Our Great-Grandfather, Edward Wilmot Blyden.

In 1850, after a long sea voyage, an 18-year-old Caribbean set foot on Africa's shores for the first time. Edward Wilmot Blyden settled in the colonial town of Monrovia, Liberia, where black Americans were building a new nation. There he quickly became known as the bright young man from the Virgin Islands who could speak English, Spanish, Dutch, and Hebrew.

Just a few years after his arrival, Blyden began teaching at Alexander High School, which the American Colonization Society had started to train young Liberians. In 1855, as editor of the newspaper The Liberia Herald, he began to champion greater respect for the indigenous cultures. The following year he became a Presbyterian minister and, soon after, a professor at Liberia College. In 1862, when …