Momulu Massaquoi

Momulu Massaquoi (1869–1938) was a Liberian politician, diplomat, and monarch of the Vai people of Sierra Leone and Liberia. He served as Liberia's consul general to Germany 1922–1930, and appears to be the first indigenous African diplomat to modern Europe.[1]

A black man, standing, with close-cropped hair and hands stretched forward and outward. He is wearing heavy embroidered robes.
Momulu Massaquoi, from a 1905 publication.

Early life

Massaquoi was born on 6 December 1869 to King Lahai of the Gallinas Kingdom and his wife, Queen Fatama Bendu Sandemani of N’Jabacca.[2] He attended a mission school in Cape Mount, before traveling to the United States to attend Central Tennessee College.[3]

Massaquoi was required by his mother to begin to study at an early age. His parents were both Muslims, and in the hopes that their son might learn to read the Quran, they placed him as a student of a Muslim cleric when he was eight years old. Two years later, he came under Christian influence at a mission school of the Protestant Episcopal Church, where he was sent to learn the English language. After several years’ residence at the mission, he was baptized and confirmed.

In 1888, he began attending Central Tennessee College in Nashville, Tennessee. His mother died while he was in college, and her death made him the rightful ruler of N’Jabacca. He felt it to be his duty to return to his people, but again visited the United States to represent Africa at the Parliament of Religious and the African Ethnological Congress in connection with the World's Columbian Exposition. He opened, in May, 1900, an industrial school at Ghendimah, the capital of Gallinas. Here, the pupils were instructed in English, Vai, and Arabic, and in the industrial arts. He was endeavoring, in his own words, “to develop an African civilization independent of any, yet, like others, on a solid Christian principle.”[4]

Death

He died on June 15, 1938.[5]

Notable descendants

References
  • Public Domain This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain: Missionary Review Publishing Company's The Missionary Review of the World (1905)
  1. G.R. Berridge; Lorna Lloyd (25 January 2012). The Palgrave Macmillan Dictionary of Diplomacy. Palgrave Macmillan. p. 239. ISBN 978-1-137-01761-1.
  2. Dunn, Elwood D.; Beyan, Amos J.; Burrowes, Carl Patrick (20 December 2000). Historical Dictionary of Liberia. Scarecrow Press. p. 223. ISBN 978-1-4616-5931-0.
  3. Thomas Borstelmann (1993). Apartheid's Reluctant Uncle: The United States and Southern Africa in the Early Cold War. Oxford University Press. p. 7. ISBN 978-0-19-507942-5.
  4. Missionary Review Publishing Company 1905, p. 449.
  5. Smyke, Raymond J. The first African diplomat, c2004: t.p. (Momolu Massaquoi) p. 43, etc. (b. 1870?, Kpasalo, Liberia; d. June 15, 1938).

Bibliography

Further reading
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