James Aggrey

James Emman Kwegyir Aggrey (October 18 1875 - July 30 1927) was an intellectual, missionary, and teacher. He was a native of the Gold Coast (modern Ghana) who later emigrated to the United States, but returned to Africa for several years.

He was born in Anomabo, the son of the Kodwo Kwegyir, a friend of the then master chieftain Amonu IV. In the June 1883, he was baptized in a municipality in the Gold Coast and accepted his Christian first name James. He went to a Methodist school, where the teachers noted that he was already unusual, already studying Greek and Latin.

In 1898, at the age of 23, he was selected due to his education to be trained in the United States as a missionary. On July 10 1898, Aggrey agreed and left the Gold Coast for the United States, where he settled in Salisbury, North Carolina and attended the Livingstone College. He studied a variety of subjects at the university, including chemistry, physics, logic, economics and politics. In May 1902 he graduated from the university with three academic degrees. Aggrey was very talented in language and was said to have spoken (beside English) French, German, Ancient and Modern Greek, and Latin.

In November 1903 he was appointed the minister of the African Methodists Zion church in Salisbury. In 1905 he married Rose Douglas, with whom he had four children. In the same year he began to teach at Livingstone College. In 1912 he earned his doctorate in theology, and in 1914 followed a doctorate in osteopathy. In the same year he transferred employment to a small municipality to North Carolina. Between 1915 and 1917 Aggrey took up further studies at the Columbia University, where he studied sociology, psychology and the Japanese language.

In 1920 Paul Monroe offered him the opportunity to attend a research expedition to Africa to determine which measures were necessary for the improvement of education in Africa. Aggrey accepted and visited ten countries in Africa, in which he collected and analyzed the education data. In 1920 he visited Sierra Leone, Liberia, the Gold Coast, Cameroon and Nigeria. In 1921 he visited the Belgian Congo, Angola and South Africa. During this journey Aggrey made a significant impression and underscored the importance of education among some people who would become important figures in Africa, including Hastings Kamuzu Banda, later president of Malawi, Nnamdi Azikiwe, the first president of Nigeria, and Kwame Nkrumah, the first president of an independent Ghana.

In 1924 Aggrey was appointed by the governor of the Crown Colony Gold Coast Sir Frederick Gordon Guggisberg as the director of Achimota College in Accra. He resettled with his wife and children at the college, north of Accra. In May 1927 he returned to the USA, and in July admitted to a hospital in Harlem, New York, where he died later that month.

Writing

* "The Eagle That Would Not Fly", (illustrated by Wolf Erlbruch)

References

* [http://www.bautz.de/bbkl/a/aggrey_j_e_k.shtml Entry] at the Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon
*fr icon [http://www.grioo.com/info1408.html Grioo.com] :"This article is based on a translation of the corresponding article at the German Wikipedia.