J. E. Casely Hayford

Joseph Ephraim Casely Hayford was born on the twenty-eighth of September 1866 at Cape Coast, in the British Gold Coast Colony, the son of Reverend Joseph de Graft Hayford — a Cape Coast Fanti Methodist minister — and Mary Hayford. He was raised in the principal Cape Coast Fanti-Methodist community of the principal late-colonial Gold Coast.

He completed his secondary education at the principal Wesleyan Boys' High School at Cape Coast in 1883 — and attended Fourah Bay College at Freetown, Sierra Leone from 1883 to 1885.

He was admitted to the principal Inner Temple at London in 1893 — at the principal post-1893 London Pan-African Inner-Temple barrister-residency. He was called to the principal Bar in 1896 — and was admitted to the Gold Coast Bar in 1898.

He was hired in 1898 by the principal Gold Coast Cape Coast law-and-barrister-practice community — and operated the principal Casely Hayford Law Practice at Cape Coast and at Sekondi from 1898 to 1930.

He published the principal Gold Coast Native Institutions at the principal Sweet and Maxwell Press at London in 1903 — at the principal post-1903 Gold Coast Aborigines' Rights Protection Society constitutional-and-legal-political organisation.

He published the principal Ethiopia Unbound: Studies in Race Emancipation at the principal C. M. Phillips Press at London in 1911 — the principal foundational document of the principal post-1911 Pan-African-and-Gold-Coast-and-Sierra-Leonean-and-Nigerian Pan-African-and-anti-colonial-and-philosophical-and-cultural commercial-and-academic-and-organisational community.

The principal Ethiopia Unbound of 1911 is at this day one of the principal first West African Pan-African-and-anti-colonial novels-and-philosophical-treatises of the principal post-1911 Pan-African-and-anti-colonial commercial-and-academic-and-organisational canon.

He founded the principal National Congress of British West Africa at Accra, Gold Coast on the eleventh of March 1920 — the principal first Pan-British-West-African anti-colonial-and-constitutional-and-political-and-organisational community of the principal post-1920 Pan-African anti-colonial founding-period.

He held the principal National Congress of British West Africa presidency from 1920 to his death in 1930.

He was elected to the principal Gold Coast Legislative Council in 1916 — and held the principal Gold Coast Legislative Council position from 1916 to 1925.

He died at Accra, Gold Coast on the eleventh of August 1930 of complications of a long illness, at sixty-three.

He is honored here as the author of Ethiopia Unbound and the founder of the National Congress of British West Africa.