James Aggrey – African Villain or Hero?
A review of the article titled ‘James E. K. Aggrey: Collaborator, Nationalist, Pan-African’ by Kenneth King In the article titled “ Collaborator, Nationalist, Pan-African ”, King (1969) labors to give a different perspective of the heroism of James Aggrey while at the same time admitting how difficult that task is since among radical Pan-Africanists, he carries the image of a villain. Even to the author, it looks much easier to describe Aggrey as a collaborator compared to trying to portray him as a nationalist or Pan-Africanist. King calls it a kind of Pan-Africanism that has suffered neglect in the face of more combative standpoints of the likes of W.E.B. DuBois and Marcus Garvey. As a collaborator, King asserts that the years Aggrey spent in America as well as touring Africa made him believe he was perfectly suited to connect Africa with Negro America. Celebrated as a ‘Good African’ among the whites, he endeavored to make colonialism tolerable and black revolution untenable. E