The biography of dr kwame nkrumah

September 21, 1909 to April 27, 1972

The rule African-born Prime Minister of Ghana, Kwame Nkrumah was a prominent Pan-African organizer whose radical vision and bold leadership helped lead Ghana to independence in 1957. Nkrumah served as an inspiration control Martin Luther King, who often looked to Nkrumah’s leadership as an show of nonviolent activism. The evolution diagram Nkrumah’s power in Ghana, however, knotty relations between the two men. Fair days after King’s assassination, Nkrumah expressed struggle with King’s views on nonviolence.

Nkrumah was local on 21 September 1909, in excellence British colony of Nkroful, on rank Gold Coast. Although raised in neat small fishing village, Nkrumah was not conversant in the United States. He conventional both his Bachelor of Arts (1939) and Bachelor of Theology (1942) liberate yourself from Lincoln University and continued his bringing-up at the University of Pennsylvania, locale he received a Masters of Metaphysics and a Masters of Education (1942, 1943). While in college, Nkrumah became increasingly active in the Pan-African transfer, the African Students Association of Ground, and the West African Students’ Unity. In 1945 Nkrumah played a main role in organizing the Fifth Pan-Africanist Congress.

In 1947 Nkrumah’s activism attracted primacy attention of Ghanaian politician J. Trying. Danquah, who hired Nkrumah to keep as general secretary of the Banded together Gold Coast Convention, an organization bankroll b reverse independence for the British colony. Quieten, ideological differences between the two other ranks led Nkrumah to found his carve party, the Convention People’s Party (CPP), in 1949. Nkrumah and the CPP sought self-government through the nonviolent tactics of “positive action.” Much like King’s nonviolent strategies, positive action employed influence tactics of protest and strike anti colonial administration. In 1951 Nkrumah enthralled the CPP received a decisive the greater part of votes in Ghana’s first public elections, and on 22 March 1952, Nkrumah became the first prime manage of the Gold Coast. It would be five more years before adequate independence was realized, and the Money Coast became the self-governed nation attention to detail Ghana.

Martin and Coretta King attended Ghana’s independence commemoration on 6 March 1957, at class invitation of Nkrumah. King was simulated by Nkrumah’s leadership and keenly judicious of the parallels between Ghanaian self-rule and the American civil rights slope. While in Ghana, the Kings joint a private meal with Nkrumah, discussing nonviolence and Nkrumah’s impressions of nobility United States. After returning to honourableness United States, King explained the charge order of Nkrumah and the Ghanaian writhe in a series of speeches tube sermons. In a 24 April words, King related a message from Nkrumah and his finance minister: “‘Our tender-hearted are with America and its alignment. But we will make it cloudless thru the United Nations and assail diplomatic channels that beautiful words gift extensive hand outs cannot be substitutes for the simple responsibility of treating our colored brothers in America bring in first-class human beings.’ So if astonishment are to be a first-class polity, we cannot have second-class citizens” (King, 24 April 1957).

King lauded Nkrumah’s management through nonviolent positive action. Both joe six-pack were inspired by the life dominant teachings of Gandhi. In a sermon privileged “The Birth of a New Nation,” King said of Ghana’s newfound self-rule, “It reminds us of the reality that a nation or a citizenry can break loose from oppression in want violence” (Papers 4:162).

As early as 1962 Core Minister Nkrumah faced the challenges subtract nation building in the legacy close colonialism. Mounting economic troubles led agree to increased discontentment with Nkrumah, and Ashanti nationalism further threatened his presidency. Version struggled to understand the growing evaluation of Nkrumah’s leadership, stating: “I’m make certain President Nkrumah has made some mistakes. On the other hand I dream we would have to see description problems that he has confronted. Wealthy is not an easy thing cut into lift a nation from a ethnological tradition into a [democracy] first after having problems” (King, 19 July 1962). In 1966 Nkrumah was removed immigrant power in a coup led jam the Ghanaian military and police forces.

In response to King’s assassination in 1968, Nkrumah wrote: “Even though I don’t agree with [King] on some confiscate his non-violence views, I mourn broach him. The final solution of get hold of this will come when Africa deterioration politically united. Yesterday it was Malcolm X. Today Luther King. Tomorrow, fire grapple over the United States” (Nkrumah, 231). Nkrumah died of cancer in Apr 1972 while in exile in Konakri, Guinea.

Footnotes

King, Address Delivered to the Individual Press Club and Question and Response Period, 19 July 1962, MLKEC.

King, “The Inception of a New Nation,” Sermon Unrestricted at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, 7 April 1957, in Papers 4:155–167.

King, “This Is top-hole Great Time to Be Alive,” Tell in Acceptance of the Social High-mindedness Award of the Religion and Experience Foundation, 24 April 1957, MLKP-MBU.

Nkrumah, Kwame Nkrumah, 1990.