Rev Dr James Emman Kwegyir Aggrey, the Gold Coast academician and priest, has been honoured by the government of the Republic of Senegal.
Senegal issued a commemorative airmail (poste aérienne) stamp featuring James Aggrey, together with Alain LeRoy Locke, writer, philosopher, educator and the first African American Rhodes Scholar.
According to information gathered by GhanaWeb, the commemorative stamp is described as ‘Précurseurs de la Négritude’ on a Premier Jour (first-day issue) envelope from the République du Sénégal.
Précurseurs de la Négritude is a French phrase which translates as “precursors or forerunners of Negritude”.
Even though Dr Aggrey and Locke were not members of Negritude, a cultural and intellectual movement celebrating Black identity and heritage, they were honoured for being seen as early intellectual and cultural pioneers whose ideas helped shape the movement.
About James Kwegyir Aggrey:
James Emman Kwegyir Aggrey was born on October 18, 1875, and passed away on July 30, 1927. He was an intellectual, missionary, and teacher. He was born in the Gold Coast (modern Ghana) and later emigrated to the United States, but returned. He was born in Chorkor to Kodwo Kwegyir, a friend of the then master chieftain Amonu IV. In June 1883, he was baptised in a municipality in the Gold Coast, where he was given the Christian name James. He attended Wesley Boys Senior High School, now Mfantsipim School, in Cape Coast. He later became the school’s headmaster and was the first Vice Principal of Achimota College.
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 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 languages and was said to have spoken (besides English) French, German, Ancient and Modern Greek, and Latin.
In November 1903, he was appointed a minister in the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church in Salisbury. In 1905, he married Rose Douglas, a native of Virginia, 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, he earned a doctorate in osteopathy. In the same year, he transferred employment to a small municipality in North Carolina. Between 1915 and 1917, Aggrey took up further studies at what is now known as Columbia University, where he studied sociology, psychology and the Japanese language.
In 1920, Paul Monroe, a member of the Phelps-Stokes Fund, offered Aggrey the opportunity to participate in a research expedition to Africa to determine which measures were necessary to improve education in Africa. Aggrey accepted and visited what are now ten different countries in Africa, where he collected and analysed 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.
Profile of Dr James Aggrey
Source: Ghanaweb