American Africans in Ghana: Black Expatriates and the Civil Rights Era

359 Pages·2006·1.356 MB·English

by  Kevin K. Gaines

american africans in ghana
The John Hope Franklin Series
in African American History and
Culture
Waldo E. Martin Jr. and
Patricia Sullivan,
editors
kevin k. gaines
The University of
North Carolina Press
Chapel Hill
American Africans
in Ghana
Black Expatriates and the Civil Rights Era
∫ 2006 The University of North Carolina Press
All rights reserved
Manufactured in the United States of America
Designed by Jacquline Johnson
Set in Charter
by Keystone Typesetting, Inc.
This book was published with the assistance of the John Hope
Franklin Fund of the University of North Carolina Press.
Frontispiece: Time Life Pictures/Getty Images.
The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence
and durability of the Committee on Production Guidelines for
Book Longevity of the Council on Library Resources.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Gaines, Kevin Kelly.
American Africans in Ghana : Black expatriates and the civil
rights era / Kevin K. Gaines.
p. cm. — (The John Hope Franklin series in African American
history and culture)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
isbn-13: 978-0-8078-3008-6 (cloth: alk. paper)
isbn-10: 0-8078-3008-9 (cloth: alk. paper)
1. African Americans—Ghana. 2. Ghana—History—1957–
3. Civil rights movements—United States—History—20th
century. I. Title. II. Series.
dt510.43.a37g35 2006
324.089%960730667—dc22 2005031382
10 09 08 07 06 5 4 3 2 1
For Penny
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contents
Acknowledgments xi
Introduction
Watching the World from Ghana 1
1
Mapping the Routes to Ghana
Black Modernity, Subjecthood, and Demands for
Full Citizenship 27
2
Richard Wright in Ghana
Black Intellectuals and the Anticolonial Critique
of Western Culture 52
3
Projecting the African Personality
Nkrumah, the Expatriates, and Postindependence Ghana,
1957–1960 77
4
Pauli Murray in Ghana
The Congo Crisis and an African American Woman’s Dilemma 110
5
Escape to Ghana
Julian Mayfield and the Radical ‘‘Afros’’ 136
6
Malcolm X in Ghana 179
7
The Coup 210
8
After Ghana
Ways of Seeing, Ways of Being 244
Epilogue
Memory and the Transnational Dimensions of
African American Citizenship 274
Notes 287
Selected Bibliography 321
Index 331
illustrations
Ghanaian independence, March 6, 1957 3
Record sleeve for Lord Kitchener, ‘‘Birth of Ghana’’ 4
A 1959 political rally in Ghana is interrupted by an enthusiastic
supporter of Kwame Nkrumah 21
Kwame Nkrumah and Horace Mann Bond, June 1951 49
Richard Wright with unidentified Ghanaians, 1953 64
George and Dorothy Padmore greet Sekou Touré, president
of Guinea, November 1958 93
Pauli Murray with Mrs. George D. Carroll, 1960 119
Audience members listen to Nkrumah’s speech in Harlem during his
visit to the United Nations, October 1960 129
Julian Mayfield, March 1959 139
Nkrumah and his wife, Fathia, with W. E. B. Du Bois and Shirley Graham
Du Bois on the occasion of Du Bois’s ninety-fifth birthday,
February 1963 150
Ghanaian outdooring ceremony, 1961 153
Julian Mayfield, W. Alphaeus Hunton, Alice Windom, Wendell Jean Pierre,
and Maya Angelou at a demonstration at the U.S. embassy, Accra,
August 28, 1963 172
Malcolm X speaks to Drum magazine, May 1964 193
May 1965 Ollie Harrington cartoon in the African Review 220
Efua Sutherland, late 1960s 235
Julian Mayfield and Joan Cambridge, 1973 263
The front wall of Cape Coast Castle 281