Kwame Nkrumah

(1909 - 1972)

Born in a Gold Coast village, Kwame Nkrumah became active in Pan-African organizations while studying in the United States. In 1950 he was imprisoned for his involvement in Ghana’s independence movement; he later became the first leader of independent Ghana. In 1957 Nkrumah invited Martin Luther King Jr. to witness the lowering of the Commonwealth flag and the raising of the Ghanaian one. “I was crying for joy,” King later said, remembering “little children six years old and old people eighty and ninety years old walking the streets of Accra crying: ‘Freedom! Freedom!’ ”