Francis Kwame Nkrumah was a Ghanaian politician, political theorist, and revolutionary. He served as Prime Minister of the Gold Coast from 1952 until 1957, when it gained independence from Britain. He was then the first Prime Minister and then the President of Ghana, from 1957 until 1966. An influential advocate of Pan-Africanism, Nkrumah was a founding member of the Organization of African Unity and winner of the Lenin Peace Prize from the Soviet Union in 1962.
Portrait of Nkrumah
60 Burghley Road, Kentish Town, London, where Nkrumah lived when in London between 1945 and 1947
Red cockerel, "Forward Ever, Backward Never": Convention People's Party logo and slogan
Kwame Nkrumah on Time magazine cover- 9 February 1953
Gold Coast (British colony)
The Gold Coast was a British Crown colony on the Gulf of Guinea in West Africa from 1821 until its independence in 1957 as Ghana. The term Gold Coast is also often used to describe all of the four separate jurisdictions that were under the administration of the Governor of the Gold Coast. These were the Gold Coast itself, Ashanti, the Northern Territories protectorate and the British Togoland trust territory.
The Gold Coast in 1922
The First Anglo-Ashanti War
The Portuguese-built Elmina Castle was purchased by Britain in 1873. Also known as St. George Castle, it is now a World Heritage Site
Following the Fourth Anglo-Ashanti War in 1896, the British proclaimed a protectorate over the Ashanti Kingdom.
