"I never dreamed I would see this miracle"

I have lived to see a dream come true. I had the vision first in the last year of the Nineteenth Century when, on the way from the World Exposition in Paris, I stopped in London to attend a "Pan-African Conference" called by a young West Indian barrister and attended by a handful of philanthropists, missionaries and various colored folk.

The resolutions adopted were simple and aimed at bringing together in regular meetings Africans, their friends and descendants to discuss and clarify their social problems. . .

But, alas, World War I now intervened and it was only after the armistice that I saw an opportunity to act....

The First Pan-African Congress was held in Paris in February, 1919. There were 19 delegates, and our resolutions, which I wrote, were in essence a demand that civilized folk be treated as civilized, no matter what their race or color.

In 1921 I went to work to assemble a real Congress of Africans. I brought together 200 delegates from Africa, the West Indies and the United States, to meet successively in London, Brussels and Paris. We gained a world-wide hearing and aroused the fear and enmity of the great colonial powers. We demanded politcal freedom and a voice in government for Negroes the world over, and we attacked the colonial system.

We held small congresses in London and Lisbon in 1923 and in New York in 1927 and then gave up. However, the seed had not died. The leaders of West Africa, inspired by the First Pan-African Congress, called a West African Coneress in 1920 which was remarkably successful and secured considerable concessions from the British government toward self-rule. Other parts of Africa heard of the Pan-African movement... in nearly every colony some form of native organization began to appear.

During the Second World War, Africans fought beside Europeans in Europe, Asia and Africa, and began to think. . . . George Padmore, a British West Indian, educated in the United States organized . . . the Fifth Pan-African Congress meeting and invited me to come from America and preside. We met in Manchester, Kwame Nkrumah was the secretary, Jomo Kenyatta of Kenya took part, Wallace Johnson of Liberia was there and some 200 other young Africans. Pan-Africa was born again.

The secretary of the NAACP was dissatisfied with my work and I was dismissed. . . But as our ability to help African freedom and unity waned, the Gold Coast arose and Ghana appeared.

Ghana became an independent Republic July 1, 1960. I attended the first Parliament. The day before, the British governor had been dismissed with stately ceremony. This day a black man, whom a free white American once waved to a spittoon when he asked for a drink of water in Maryland, was not only Prime Minister of the new nation, but also its first President. That which no modern nation had dared to do-give the people the right not only to elect a parliament but also a President-Nkrumah had done.

This self-ruling Ghana is at the same time leading Africa.

I never dreamed to see this miracle. On this was piled. . . the boycott of South Africa. This plain duty which America feared to launch and Britain dared not not to, Ghana, led by Kwame Nkrumah, has started. It is all a miracle.

I am startled before it.

Ghana knows (its) foe is the threat of international investment, knows the great international monopolies, the trusts which seek to rule the world. It treats them with courtesy and yet begins to invite Soviet investment, recognizes the Peoples Republic of China and announces its aim to be Pan-African socialism.

Kwame Nkrumah, the first president of Ghana, is cerainly one of the greatest statesman of our day. There is no politician in Washington with his brains and none in the United States with his courage.

Copyright Crisis Publishing Company, Incorporated Jul 1998
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