There is a wealth of information in the annual publications of the Colonial Office (London) and those of the Gold Coast.

The indexes strongly suggest there was a policy to recruit literate personnel with administrative experience: and almost perhaps all branches of the colonial administration employed African Caribbeans. The post office (John Barbour-James), schools (Edith Goring), the customs, the railways, the harbour board, the tax departments, prisons, the police, and so on.

Here is one example: Leonard Julius Muss born 8 September 1873 according to the Gold Coast Civil Service List 1917, p 87. He transferred to the Gold Coast from British Guiana in March 1902 to be a 2nd class supervisor in the Gold Coast customs (and is listed in the Colonial Office Lost 1903, p 197 - this is the annual listing of everyone who had a regular job with the Colonial service). The Gold Coast Civil Service List of 1908 p 409 noted he had been in the British Guiana customs since 1892 (aged 19?). He was a member of the British Guiana militia in 1899, and deputy harbour master Dec 1898-May 1899. The Colonial Office List of 1900 p 19 lists him as a 5th class clerk in the British Guiana customs and the 1903 list has him as a 2nd class supervisor (as above). He wrote a short article for Elizabeth, Lady Clifford (wife of Gold Coast governor')s Our Days on the Gold Coast (London: John Murray, 1919).

Another example is Ebenezer Adonis James, who is listed as a passenger of the Clyde which arrived in Southampton from Trinidad on 3 February 1913 where the passenger list BT 26/568 says he was aged 42 and a superintendent of police who normally lived in West Africa. The National Archives CO documents noted in CO 343/20 October 1908 ref 37716 that he was of British Guiana and working in the Gold Coast. The Colonial Office List 1911 p 193 has him as one of the senior superintendents of police. CO 343/26 of 1919 ref 2140 has him retired to British Guiana.

Another British Guiana police officer in the Gold Coast was Lance Sergeant Alfred William Downer who was in Africa from 1901 (CO 96/404/3408 2 January 1903) and the Gold Coast Blue Book (the annual report issued for the governor, a financial overview of the colony) of 1903 notes he was paid £145 a year as a senior superintendent - there were six police officers of greater seniority. The London weekly newspaper African World 20 May 1905 p 75 notes passengers on the Jebba which reached Liverpool on 15 May 1905 and Downer travelled on that ship as did polymath-politician Blyden.

The Colonial Report of 1912 noted that E. Buckmire was a 'West Indian Native Travelling Instructor' in the Agricultural Department in Ashanti.

Once you realise that the Gold Coast administration had West Indian personnel you realise the traditional White / Black division makes little sense. Colonial social life was strongly based on clubs and you can see clubs that seem to be neither White nor African.

H. R. Biltcliffe was a prison officer in the Gold Coast (Gold Coast Report 1911) having been a Sergeant Major of the Bahamas Police.
Robert Arthur Clarke born 12 March 1870 was educated in British Honduras and worked in the post office there 1893. He was in the Gold Coast customs in 1902 (Colonial List 1910 p 493). J. Concannon had been a Sergeant Major of the St Vincent Police before working in the Gold Coast (Gold Coast Report 1911).

The e mail I received did not have the name and contact details for the student so hope she/he sees this.

Jeff Green

========================================
Message Received: Aug 12 2014, 10:54 AM
From: "Kathleen Chater" 
To: [log in to unmask]
Cc: 
Subject: Re: PhD student on BWI colonial officials in Africa needs advice

If you haven't already looked at it, the Mundus database is useful. It's "a web-based guide to more than four hundred collections of overseas missionary materials held in the United Kingdom". 

http://www.mundus.ac.uk/

Kathy

> Date: Tue, 12 Aug 2014 09:37:11 +0000
> From: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: PhD student on BWI colonial officials in Africa needs advice
> To: [log in to unmask]
> 
> The Basel Mission in Ghana (1815-2001) was an earlier missionary society
> that had Caribbean (Mainly Jamaican, 1 Antiguan) missionaries. There are
> really good archives kept by the University of Southern California about
> them http://bmpix.usc.edu/bmpix/controller/index.htm. I am working on
> this particularly missionary group at the moment and am happy to help
> further if you pass on this email.
> 
> Beverley
> ____________________
> Dr. Beverley Mullings
> Acting Head, Department of Gender Studies
> Associate Professor
> Department of Geography
> Queen's University 
> Mackintosh-Corry Hall, D506
> Kingston, Ontario, Canada K7L 3N6
> 
> Tel: 613 533-6000 ext 75030
> Fax 613 533-6122 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> On 2014-08-12 4:34 AM, "Peter B Freshwater MA, DipLib, FSA Scot"
> 
wrote:
> 
> >If the remit of this research were to extend to cover missionary
> >societies, there are records of at least one instance (and there may
> >have been more) of the London Missionary Society employing a Caribbean
> >couple as missionaries in the very early years of the C20, ca 1900-1910,
> >in North-Eastern Rhodesia. They get a mention in one of Robert
> >Rotberg's books on Christian missions in Northern Rhodesia / Zambia, and
> >details will be found in the LMS/Council for World Mission Archive in
> >SOAS. The LMS regarded this as something of a failed experiment, if I
> >remember rightly.
> >
> >Peter
> >
> >Peter B Freshwater MA, DipLib, FSA Scot
> >Editor, University of Edinburgh Journal
> >Edinburgh
> >Email: [log in to unmask]
> >
> >On 12/08/2014 08:05, msherwood wrote:
> >> A PhD student from the USA has asked for advice - other than Jeff
> >>Greene,
> >> whom else could he ask for help? Or for sources (I told him to go to the
> >> National Archives, and ask Rhodes House and the Royal Af. Society)
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> I am a Phd student at the University of Wisconsin, and I am working on a
> >> project about "Caribbean colonizers," people from the Caribbean who
> >>worked
> >> for the French and British colonial administrations in Africa. I am also
> >> interested in finding links between these colonizers and black
> >>intellectuals
> >> and black internationalist organizations during the interwar years.
> >> .....
> >>
> >> I've been doing some searching in Gold Coast newspapers, and have found
> >>a
> >> number of names of West Indian Police Superintendents, Sanitation
> >> inspectors, customs officers, postmasters, etc. I have not found any
> >>strong
> >> connections to black internationalist groups in London. So far the main
> >>lead
> >> I have is John Alexander Barbour-James, a man from British Guiana who
> >>worked
> >> as a postmaster in the Gold Coast, and then moved to London where he was
> >> involved in the African Progress Union, and likely other movements. His
> >>wife
> >> Edith Rita Goring seems to have followed a similar trajectory.
> >>
> >