[3][4] His assassination in early 1989 reverberated across West Africa and sent shockwaves in Sierra Leone, especially in the Creole community and among his professional and political peers.

Although the family subsequently immigrated to Nigeria in 1939, all of his four siblings were born in Freetown and three qualified as professionals namely as lawyers and in the teaching profession.

His parents belonged to the Creole ethnic group, the descendants of free and formerly enslaved people of African descent and came from prominent Freetown families engaged in colonial politics.

He was a contemporary of Sierra Leonean professionals and politicians including Claude Emile Wright, Ernest Samuel Beoku-Betts and Salako Benka-Coker.

She subsequently qualified as a Registered Nurse in England and was also actively involved with the women's movement in Sierra Leone alongside other Creole political and civil leaders such as Constance Agatha Cummings-John.

[12] Igbobi College was an elite school that attracted prominent members of the Lagosian Yoruba middle class.

The provisions of this arrangement provided Sierra Leoneans with the opportunity to complete a Durham University degree at Fourah Bay College.

Several other prominent Sierra Leoneans including Sir Milton Margai, the first Prime Minister of Sierra Leone, Dr Robert Wellesley-Cole, the first West African to qualify as a surgeon at the Royal College of Surgeons in England, and Dr Raymond Sarif Easmon a medical doctor and accomplished playwright, completed their medical studies at Durham University which was affiliated to Fourah Bay College until 1960.

John Nelson-Williams, was elected to the Sierra Leone Parliament and held a cabinet position as Minister of Information and Broadcasting.

He ran to be a member of Parliament for the Wilberforce, Sierra Leone district in 1962 and lost the election to Cyril Rogers-Wright, a Creole lawyer, who was the SLPP flagbearer.

Almost twenty years later in 1985, Nelson-Williams ran for the Parliamentary seat in the Freetown West III constituency against candidates including F.E.D.

In the latter years of his life, outside of his medical practice and business interests, Nelson-Williams spent time in the company of a small group of like-minded professional friends at the Brookfields Hotel.

The rampant corruption and state-sanctioned violence evidenced by the execution of Dr Mohamed Sorie Forna and the assassination of Samuel Lansana Bangura, which was allegedly sanctioned by the Sierra Leonean government, was fiercely criticized by Sierra Leoneans such as Claude Nelson-Williams and Dr Raymond Sarif Easmon.

[34] Claude Nelson-Williams would remain a critic of corruption and violence by the state and some reports at the time of his death outline that the Sierra Leonean government was wary of his critiques.

Alhadi or Highway had been accused of the 1979 assassination of Samuel Lansana Bangura, a Governor of the Bank of Sierra Leone, who was a personal friend of Nelson-Williams.

[35] Following a funeral service at Wesley Methodist Church, Claude Nelson-Williams was buried at King Tom Cemetery in the West End of Freetown.

These younger generation of Sierra Leoneans combined professional achievement with civic and political leadership, and in the one-party state paid with their lives or were imprisoned.