Walter Benjamin Cockerill (1886-1984) from Milton Junction, Wisconsin, served as a Seventh Day Baptist missionary in Nyasaland (now Malawi), British Central Africa in 1914-1915. During this period was the Chilembwe Uprising, a revolt against British colonial rule, led by Reverend John Chilembwe, and African who trained as a minister in the United States. British authorities accused Cockerill and other foreign missionaries including Joseph Booth of teaching sedition and deported them.
George Shepperson (1922-2020) was a British historian and Africanist at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. He is best known for his works on Malawian and African American history. One of his early scholarly works on African history was Independent African: John Chilembwe and the Origins, Setting and Significance of the Nyasaland Native Rising of 1915 (Edinburgh, 1958).
