James E. Kwegyir Aggrey

James E. Kwegyir Aggrey was born in 1875 into a family of chiefs. A Ghanaian-born educator and clergyman, and one of the most eminent Africans of his day, he was a prime mover in the formation of the Johannesburg Joint Council of Europeans and Africans in 1921. Aggrey received his education in Ghana (then the Gold Coast), England, and the United States. In 1921 he spent three months in South Africa as a member of the Phelps-Stokes Commission on African Education. Aggrey's thinking on race relations reflected patterns current in the United States, where the stress was on compromise and cooperation by blacks, not on integration or the achievement of political rights. His appeals for racial harmony reinforced the disposition of many African National Congress (ANC) leaders for consultation and for participation in the interracial councils then being formed in major South African cities. He died in 1927. Edwin W. Smith wrote a biography of him, Aggrey of Africa ( 1929).