SYMBOL FOR AFRICA
Jack, Homer A.
Symbol for Africa Ghana, the autobiography of kwame nkrumah. Thomas Nelson. 302 pp. $5. Reviewed by Homer A. Jack NEHRU at one time groomed Jayaprakash Narayan as his successor as Prime Minister...
...Then he has the overwhelming task of economic development which, from all predictions, will be as difficult as anything facing Nehru in India, only of course on a much smaller scale...
...He soon formed his own party—the Convention People's Party...
...Generously he called it a moment of victory for the British governor as well as for himself...
...He paid a surprise visit to his old Philadelphia landlady and pressed a hundred dollar bill in her hand...
...He realized, however, that there are two stages in the freedom of any modern colony: a period of tension with the metropolitan power followed by a period of accommodation...
...The fateful years for a new African nation may well be the period immediately before independence and not after...
...At the first opportunity, however, Nkrumah returned home to the Gold Coast (where he was born in 1909) to lead his people to freedom...
...Whether any organic Pan-Africanism will immediately result is doubtful...
...He gives hints in this restrained, usually modest autobiography of his next tasks...
...In his autobiography Nkrumah writes, without bitterness, of the history of his difficult decade in America beginning in 1935...
...The first task is to heal the deep sectional and cultural divisions within his nation...
...In a moment of faith, the British authorities released Nkrumah from prison one day and made him virtually head of the government the next...
...not to be confused with any CP...
...Many in Europe and America wonder whether "the Ghana experiment" will succeed...
...When the British kept their word and actually set the date for the freedom of Ghana, he writes of the tears of joy on first viewing the actual document...
...He ruled wisely and this resulted in an orderly and speedy transfer of power, culminating in the creation of an independent Ghana on March 6. With a free nation, Nkrumah's work is not done...
...He was influenced in this London period by everyone from American historian W. E. B. DuBois to South African writer Peter Abrahams, from expatriate anti-colonialist George Padmore to the inevitable Harold Laski...
...Ghana is not all politics...
...His dictum is simply: "It is far better to be free to govern or misgovern yourself than to be governed by anybody else...
...These leaders of erstwhile British colonies have brought the spirit of America more than the accent of Oxford to the formative years of their nations...
...Yet success is not the test for Nkrumah...
...He tells how, as prime minister, he returned to America in June 1951 to receive an honorary degree from Lincoln...
...From this standard, Ghana is fated to succeed...
...Most important, Nkrumah feels deeply his responsibility toward the rest of Africa still under European oppression...
...Nkrumah writes of poignant drama...
...He managed to collect four degrees, but not before knowing America as few Americans do: from sleeping on the New York subway trains all night to joining Father Divine's movement to get a cheap meal...
...Going to London in 1945 to study law, Nkrumah welcomed being sidetracked by his fellow expatriates from various parts of Africa and led all kinds of movements for colonial freedom...
...Nkrumah and Ghana will, however, become strong symbols as other African leaders and their people wrestle for their freedom...
...won in 1951...
...Reviewed by Homer A. Jack NEHRU at one time groomed Jayaprakash Narayan as his successor as Prime Minister of India...
...While some of the Asian freedom movements were successful, if uneasy, coalitions of the higher classes and the masses, Nkrumah soon discovered that the party he was working for was composed of intellectuals and chiefs out of touch with the overwhelming majority of the people...
...This volume may not endure as long as Nehru's autobiography, Toward Freedom, yet it may be even more relevant in the next decade— both to Americans and Africans —as Africa disengages itself from colonialism...
...Kwame Nkrumah, who is the first prime minister of Ghana, attended Lincoln University and the University of Pennsylvania and worked in Philadelphia's shipyards...
...Freedom is essential at all costs...
...Now he will be free to aid substantially these freedom movements from Algeria to the Union of South Africa...
...Narayan attended the University of Wisconsin and worked in Chicago's stockyards...
...Nationalism is too strong...
...He got close to his people, then was separated from them by prison...
...The transition from tension to accommodation came fast, after the C.P.P...
Vol. 21 • April 1957 • No. 4
