American Africans in Ghana : Black expatriates and the civil rights era /
In 1957 Ghana became one of the first sub-Saharan African nations to gain independence from colonial rule. Over the next decade, hundreds of African Americans--including Martin Luther King Jr., George Padmore, Malcolm X, Maya Angelou, Richard Wright, Pauli Murray, and Muhammed Ali--visited or settle...
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| Format: | Book |
| Language: | English |
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Chapel Hill :
University of North Carolina Press,
[2006]
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| Series: | John Hope Franklin series in African American history and culture.
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | Table of contents Contributor biographical information Publisher description |
| Summary: | In 1957 Ghana became one of the first sub-Saharan African nations to gain independence from colonial rule. Over the next decade, hundreds of African Americans--including Martin Luther King Jr., George Padmore, Malcolm X, Maya Angelou, Richard Wright, Pauli Murray, and Muhammed Ali--visited or settled in Ghana. Kevin K. Gaines explains what attracted these expatriates to Ghana and how their new community was shaped by the convergence of the Cold War, the rise of the U.S. civil rights movement, and the decolonization of Africa. Posing a direct challenge to U.S. hegemony, Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana's president, promoted a vision of African liberation, continental unity, and West Indian federation. Although the number of African American expatriates in Ghana was small, in espousing a transnational American citizenship defined by solidarities with African peoples, these activists waged along with their allies in the United States a fundamental, if largely forgotten, struggle over the meaning and content of the formal American citizenship conferred on African Americans by civil rights reform legislation. |
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| Physical Description: | xiv, 342 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm. |
| Bibliography: | Includes bibliographical references (pages 287-330) and index. |
| ISBN: | 0807830089 9780807830086 0807858935 9780807858936 |