The Second Emancipation: Nkrumah, Pan-Africanism, and Global Blackness at High Tide

In this magisterial account, journalist French (Born in Blackness) revisits the history of the Pan-Africanist movement through the life of Ghanaian prime minister Kwame Nkrumah, who in 1957 became the first head of state of the first colonized African nation to gain independence. French’s work is “not a comprehensive biography,” but rather “an exploration of the momentous politics of [Nkrumah’s] age,” including Nkrumah’s role in turning Ghana into a “fountainhead of emancipation” for other colonies. Born in 1909, Nkrumah lucked into an education thanks to the sponsorship of a missionary, who sent him to the U.S. There, he met “committed Marxist” C.L.R James, who “tutored” him in “radical politics.” During WWII, “Europe’s... focus on extraction” of men and resources from Africa radicalized the Gold Coast’s “local intelligentsias”; by 1947, London’s Colonial Office was acquiescing to demands for constitutional reform, leading to a public convention with more than 60,000 in attendance, at which a newly returned Nkrumah addressed a receptive crowd. Over the coming years, Nkrumah assumed leadership of a massive nonviolent political movement that eventually (after Nkrumah’s imprisonment) led to independence. French notes that Nkrumah never relinquished his Pan-African ideals, and dissects how the Cold War, which brought the colonial presence back to Africa in the form of U.S. imperialism, unraveled Nkrumah’s dream of a unified Africa. Weaving a staggering amount of history into a propulsive narrative that recasts the 20th century as a long struggle for liberation, this is a towering achievement. (Aug.)