[8] In the 1780s, London was home to several thousand freed slaves and Black Pioneers, who had gained their freedom fighting on the side of the British in the American Revolutionary War.

[10] William Pitt the Younger, prime minister and leader of the Tory party, had an active interest in the Scheme, because he saw it as a means to repatriate the Black Poor to Africa, since "it was necessary they should be sent somewhere, and be no longer suffered to infest the streets of London".

In 1787, a naval vessel carrying 411 passengers, including freed slaves, Black Pioneers, their white wives, and mixed-race children, arrived on the coast.

[21] In 1938 Wallace Johnson started the West African Youth League in Freetown, mobilising workers in new trade unions against the colonial government.

Politicians led by Sir Milton Margai campaigned for this within the colonial government of Sierra Leone and throughout the 1950s won office on those grounds.

British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan already supported the policy of granting independence to Britain's African colonies and ordered his government to receive the petitions and act on them.

Macmillan privately stated that he knew they would vote yes, however, this was a formality in order to show his own government that there was popular support within Sierra Leone for a British withdrawal.

After the referendum passed, as all involved assumed it would, the colonial administration in Freetown began holding elections to establish the government that would take over after the handover of power.

On 20 April 1960, Margai led a 24-member Sierra Leonean delegation at constitutional conferences that were held with the Government of Macmillan and British Colonial Secretary Iain Macleod where the details of independence were agreed to.

[7] The last British Governor of Sierra Leone was sworn in by the new independent government as the Governor-General (Queen Elizabeth II's representative to the new country.)

There was a brief state of emergency, as opposition leader Siaka Stevens, whose political party the All People's Congress (APC) had lost the previous elections to Margai boycotted the ceremony, and it was feared would try to sabotage the handover of power.

It was feared the APC would attempt to incite riots, on this basis Stevens was placed under house arrest prior to the ceremony and released shortly afterwards.