"Let me forever be discarded by the Black race, and let me be condemned by the White, if I strive not with all my powers, if I put not forth all my energies to bring respect and dignity to the African race." --Dr. Edward Wilmot Blyden
Among the most acclaimed of the early pioneer advocates of the rights of African people were Martin Robison Delany (1812-1885) and Edward Wilmot Blyden (1832-1912). They were intellectuals and activists whose lives personified the maxim of Kwame Nkrumah--"Thought without practice is empty, action without thought is blind."
Dr. Martin Robison Delany has been called "the father of Black Nationalism." It was Delany, in fact, who coined the phrase "Africa for the Africans." Delany was born May 6, 1812 in West Virginia, of a free mother and a father who purchased his own freedom in 1823. Delany's paternal grandfather was an African chief; his maternal grandfather a Mandingo prince. Born in the South, Delany resorted to learning how to read and write illegally. Due to his continued desire to learn, he later settled in New York where he attended the African Free School. Between 1843 and 1846 Delany published his own newspaper--the Mystery. Subsequently, he worked with Frederick Douglass on his weekly newspaper--the North Star. In 1850, Delany entered Harvard Medical School as one of its first Black students. In 1859, he traveled to Africa, where he stayed for nearly a year, searching for a suitable location for emigration. On February 8, 1865, during the U.S. Civil War, Delany received the commission of Major in the Federal Army--the first Black man to receive such a commission.
Delany was an accomplished author. Not surprisingly, his favorite subject was histoy. One of his books, Principia of Ethnology: The Origin of Races and Color, With an Archaeological Compendium of Ethiopian and Egyptian Civilization, From Years of Careful Examination and Enquiry, was published in 1879, and detailed the African origins of Nile Valley civilizations.
The racial and historical consciousness of Martin Robison Delany is apparent in the names he gave his children. One of his son's name was Ramses Placido, named after the mighty Egyptian pharaoh Usemare Ramses II and the Cuban poet and revolutionary. Other names for his children included Alexander Dumas, Saint Cyprian and Toussaint l'Ouverture. Frederick Douglass said of Delany, "I thank God for making me a man, simply, but Delany always thanks Him for making him a Black man."
Dr. Edward Wilmot Blyden was born August 3, 1832 in St. Thomas, Virgin Islands. Blyden often remarked that "I would rather be a member of this race than a Greek in the time of Alexander, a Roman in the Augustan period, or Anglo-Saxon in the nineteenth century." Blyden wrote and traveled extensively. During a visit to Egypt in 1866 he recorded that:
"I felt that I had a peculiar heritage in the Great Pyramid built...by the enterprising sons of Ham, from which I descended. The blood seemed to flow faster through my veins. I seemed to hear the echo of those illustrious Africans. I seemed to feel the impulse from those stirring characters who sent civilization to Greece...I felt lifted out of the commonplace grandeur of modern times; and, could my voice have reached every African in the world, I would have earnestly addressed him...: `Retake your fame.'"
Of Blyden, the great Marcus Mosiah Garvey (1887-1940) stated that:
"You who do not know anything of your ancestry will do well to read the works of Blyden, one of our historians and chroniclers, who has done so much to retrieve the lost prestige of the race."
In 1869, Blyden's essay entitled "The Negro in Ancient History" appeared in the Methodist Quarterly Review. In 1887, Blyden's most comprehensive work- -Christianity, Islam and the Negro Race--was published. A monument stands to Dr. Blyden's memory at Freetown, capital of Sierra Leone, West Africa.
In spite of fact that Delany and Blyden struggled during the heart of the nineteenth century, time has not diminished the glory of their deeds. This brief essay, therefore, is intended as a tribute to those deeds with the hope that it will help to inspire the present generation of African people to continue their noble struggle.
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