Kwame Nkrumah

"There is a close connection between socio-political development, the struggle between social classes and the history of ideologies. In general, intellectual movements closely reflect the trends of economic developments. In communal society, where there are virtually no class divisions, man's productive activities on outlook and culture is less discernible. Account must be taken of the psychology of conflicting classes." ~ Kwame Nkrumah, Class Struggle in Africa

Kwame Nkrumah was born September 21, 1909 in Nkroful, Gold Coast (now Ghana). He was educated at Catholic mission schools and seminary, and taught for several years before coming to the United States to study in 1935. He earned a bachelor's degree in economics and sociology from Lincoln University, followed by a degree in theology. While at Lincoln he organized and was president of the African Students Organization. He then attended the University of Pennsylvania, receiving master's degrees in education and philosophy, and went on to study at the London School of Economics where he helped organize the fifth annual Pan-African Congress. During these years he was influenced by the works of DuBois, Gandhi, Lenin, Marx and Garvey.

In 1947 Nkrumah left England to serve as General Secretary of the United Gold Coast Convention, a moderate nationalist movement. He became a leader among the younger, more eglitarian members of the party, and his campaign for universal suffrage gained him the support of farmers, union workers and women. He formed the Convention People's Party in 1949, which sought independence through civil disobiedience and non-cooperation with the British. The colonial administration arrested Nkrumah and other CPP leaders, and he was sentenced to three years in prison.

The British called for a general election on limited home rule in February 1951, and the CPP won 34 of 38 seats in the Legislative Assembly. Nkrumah was released from prison and named Leader of Government Business. The constitution was amended to provide for a Prime Minister, and he was elected to this position by the Assembly in March 1953. The CCP pursued full independence, and on March 6, 1957 the Gold Coast became the first black African nation liberated from British rule, merging with British Togoland to form Ghana. A new constitution was ratified in 1960, with Nkrumah being elected President. He increased his focus on pan-Africanism, traveling throughout the continent, and Ghana became a charter member of the Organization of African Unity in 1963.

Nkrumah's legacy as a African nationalist and visionary is unequaled but his leadership in Ghana steadily deteriorated and became more repressive. In 1958 the Preventive Detention Act suppressed political opponents by calling for the arrest and detention of anyone criticizing the government, without recourse to a jury trial. Although Nkrumah had supported labor strikes earlier, in 1961 he had strikers arrested because the strikes interfered with industrial expansion. In 1964 the CPP became the only legal political party and Nkrumah was elected President-for-Life.

With W. E. B. DuBois

Assassination attempts were made in 1962 and 1964, and shortly after Nkrumah left for a visit to North Viet Nam and China in February 1966 Emmanuel Kwasi Kotoka of the National Liberation Council staged a successful coup. Nkrumah never returned to Ghana, continuing his pan-African efforts from Guinea at the invitation of President Sekou Toure. He was diagnosed with cancer in 1971 and went to Bucharest, Romania for treatment where he died April 27, 1972 at the age of 62.

Larry Neal

"...On the road:
It would be some hoodoo town
It would be some cracker place
you might meet redneck lynchers
face to face
but mostly you meet mean horn blowers
running obscene riffs..."


(from "Don't Say Goodbye to the Porkpie Hat")


Lawrence Paul Neal was born September 5, 1937 in Atlanta. When he was a small child his family moved to Philadelphia, where he graduated from Lincoln University in 1961 with a double major in English and History. He then earned a master's degree from the University of Pennsylvania and taught briefly at Drexel before moving to New York City.

Neal became arts editor of the black nationalist magazine The Liberator, where he reviewed African American events and became a leading voice of the Black Arts Movement which he described in a 1968 essay as being

...radically opposed to any concept of the artist that alienates him from his community. Black Art is the aesthetic and spiritual sister of the Black Power concept. As such, it envisions an art that speaks directly to the needs and aspirations of Black America....The Black Arts and the Black Power concept both relate broadly to the Afro-American’s desire for self-determination and nationhood. Both concepts are nationalistic. One is politics; the other with the art of politics.

Recently, these two movements have begun to merge: the political values inerent in the Black Power concept are now finding concrete expression in the aesthetics of Afro-American dramatists, poets, choreographers, musicians, and novelists. A main tenet of Black Power is the necessity for Black people to define the world in their own terms. The Black artist has made the same point in the context of aesthetics. The two movements postulate that there are in fact and in spirit two Americas—one black, one white.... 

Neal collaborated with Amiri Baraka editing Black Fire: An Anthology of Afro-American Writing, published in 1968. The two had worked together earlier founding the Black Arts Repertory Theater and School, staging plays and poetry readings on the streets of Harlem. Although it folded after three months, it became a model for similar efforts around the country.


In addition to numerous essays in both arts periodicals and general publications such as Partisan Review, The New York Times and Ebony, Neal wrote two plays, The Glorious Monster In the Bell of the Horn (1979) and In an Upstate Motel  (1981). His poetry appeared in two volumes, Black Boogaloo (1969) which addressed the African roots of the Black Arts Movement, and Hoodoo Hollerin Bebop Ghosts (1971) concentrating on the experience of the American South.



Neal continued to teach as well as write. At various times he was on the faculties of the City University of New York and of Wesleyan College in Middletown, Connecticut, and held a chair in humanities at Howard University. From 1970 to 1975 he taught at Yale; during this time he was the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship.  In 1975 he became executive director of the Washington D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities.

Neal died of a sudden heart attack on January 6, 1981 while leading a theater workshop at Colgate University. He was 43 years old. At the time of his death he was working with drummer Max Roach on Roach's autobiography, writing the introduction for a three-volume set of the works of Zora Neale Hurston, and compiling a series on jazz for the Boston PBS television station WGBH. A partially completed manuscript on the rise of the Black Arts Movement and black consciousness, Visions of a Liberated Future, was completed by his widow and published in 1989.

Poppa Stoppa Speaks From His Grave

Remember me baby in my best light,
lovely hip style and all;
all laid out in my green velour
stashing on corners
in my boxcar coat--
so sure of myself, too cool for words
and running down a beautiful game.

It would be super righteous
if you would think of me that way sometimes;
and since it can't be that way,
just the thought of you digging me that way
would be hip and lovely even from here.

Yeah, you got a sweet body, baby,
but out this way, I won't be needing it;
but remember and think of me
that way sometimes.

But don't make it no big thing though;
don't jump jive and blow your real romance.
but in a word, while you high-steppin and finger-popping
tell your lovin man that I was a bad
motherfucker till the Butcher cut me down.