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Meda wo ase, Afron8v—powerful thread to pull.
Nana Edward Wilmot Blyden (1832–1912), he’s essential alongside Nana Martin R. Delany. They were in dialogue around repatriation, education, language, and race vindication; Blyden shows up in Delany’s Liberia/Abẹ́òkúta networks.
How to dive in (short reading path)
Delany, Official Report of the Niger Valley Exploring Party (1861): read Preface, Liberia chapters, and Appendices; use search-in-text for “Blyden,” “Liberia Herald,” “Benson,” “Abeokuta.”
Blyden, Christianity, Islam and the Negro Race (essays, 1875–1887): especially “Mohammedanism and the Negro Race,” “The Call of Providence…,” and “West Africa and Her Needs.”
Blyden, West Africa Before Europe (1905): nation‑building, education, and the “African personality” (the Nana Kwame Nkrumah appropriated for his own purposes markedly against its Black origins) thesis.
Blyden, The Negro in Ancient History (lecture/essays): race vindication through Kmtyw antiquity.
Biography/context: Hollis R. Lynch, Edward Wilmot Blyden: Pan‑Negro Patriot; Teshale Tibebu, Edward Wilmot Blyden and the Racial Nationalist Imagination.
Themes to track (Abibifahodie lens)
Self‑definition: the “African/Black personality” vs. imitation of Europe.
Language: advocacy for our languages (and arabic literacy) as tools of mind and power.
Spiritual frames: his comparative take on it’s-slime/christinsanity among Abibifoɔ.
Repatriation and institution‑building: schools, press, diplomacy in Liberia/Sierra Leone.
Access tips
Search terms on Internet Archive/Google Books/HathiTrust:
“Official Report of the Niger Valley Exploring Party Delany 1861”
“Edward Wilmot Blyden Christianity Islam and the Negro Race pdf”
“West Africa Before Europe Blyden”
Then use “Search inside” for cross‑references (“Delany” in Blyden; “Blyden” in Delany).
If folks are down, these can be touched on in the Africana Study Group
Week 1: Delany report + notes on any Blyden mentions.
Week 2: Blyden’s Islam/Christianity essays.
Week 3: West Africa Before Europe + applications to today (schools, press, land).
Week 4: Synthesis—Delany x Blyden to practical Abibifahodie now.