There haven’t been many famous people born in Rayleigh. But one of the pioneers of journalism in Africa , Frank Barton, was born in Rayleigh in 1924. He died just over a year ago.
The Times’ obituary of him explains that he was the founding editor of the first newspaper in Africa designed for a black readership:
The journalist Frank Barton was one of the great figures of white liberal resistance to colonial rule. He worked for many newspapers in southern Africa and in 1958 he was founding editor of the African Times, the first African-edited paper designed for a black readership, in Lusaka, Zambia.
.
Frank Barton was born in Rayleigh, Essex, in 1924. He left school in Uxbridge, Middlesex, at 15 to do odd jobs, including that of office boy on the Hendon Times, a post that began his lifelong love of journalism.
.
In 1942 he joined the RAF and was posted to Southern Rhodesia where he published a weekly bulletin for RAF staff. He returned to the Hendon Times in 1947 before going back to Africa in 1950 to work on the Central African Post (Lusaka), owned by Dr Alexander Scott.
.
Though Scott was an early champion of African rights, the Post, like other colonial newspapers, had catered almost exclusively for the tiny white community. It was a bias that Barton set out to change, covering news of the African community, publishing African readers? letters and exposing the dire inequalities to which the voiceless black majority were subject. He became an outcast within the white community.
The Guardian’s obituary mentions that:
In his last few years he became increasingly depressed at the state of Africa and the poverty of its people.
Which is not surprising considering the dreadful condition of Zimbabwe today. But he still remembered well in Africa, for example at the end of this article from the Nigerian Daily Sun: