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The Right Honorable

Kwame Nkrumah
PC

1st President of Ghana

In office
1 July 1960 24 February 1966
Elizabeth II
Preceded by

as Queen of Ghana

Himself
as Prime Minister of Ghana

Succeeded by

Joseph Arthur Ankrah

3rd Chairperson of the Organisation of African Unity

In office
21 October 1965 24 February 1966

Preceded by

Gamal Abdel Nasser

Joseph Arthur Ankrah

Succeeded by

as Chairman of the National Liberation

Council

1st Prime Minister of Ghana

In office
6 March 1957 1 July 1960
Monarch

Elizabeth II

Governor
General

Charles Arden-Clarke
The Lord Listowel

Preceded by

Himself as Prime Minister of the Gold

Coast

Succeeded by

Himself as President

1st Prime Minister of the Gold Coast

In office
21 March 1952 6 March 1957
Monarch

Elizabeth II

Governor
General

Charles Arden-Clarke

Preceded by

Position established

Succeeded by

Himself as Prime Minister of Ghana

Personal details

Born

18 September 1909
Nkroful, Gold Coast
(now Ghana)

Died

27 April 1972 (aged 62)

Bucharest, Romania

United Gold Coast Convention (1947

Political party

1949)

Convention People's Party (19491966)

Spouse(s)

Fathia Rizk

Children

Francis
Gamal
Samia
Sekou

Alma mater

Lincoln University, Pennsylvania

University of Pennsylvania
London School of Economics
University College London
Gray's Inn

Religion

baptized Roman Catholic; by 1957, "nondenominational Christian"[1]

Kwame Nkrumah, P.C.[2] (18 or 21 September 1909[3] 27 April 1972) was the leader of Ghana
and its predecessor state, the Gold Coast, from 1951 to 1966. He became the first Prime Minister
of the Gold Coast in 1951, and led it to independence as Ghana in 1957, becoming the new
country's first Prime Minister. After Ghana became a republic in 1960, Nkrumah became
President. An influential 20th-century advocate of Pan-Africanism, he was a founding member
of the Organisation of African Unity and was the winner of the Lenin Peace Prize in 1963. He
saw himself as an African Lenin.[4]

Contents

1 Early life and education

o 1.1 Gold Coast
o 1.2 United States of America
o 1.3 London
2 Return to the Gold Coast
o 2.1 Convention People's Party
o 2.2 Prime Minister
3 Ghanaian independence
4 Social and cultural policies
o 4.1 Education
o 4.2 Culture
o 4.3 Media
5 Economic policy
o 5.1 Cocoa

6 Political developments
o 6.1 Preventive Detention Act
o 6.2 Opposition to tribalism
o 6.3 Increased power of the Convention People's Party
7 Foreign policy and military
o 7.1 Armed forces
o 7.2 Relationship with Communist world
8 Political philosophy
9 Overthrow
10 Exile, death and tributes
11 Works by Kwame Nkrumah
12 See also
13 References
o 13.1 Sources & further reading
14 External links

Early life and education

Gold Coast
Kwame Nkrumah was born as Francis Nwia Kofi Ngonloma in 1909[5][6] in Nkroful, Gold
Coast.[7][8] He attended a nearby Roman Catholic missionary school, where on September 21 he
was baptized.[9][10] His family came from the Nzema ethnic group, one of the Akan peoples of the
coast, known for powerful witchcraft.[1]
At age sixteen or seventeen, he became a pupil-teacher at a school in Half Assini, where he was
discovered by Reverend Alec Garden Fraser and recommended for Government Training
College at Achimota School in Accra.[9] There he studied to be a teacher from 1926 to 1930.[2][11]
And there, Columbia-educated headmaster Kwegyir Aggrey exposed him to the ideas of Marcus
Garvey and W. E. B. Du Bois.[12]
Soon after graduation he became head teacher at the Roman Catholic Junior School in Axim, and
then taught at the new Catholic Seminary in Amissano. During this time he raised funds and
prepared to attend college, though with his newfound appreciation for Catholic education, he
considered becoming a priest.[13] Nkrumah later recalled hearing a powerful Afro-nationalist
lecture from African Morning Post editor and future Nigerian President Nnamdi Azikiwe[14] In
1935, Nkrumah sailed from Takoradi, Gold Coast, to Liverpool, England, and made his way to
London, England, where he applied and received his student visa from the American Embassy.
While in London Nkrumah was outraged to hear news of the Invasion of Abyssinia by fascist
Italy.[15]

United States of America

In October 1935, Nkrumah sailed from Liverpool to Harlem, New York, then traveling to
Pennsylvania where he enrolled in historically-black Lincoln University. He did a variety of
jobs, not always fun or easy to come by during the Great Depression, to make ends meet. He

spent summers working in Harlem, the Capital of Black America, an African diasporic hub,
and a hotbed of Communist activity. There too, he met his first girlfriend, a nurse named
Edith.[16] In 1939 he graduated from Lincoln with a Bachelor's degree in economics and
sociology.[17] He completed his Bachelor of Sacred Theology degree in 1942 and became a
member of Phi Beta Sigma fraternity.
Just as in the days of the Egyptians, so today God had ordained that certain among the African race should
journey westwards to equip themselves with knowledge and experience for the day when they would be called
upon to return to their motherland and to use the learning they had acquired to help improve the lot of their
brethren . . . I had not realized at the time that I would contribute so much towards the fulfillment of this
prophecy.
Kwame Nkrumah, The Autobiography of Kwame Nkrumah (1957)[1]

Nkrumah earned his Master of Science degree in Education in 1942, and in 1943 his M.A. in
Philosophy, from the University of Pennsylvania. Reportedly, according to this teachers, no
matter what a paper was supposed to be on, Nkrumah always twisted it around to write on
African freedom and anti-colonial struggle. Otherwise his papers were excellent. He could have
been a brilliant scholar if he stuck to the topic.[18] While he was lecturing in political science at
Lincoln University, he was elected the president of the African Students Organization of the
United States and Canada. As an undergraduate student at Lincoln University, he took part in at
least one student theater production, and he published an essay on European government in
Africa in the student newspaper called The Lincolnian.[19]
During his time in the United States, Nkrumah preached at black Presbyterian churches in
Philadelphia and New York City, having given up his allegiance to the Catholic Church.[20][1] (By
this He read books about politics and divinity, and tutored students in philosophy. In 1943
Nkrumah met Trinidadian Marxist C. L. R. James, Russian expatriate Raya Dunayevskaya, and
Chinese-American Grace Lee Boggs, all of whom were members of an American-based
Trotskyist intellectual cohort. Nkrumah later credited James with teaching him "how an
underground movement worked". James, in a letter introducing Nkrumah to George Padmore in
1945, wrote: George, this young man is coming to you. He is not very bright, but nevertheless
do what you can for him because he's determined to throw Europeans out of Africa.[21] Federal
Bureau of Investigation files on Nkrumah, kept from January to May 1945, identify him as a
possible Communist.[22]

London
Nkrumah returned to London in May 1945 and enrolled at the London School of Economics as a
PhD candidate in Anthropology. He withdrew after one term and the next year enrolled at
University College, with the intent to write a philosophy dissertation on Knowledge and Logical
Positivism. His supervisor, A. J. Ayer, declined to rate Nkrumah as a first-class philosopher,
saying, I liked him and enjoyed talking to him but he did not seem to me to have an analytical
mind. He wanted answers too quickly. I think part of the trouble may have been that he wasn't
concentrating very hard on his thesis. It was a way of marking time until the opportunity came
for him to return to Ghana. Finally, Nkrumah enrolled in, but did not complete, a study in law at

Gray's Inn[23] It was around this time that Francis Nwia Kofi began calling himself
Kwaame.[24]
Instead, Nkrumah spent his time on political organizing. After meeting with George Padmore, he
helped organize the Fifth Pan-African Congress in Manchester, England. The Congress
elaborated a strategy for supplanting colonialism with African socialism. They agreed to pursue a
federal United States of Africa, with interlocking regional organizations, governing through
separate states of limited sovereignty. They planned to pursue a new African culture,
synthesizing traditional aspects with modern thinking. They stated a preference for nonviolent
means of political change. And they intended to phase out tribalism as the basis of African social
organisation, replacing it with 'one man one vote' democracy along with an economic system of
communism or socialism.[25]
Nkrumah went on to found the West African National Secretariat to work towards the
decolonization of Africa. The new organization published a pamphlet manifesto in December
1945, declaring WEST AFRICA IS ONE COUNTRY: PEOPLES OF WEST AFRICA
UNITE! It issued a journal, The New African, and conducted meetings with Gold Coasters and
Sierra Leoneans.[26] This group initially held good relations with the Fabian Colonial Bureau,
though deteriorated when the new Labour government seemed unwilling to take action on
decolonization.[27] At the request of the Colonial Office, the British intelligence service MI5
compiled reports on Nkrumah and the West African National Secretariat, focusing on their links
with Communism.[28] The U.S. State Department also kept tabs on him, through its embassies in
Accra and London and through contact with the British Colonial Office.[29]
Nkrumah served as Vice-President of the West African Students' Union (WASU). During this
time he tried to build an alliance between student radicals and impoverished workers of London's
East End. He wrote: In the East End of London particularly, the meanest kind of African mud
hut would have been a palace compared to the slum that had become their lot. He brought the
Coloured Workers Association into a larger alliance of radical African organizations including
the Students Union.[30][31]
Nkrumah also created a secret society called The Circle, details of which were exposed later
when he was arrested in Accra. Members swore an oath of secrecy, pledging to irrevocably
obey orders from the group, to help a member brother of THE CIRCLE in all things and in all
difficulties, to avoid the use of violence, to fast on the twenty-first day of the month, and
finally, to accept the leadership of Kwame Nkrumah.[32]

Return to the Gold Coast

In the autumn of 1947, Nkrumah was invited to serve as the General Secretary to the United
Gold Coast Convention (UGCC) under Joseph Boakye Danquah.[33] This political convention
was exploring paths to independence. Nkrumah accepted the position and sailed for the Gold
Coast. After brief stops in Sierra Leone, Liberia, and the Ivory Coast, he arrived in the Gold
Coast on 10 December 1947. Soon after arrival, Nkrumah's disputes with Danquah began,
starting with Nkrumah's disapproval of a two-headed monstrosity as the UGCC emblem.[34]

On 28 February 1948, police fired on African ex-servicemen protesting the rising cost of living,
killing three and injuring sixty.[35] The shooting spurred riots in Accra, Kumasi and elsewhere.
The government suspected that the United Gold Coast Convention (UGCC) was behind the
protests and on 12 March 1948, arrested Nkrumah and other party leaders. Realizing their error,
the British released the convention leaders on 12 April 1948. After his imprisonment by the
colonial government, Nkrumah emerged as the leader of the youth movement in 1948.

Convention People's Party

Red cockerel, Forward Ever, Backward Never: Convention People's Party logo and slogan. As the
Evening News editorialized on May 10, 1954, the cockerel was a masculine expression of the energy
and seriousness of the forces of Kwame Nkrumah . . . [and] the virility and initiative with which the
herald of the Common People's Salvation (CPP) is calling on all oppressed black people to rise and fight
for freedom . . . All the other symbols represent opportunism, reaction, tribalism, separatism, imperialist
divide and rule and national betrayal.[36]

After his release from prison, Nkrumah hitchhiked around the country. He proclaimed that the
Gold Coast needed "self-governance now" and built a large power base. Cocoa farmers rallied to
his cause. He invited women to participate in the political process, at a time when women's
suffrage was new to Africa. Women became passionate advocates of the independence cause:
one woman who adopted the movement name Ama Nkrumah famously slashed her face
onstage, with a razor blade, to symbolize her willingness to sacrfice blood for freedom.[37] The
trade unions also allied with Nkrumah's movement.
Somewhere in June 1947, we received a charming gentleman, he was introduced to me by my
brother as Kwame Nkrumah, General-Secretary of the UGCC. During the day, my brother went

out with Nkrumah to address various meetings of the local UGCC branch in town. . . . One day,
as they came back and I was serving Kwame Nkrumah, he asked me why I have not been
attending the UGCC meetings in town. I was amazed by his question and I honestly told him I
thought politics was only mens business. For the next twenty or so minutes, Kwame Nkrumah
explained to me all they were doing and the importance of everybody, especially women, to get
involved. By the time Kwame Nkrumah left. . . my interest was aroused in politics. At work, I
began explaining issues to my colleague seamstresses and customers. Whenever I was traveling
to visit my dressmaking clients, I talked on trains about the need for our liberation and urging
people to join the Tarkwa branch of the UGCC and summoning people together to hear news of
the campaign for self-government.
CPP activist Hanna Cudjoe (Accra Community Center; March 8, 1986)[38]
On 12 June 1949, he organized these groups into a new political party: The Convention People's
Party (CPP). The CPP appropriated the red cockerela familiar icon for some local ethnic
groups, and a symbol of leadership, alertness, and masculinityas its party symbol.[36][1] Party
symbols and colors (red, white, and green) appeared on clothing, flags, vehicles, and houses.[1] In
its press organs, the CPP attacked the symbols of other parties, especially the cocoa tree and
golden stool of the Asante group and its party, the National Liberation Movement.[36] CPP vans
drove red-white-and-green vans across the country, playing music and rallying public support for
the party and especially for Nkrumah. These efforts were wildly successful, especially because
previous political efforts in the Gold Coast had focused exclusively on the urban intelligentsia.[1]
The British convened a selected commission of middle-class Africans, to draft a new constitution
that would give Ghana more self-government. Under the new constitution, only those with
money and property would be allowed to vote. Nkrumah organized a "People's Assembly" with
CPP party members, youth, trade unionists, farmers and veterans. In September 1948, Nkrumah
set up a party newspaper Accra Evening News, adding the Sekondi Morning Telegraph in
January 1949 and the Cape Coast Daily Mail in December 1949. The goal of these papers was to
rally the masses to the new political party. Nkrumah declared in the Accra Evening News,
January 19, 1949: The strength of the organized masses is invincible . . . We must organize as
never before, the organization decides everything.[39] Since many Ghanaians did not read
newspapers, much party organizing was also done though face to face communication.[1]
The Convention People's Party called for universal franchise without property qualifications, a
separ