Joe Appiah and his British upper class wife lady Peggy Appiah and their four kids; firstborn child, son Kwame (now world renowned Professor of philosophy and co-author of Encyclopedia Africana Prof Anthony Kwame Appiah aka postmodern Socrates. In November 2009, Forbes Magazine put Professor Appiah on a list of the world’s seven most powerful thinkers, selected by Princeton’s President. Norton published The Honor Code: How Moral Revolutions Happen in October 2010.), was born in London in 1954, followed by Ama (born 1955), Adwoa (born 1960) and Abena (born 1962). This photo was taken in 1969.
JOE APPIAH AND PEGGY CRIPPS: INTERNATIONAL INTERRACIAL MARRIAGE DESCRIBED AS "DISGUSTING" BY APARTHEID SOUTH AFRICAN GOVERNMENT AND INSPIRED THE MOVIE "GUESS WHO`S COMING TO DINNER"
Dr Joe Appiah, then the Ghana government`s representative in Britain caused an international sensation and racial diplomatic uproar when he married Peggy Cripps, the youngest daughter Labour politician and former chancellor of Exchequer Sir Stafford Cripps in 1953. It was then unheard of that an African will dare to marry a white lady from the the British upper class family. This sensational love affair inspired the 1967 Hollywood comedy-drama movie "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner " starring Spencer Tracy, Sidney Poitier and Katharine Hepburn, and featuring Hepburn's niece Katharine Houghton.
Enid Margaret Cripps was born on May 21 1921, the fourth child of the barrister and MP Sir Stafford Cripps. She was brought up at the family home in Gloucestershire, where her father was known locally as "The Squire of the Moated Grange" and banned from reading the lesson at his local church because of his politics. Young Peggy, however, remembered his liking for blue jokes and the future Commonwealth leaders who came to call; she was unselfconscious enough to write a poem entitled Nigger.
After Maltman Green School at Gerrard's Cross, she studied History of Art in Florence before returning home to go to a secretarial school. When the the Blitz began it moved to Dorset, where she was arrested for acting suspiciously while looking for flowers. At the police station she reeled off an impressive list of Latin names for flora, then encountered fresh suspicion by saying that her father was in Moscow, where he was ambassador.
On joining him, she decided that, although Muscovites were shabbily dressed, they seemed more independent than ordinary Londoners. She and her mother visited Finland, where a Russian officer proposed to her, saying he would come to England in 10 years, after the war and the revolution.
When her father left the Soviet Union, Peggy worked in Teheran for the British embassy and then the Army. After the war she had a breakdown, which necessitated recuperation in Switzerland. She studied art in London before setting off with her mother on an aid mission to China, which prompted the Chinese ambassador to predict:
Millions of Changs and Wangs with open arms
The Albion maiden will embrace,
Whose rare benevolence and natural charms
Profoundly touch the heart of an ancient race.
After Joe Appiah completed his Bar finals the couple settled at Kumasi in the Gold Coast, where she satisfied his family by coming from a respectable background and having borne him a son, who was to be joined by three sisters. Joe started off working for Nkrumah, but he fell out with "the Redeemer" as the Gold Coast was about to become an independent Ghana setting off on the "Golden Road to Socialism".
Appiah practised at the Bar while joining the opposition United Nationalist Party, and found himself in jail without trial for 15 months after fiercely campaigning against a Prevention Detention Act. He later formed his own own party to champion democracy; had another spell in jail after being accused of trying to foment a coup; and latterly became a roving ambassador regarded as an apologist for the new regime.
During these years Peggy Appiah learned to wear the local cloth on ceremonial occasions, though she preferred to wear European dress around the house. She started to write a series of children's books, which included The Pineapple Child and Other Tales from the Ashanti, Why There are So Many Roads, Afua and the Mouse and the reader Yao and the Python. There were also a couple of adult novels - Smell of Onions and A Dirge Too Soon - as well as a volume of verse and a collection of 7,000 Ashanti proverbs.
When Joe Appiah was jailed, there were plans to expel Peggy; but this would have caused unwelcome publicity, with the prospect of moving photographs of her at press conferences surrounded by her attractive light-skinned children.
Peggy Appiah bought a house in England to be close to the children when they were at school, but continued to visit Ghana, where she spent her last years gardening and amassing what is arguably the finest collection of Akan gold weights. In 1996 she was appointed MBE for services to Anglo-Ghanaian relations.
When her husband died in 1990 she was asked if she would return to Britain; she replied that her home was in Kumasi. She bought a plot for herself next to Joe's grave, covering it with a concrete slab to prevent anyone else being buried there.
Credit: Trip Down Memory Lane http://goo.gl/PkEZW
