Edward Wilmot Blyden
Edward Wilmot Blyden (3 August 1832 – 7 February 1912) was an educator, writer, diplomat, and politician.
Quotes
[edit]- I am aware that some, against all experience, are hoping for the day when they will enjoy equal social and political rights in this land. We do not blame them for so believing and trusting. But we would remind them that there is a faith against reason, against experience, which consists in believing or pretending to believe very important propositions upon very slender proofs, and in maintaining opinions without any proper grounds.
- The Call of Providence to the Descendants of Africa in America (1862)
- Mohammed not only loved the Negro, but regarded Africa with peculiar interest and affection. He never spoke of any curse hanging over the country of people. When in the early years of his reform, his followers were persecuted and could get no protection in Arabia, he advised them to seek an asylum in Africa. "Yonder", he said, pointing towards this country, "yonder lieth a country wherein no man is wronged —a land of righteousness. Depart thither; and remain until it pleaseth the Lord to open your way before you". This recalls to us Homer’s "blameless Ethiopians", and the words of the Angel to Joseph: "Arise and flee into Egypt, and be thou there until I bring thee word again".
- Christianity, Islam and the Negro Race (1887), p. 266.
Quotes Edward Wilmot Blyden
[edit]- The claim of Edward Wilmot Blyden to the esteem and regard of all thinking Africans rests not so much upon the special work he has done for any particular people of the African race, as upon the general work he has done for the race as a whole.
- What do I mean? I mean this, that while Booker T. Washington seeks to promote the material advancement of the black man in the United States, and W.E. Burghart Du Bois his social enfranchisement amid surroundings and in an atmosphere uncongenial to racial development, Edward Wilmot Blyden has sought for more than a quarter of a century to reveal everywhere the African unto himself; to fix his attention upon original ideas and conceptions as to his place in the economy of the world; to point out to him his work as a race among the races of men; lastly and most important of all, to lead back unto self-respect. He has been the voice of one crying in the wilderness all these years, calling upon all thinking Africans to go back to the rock from whence they were hewn by the common Father of the nations-- to drop a metaphor, to learn to unlearn all that foreign sophistry has encrusted upon the intelligence of the African"
- West Africa Before by Europe Casely Hayford Edward Wilmot Blyden (1832-1912)
- His place of birth, St. Thomas[now US Virgin Islands] did not stop him from holding on to his African roots.
