J. E. K. Aggrey: Africa's Scholar from Salisbury

James Emman Kwegyir Aggrey was born in eighteen seventy-five on the Gold Coast of West Africa, in the region now called Ghana. He arrived at Livingstone College in Salisbury in eighteen ninety-eight as a student and stayed for many years as a faculty member, becoming one of the most influential African educators of the early twentieth century.

Aggrey carried a message of racial cooperation across two continents. He is remembered for the image of the piano keyboard: you need both the black and white keys to make harmony. In nineteen twenty he joined the Phelps-Stokes Commission and traveled through sub-Saharan Africa, shaping the direction of colonial and post-colonial education policy. Back in Salisbury, he married Rose Douglass in nineteen oh five. Rose spent decades organizing across North Carolina for education, social welfare, and racial harmony. Aggrey died in New York in nineteen twenty-seven. This was their home.