Kwame Nkrumah

Biography

Kwame Nkrumah

Kwame was born Sept of 1909 in Nkroful, Gold Coast (now known as Ghana). He moved the country to it's independence from Brittain in 1957.

He was baptized as a Roman catholic, ans went to college at Achimota in 1930. He began his career as a teacher at a Roman Catholic junior school in Elmina and Axim and at seminars.

As he became more interested in politics, he moved to the United States and went to Lincoln university in Pennsylvania in 1935, and graduated with a masters from the University of Pennsylvania in 1939. He heavily studied Marcus Garvey, Karl Marx, and Vladimir Lenin. He has always been interested in the education of Black Africa, and spent a lot of his time researching everything he could find.

In 1945, he left the United States to go to Manchester England, where he then organized the 5th Pan African Congress.

He was invited to serve as the General Secretary for the United Gold Coast Convention (UGCC) in 1945, so he returned home.

People would then begin to split their support between him (Kwame) and the UGCC, so he formed the Convention People's Party, a group that was committed to a program of self immediate self government. Jan of 1950, he began an initiation of stong action, non violent protests and non corporation with the Brittain government. He was eventually arrested for a year, then released from prison to become the prime minister of Gold Coast in 1952.

In March 1957, when Cold Coast had it's independence from Brittan rule, he was officially the prime minister of Ghana, and became president on 1960.

He had many assassination attempts against him. One in August of 1962, made him increase shying away from public life.

Early of 1964, Ghana was officially designated a one party state, with Kwame the as life president of both nation and party.

When he left for Beijing in Feb of 1966, the army and police in Ghana seized power. He returned back to West Africa, where Kwame found asylum in Guinea, and also where he spent the rest of his life.

He would die of cancer in Bucharest in 1972.