[4] Ed Vaughn co-founded the Pan-African Congress-USA in Detroit, an organization that was formed to establish ties with African countries and supported the liberation struggle against white minority rule on the continent.

Ed Vaughn was also one of the main African American delegates to the Sixth Pan-African Congress in Dar es salaam, Tanzania, in June 1974, together with C.L.R.

James, Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones) Charlie Cobb, Howard Fuller (Owusu Sadaukai) who was the founder and president of Malcolm X Liberation University, and Courtland Cox who, together with C.L.R.

The last one, the Fifth Pan-African Congress, was held in Manchester, England, in October 1945 and was attended by future African leaders including Kwame Nkrumah, Jomo Kenyatta and Hastings Kamuzu Banda who became the first presidents of their countries on attainment of independence.

Ed Vaughn was also one of the leading African American delegates to the Sixth Pan-African Congress who met with President Nyerere and had private conversations with him.

He said Nyerere told him he refused to send Babu to Zanzibar to stand trial because he was afraid they were going to kill him, as they did in 1969 another union cabinet member Abdullah Kassim Hanga who was also a close friend of Guinea's President Ahmed Sékou Touré.

Ed Vaughn also met and talked to Ugandan military head of state Idi Amin when he was in Africa in 1974, as Godfrey Mwakikagile has explained in his book Reflections on Race Relations: A Personal Odyssey.

[6] He also served as executive assistant to Detroit's first black mayor Coleman Young and was an unsuccessful candidate for the Michigan Senate seat representing the 2nd district in 2001.