User:Latimhc0/Edward Wilmot Blyden

After immigrating to Liberia in 1850, Blyden was soon working in journalism. From 1855 to 1856 he edited the Liberia Herald and wrote the column "A Voice From Bleeding Africa". He also spent time in British colonies in West Africa, particularly Nigeria and Sierra Leone, writing for early newspapers in both colonies. In Sierra Leone from 1855-1856, Blyden was the founder and editor for the Liberia Herald. He also served as editor at The Negro and The African World. He maintained ties with the American Colonization Society and published in their African Repository and Colonial Journal.

In 1861 Blyden became professor of Greek and Latin at Liberia College. He was selected as president of the college, serving 1880–1884 during a period of expansion.

As a diplomat, Blyden served as an ambassador for Liberia to Britain and France. He also traveled to the United States where he spoke to major black churches about his work in Africa. Blyden believed that Black Americans could end their suffering of racial discrimination by returning to Africa and helping to develop it. He was criticized by African Americans who wanted to gain full civil rights in their birth nation of the United States and did not identify with Africa.

In suggesting a redemptive role for African Americans in Africa through what he called Ethiopianism, Blyden likened their suffering in the diaspora to that of the Jews; he supported the 19th-century Zionist project of Jews returning to Palestine. In their book Israel in the Black American Perspective, Robert G. Weisbord and Richard Kazarian write that in his booklet The Jewish Question (published in 1898, the year after the First Zionist Congress) Blyden describes that while travelling in the Middle East in 1866 he wanted to travel to "the original home of the Jews--to see Jerusalem and Mt. Zion, the joy of the whole earth". While in Jerusalem he visited the Western Wall. Blyden advocated for the Jewish settlement of Palestine and chided Jews for not taking advantage of the opportunity to live in their ancient homeland. Blyden was familiar with Theodor Herzl and his book The Jewish State, praising it for expressing ideas that "have given such an impetus to the real work of the Jews as will tell with enormous effect upon their future history".

Later in life Blyden became involved in Islam and concluded that it was a more "African" religion than Christianity for African Americans and Americo-Liberians.

Participating in the development of the country, Blyden was appointed the Liberian Secretary of State (1862–64). He was later appointed as Secretary of the Interior (1880–82). Blyden contested the 1885 presidential election for the Republican Party, but lost to incumbent Hilary R. W. Johnson.

From 1901 to 1906, Blyden directed the education of Sierra Leonean Muslims at an institution in Sierra Leone where he lived in Freetown. This is when he had his relationship with Anna Erskine; they had five children together. He became passionate about Islam during this period, recommending it to African Americans as the major religion most in keeping with their historic roots in Africa.