- Joe Appiah
Joseph Emmanuel Appiah (1918 - 1990) was a
Ghana ian politician. He born atAdum inKumasi, Ghana , the son of James Appiah and Adwoa Akyaa. Both parents were relations of theAsantehene . His father was a schoolmaster and aMethodist elder. Appiah was educated atWesley College ,Mfantsipim , and theMiddle Temple .During his time in the
United Kingdom , he was closely involved with theWest African Students' Union (WASU), eventually becoming its president. He came, through residence in London and involvement with WASU, to know many of the main players in the fight against imperial rule inGhana and elsewhere inAfrica . Not least among these wasKwame Nkrumah , to whom he became very close. Nkrumah was Appiah's first choice for best man at his wedding to Peggy Appiah (néePeggy Cripps ) in 1953. Their son, thephilosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah , was born inLondon in 1954.Appiah and his young family returned to Ghana in late 1954. Soon after, his friendship with Nkrumah was ruined. He joined the National Liberation Movement (NLM) party and won the Atwima-Amansie seat in 1957. After the General Afrifa-led coup that overthrew Nkrumah in 1966, he was asked to explain the new regime's motives to Ghana's friends and neighbours. Appiah was intermittently involved in public life as a diplomat and a government minister from then on until his retirement in 1978.
He returned to Kumasi, where he continued to fulfill his duties as a clan elder. His autobiography "Joe Appiah: The Autobiography of an African Patriot" was published in 1990. Kwame Anthony Appiah's "In My Father's House: Africa in the Philosophy of Culture" is inspired throughout by the example of his father's easy cosmopolitanism, which remained faithful to his origins.
Appiah is remarkable for the consistency of his moderate nationalism, his
Pan-Africanism , hiscosmopolitanism and the steadying role he played in post-independence Ghanaian politics. His autobiography is an important source for the late colonial/earlypost-colonial period in Africa.Of note, he had a grandson who played international rugby.
Books
*Appiah, Joseph (1990) "The Autobiography of an African Patriot", Praeger: New York
*Appiah, Kwame Anthony (1993) "In My Father's House: Africa in the Philosophy of Culture", OUP: New York
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