People, Independence & Pan-AfricanismGhanaiandocumented history
The Big Six and the Road to 1957
In 1947 a group of lawyers and businessmen founded the United Gold Coast Convention and, needing an organiser, sent for a young man in London.
The Kwame Nkrumah Memorial Park and Mausoleum, Accra; Christiansborg/Osu Castle; the Independence Arch at Black Star Square.
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The Big Six and the Road to 1957
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The Big Six and the Road to 1957
In 1947 a group of lawyers and businessmen founded the United Gold Coast Convention and, needing an organiser, sent for a young man in London. Kwame Nkrumah came home to a country that was about to move faster than the people who had invited him wanted it to.
In February 1948, unarmed ex-servicemen of the Gold Coast Regiment — men who had fought for Britain in Burma — marched to Christiansborg Castle to present a petition about pensions they had been promised and not paid. Police opened fire. Three were killed: Sergeant Adjetey, Corporal Attipoe, Private Odartey Lamptey. Riots followed across the colony. Six leaders were arrested — Nkrumah, J. B. Danquah, Ako Adjei, Edward Akufo-Addo, Emmanuel Obetsebi-Lamptey and William Ofori Atta — and they are the Big Six, and they are on the cedi notes.
Nkrumah split from the UGCC in 1949 and formed the Convention People's Party with a slogan the elders found reckless: Self-Government NOW. He launched Positive Action — strikes, boycotts, non-violent non-cooperation — and was jailed for it.
In 1951 the CPP won the general election in a landslide while its leader was still in James Fort prison. The British let him out and made him Leader of Government Business. From prison cell to government in a matter of hours.
At midnight on 6 March 1957 the Gold Coast became Ghana — the first Black African colony south of the Sahara to take its independence — and Nkrumah stood at the old polo ground in Accra in a smock and said:
At long last, the battle has ended! And thus Ghana, your beloved country, is free forever.
And then, in the same speech, the sentence that made him more than a national leader:
Our independence is meaningless unless it is linked up with the total liberation of the African continent.
That second sentence is why Ghana's independence was never only a national event. It was a promise that freedom at home would be tied to freedom across Africa.
If you visit Ghana. The Kwame Nkrumah Memorial Park and Mausoleum, Accra; Christiansborg/Osu Castle; the Independence Arch at Black Star Square.
In 1947 a group of lawyers and businessmen founded the United Gold Coast Convention and, needing an organiser, sent for a young man in London. Kwame Nkrumah came home to a country that was about to move faster than the people who had invited him wanted it to.
In February 1948, unarmed ex-servicemen of the Gold Coast Regiment — men who had fought for Britain in Burma — marched to Christiansborg Castle to present a petition about pensions they had been promised and not paid. Police opened fire. Three were killed: Sergeant Adjetey, Corporal Attipoe, Private Odartey Lamptey. Riots followed across the colony. Six leaders were arrested — Nkrumah, J. B. Danquah, Ako Adjei, Edward Akufo-Addo, Emmanuel Obetsebi-Lamptey and William Ofori Atta — and they are the Big Six, and they are on the cedi notes.
Nkrumah split from the UGCC in 1949 and formed the Convention People's Party with a slogan the elders found reckless: Self-Government NOW. He launched Positive Action — strikes, boycotts, non-violent non-cooperation — and was jailed for it.
In 1951 the CPP won the general election in a landslide while its leader was still in James Fort prison. The British let him out and made him Leader of Government Business. From prison cell to government in a matter of hours.
At midnight on 6 March 1957 the Gold Coast became Ghana — the first Black African colony south of the Sahara to take its independence — and Nkrumah stood at the old polo ground in Accra in a smock and said:
At long last, the battle has ended! And thus Ghana, your beloved country, is free forever.
And then, in the same speech, the sentence that made him more than a national leader:
Our independence is meaningless unless it is linked up with the total liberation of the African continent.
That second sentence is why Ghana's independence was never only a national event. It was a promise that freedom at home would be tied to freedom across Africa.