Second Emancipation: Nkrumah, Pan-Africanism, and Global Blackness at High Tide
Second Emancipation: Nkrumah, Pan-Africanism, and Global Blackness at High Tide
Second Emancipation: Nkrumah, Pan-Africanism, and Global Blackness at High Tide
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Description
Description
The Second Emancipation, the second work in a trilogy from best-selling author Howard W. French about Africa's pivotal role in shaping world history, underscores Adam Hochschild's contention that French is a "modern-day Copernicus." The title--referring to a brief period beginning in 1957 when dozens of African colonies gained their freedom--positions this liberation at the center of a "movement of global Blackness," with one charismatic leader, Kwame Nkrumah (1909-1972), at its head.
That so few people today know about Nkrumah is an omission that French demonstrates is "typical of our deliberate neglect of Africa's enormous role in the birth of the modern world." Determined to re-create Nkrumah's life as "an epic twentieth-century story," The Second Emancipation begins with his impoverished, unheralded birth in the far-western region of Ghana's Gold Coast. But blessed with a deep curiosity, a young Nkrumah pursued an overseas education in the United States. Nowhere is French's consummate style more vivid than in Nkrumah's early years in Depression-era America, especially in his mesmerizing portrait of a culturally effervescent Harlem that Nkrumah encountered in 1935 before heading to college. During his student years in Pennsylvania and later as an activist in London, Nkrumah became steeped in a renowned international Black intellectual milieu--including Du Bois, Garvey, Fanon, Padmore, and C.L.R. James, who called him "one of the greatest political leaders of our century"--and formed an ideology that readied him for an extraordinarily swift and peaceful rise to power upon his return to Ghana in 1947.
Four years later, in a political landslide he engineered while imprisoned, Nkrumah stunned Britain by winning the first general election under universal franchise in Africa, becoming Ghana's first independent prime minister in 1957. As leader of a sovereign nation, Nkrumah wielded his influence to promote the liberation of the entire continent, pushing unity as the only pathway to recover from the damages of enslavement and subjugation. By the time national military and police forces, aided by the CIA, overthrew him in 1966, Nkrumah's radical belief in pan-African liberation had both galvanized dozens of nascent African states and fired a global agenda of Black power.
In its dramatic recasting of the American civil rights story and in its tragic depiction of a continent that once exuded all the promise of a newly won freedom, The Second Emancipation becomes a generational work that positions Africa at the forefront of modern-day history.
That so few people today know about Nkrumah is an omission that French demonstrates is "typical of our deliberate neglect of Africa's enormous role in the birth of the modern world." Determined to re-create Nkrumah's life as "an epic twentieth-century story," The Second Emancipation begins with his impoverished, unheralded birth in the far-western region of Ghana's Gold Coast. But blessed with a deep curiosity, a young Nkrumah pursued an overseas education in the United States. Nowhere is French's consummate style more vivid than in Nkrumah's early years in Depression-era America, especially in his mesmerizing portrait of a culturally effervescent Harlem that Nkrumah encountered in 1935 before heading to college. During his student years in Pennsylvania and later as an activist in London, Nkrumah became steeped in a renowned international Black intellectual milieu--including Du Bois, Garvey, Fanon, Padmore, and C.L.R. James, who called him "one of the greatest political leaders of our century"--and formed an ideology that readied him for an extraordinarily swift and peaceful rise to power upon his return to Ghana in 1947.
Four years later, in a political landslide he engineered while imprisoned, Nkrumah stunned Britain by winning the first general election under universal franchise in Africa, becoming Ghana's first independent prime minister in 1957. As leader of a sovereign nation, Nkrumah wielded his influence to promote the liberation of the entire continent, pushing unity as the only pathway to recover from the damages of enslavement and subjugation. By the time national military and police forces, aided by the CIA, overthrew him in 1966, Nkrumah's radical belief in pan-African liberation had both galvanized dozens of nascent African states and fired a global agenda of Black power.
In its dramatic recasting of the American civil rights story and in its tragic depiction of a continent that once exuded all the promise of a newly won freedom, The Second Emancipation becomes a generational work that positions Africa at the forefront of modern-day history.
Critical Reviews
Critical Reviews
It would be as impossible to overstate the importance of Nkrumah as it would be to overstate the brilliance of this study. For too many, Africa as a whole remains an enigma. Howard W. French's masterwork clarifies the continent, both its history and the backstory to its current conflicts, with remarkable precision.--Greg Grandin, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for The End of the Myth
A brilliant examination. . . . Howard W. French illuminates a period of time when people believed that standards of justice and equality could prevail for African people on the continent and in the diaspora, especially in the United States during the civil rights movement.--Annette Gordon-Reed, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for The Hemingses of Monticello
An original, provocative, and important work of history. . . . With meticulous research and crisp writing, Howard W. French helps us see and understand the modern world anew. An extraordinary achievement.--Jonathan Eig, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for King: A Life
Kwame Nkrumah founded a country and became the leading African statesman of the twentieth century. French tells Nkrumah's story wonderfully well, in all its greatness and complexity.--Odd Arne Westad, Yale University, and author of The Cold War: A World History
In prose both lyrical and personal, Howard W. French reveals how civil rights and decolonization were bound together by Garvey's ghost, Du Boisian internationalism, a long dream of Black power, and a vision of pan-Africanism based less on returning home than on rejecting the world order and the color line that belts it. A tour de force.--Robin D. G. Kelley, author of Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination
In this truly monumental biography of the rise and fall of Ghana's Kwame Nkrumah, global observer Howard W. French documents the Cold War hubris that foredoomed Africa's aspirations in a Greek tragedy of racist pathologies affronted by emancipated leadership. French's The Second Emancipation stands the second half of the last century on its geopolitical head.--David Levering Lewis, winner of the Pulitzer Prize
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 . . . 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.--Publishers Weekly, starred review
A fluent exploration of an important if often overlooked political leader whose ideas still bear consideration.-- "Kirkus Reviews"
French adeptly places the rise and fall of Kwame Nkrumah, first president of Ghana, the first liberated African colony, in the context of wider anti-colonial movements in Asia and the Middle East, as well as Nkrumah's influence on racial justice in the U.S...Despite assassination threats, ethnic rivalries, and failure to achieve his greatest goal of a pan African Federation, Nkrumah's influence on African and African American liberation remains unparalleled.--Lesley Williams "Booklist"
Publishing Information
Publishing Information
Publisher:
Liveright Publishing Corporation
Pub date:
2025-08-26
Length:
512 pages
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