Thomas Hutton-Mills Sr.

Thomas Hutton-Mills was a lawyer and nationalist who became the first African barrister elected to the Gold Coast Legislative Council and the first president of the National Congress of British West Africa. He was born in James Town, Accra, on 13 June 1865 and died on 4 March 1931.

His mother was a daughter of James Bannerman, the Gold Coast's lieutenant-governor, and his father was a James Town merchant. He was educated at Wesleyan schools in Accra, Cape Coast and Freetown, at Harrow and at Cambridge. As a government clerk he was dismissed for joining protests in 1886. He worked for his uncle Edmund Bannerman, a barrister and newspaper owner, then read law at the Middle Temple and was called to the bar in 1894.

He led the opposition to colonial ordinances on the Accra Town Council and compulsory labour in 1897, sat on the Legislative Council from 1898 to 1904 and 1909 to 1919, and advised the Ga Mantse Kojo Ababio, championing the people of the Alata quarter. In 1920 he became the first president of the National Congress of British West Africa. His son, Thomas Hutton-Mills Jr., was also a lawyer and diplomat.