JC Omosanya Vaughan was a Nigerian nationalist at the beginning of the 20th Century. Vaughan was a social activist and also a Medical Practitioner. Born in 1893, to James, son to American former slave. James had left America with his brother in 1853 after their father’s death. These were times when those who knew where in Africa their ancestors came from, migrated to escape oppressive laws against colored peoples. After a brilliant career at the Kings’ College, James Churchill enrolled in the University of Glasgow in 1913 to study Medicine and Surgery and graduated in 1918. Together with friends such as Ernest Ikoli and Samuel Akinsanya, Vaughan organized the Lagos Youth Movement, later named the Nigerian Youth Movement, to challenge Macaulay’s control over the political spectrum of Lagos.
Vaughan took special interest in African traditional medicine and in an effort to promote African culture, wrote a work titled: Yoruba Women in Medicine practice, Native and Modern, in 1935. He established industrial school for the orphans where they taught carpentry and some other technical works. Dr. J.C. Vaughan died in 1937.
