Topic: Kwame Nkrumah

Kwame Nkrumah on a Soviet postage stamp

Kwame Nkrumah (21 September 1909 - 27 April 1972), was an influential 20th century advocate of Pan-Africanism, and the leader of Ghana and its predecessor state, the Gold Coast, from 1952 to 1966.

In 1909, Kwame Nkrumah was born to Madam Nyaniba. in Nkroful, Gold Coast. Nkrumah graduated from the prestigious Achimota School in Accra in 1930, studied at a Roman Catholic Seminary, and taught at a Catholic school in Axim. In 1935 he left Ghana for the United States, receiving a BA from Lincoln University, Pennsylvania in 1939, where he pledged the Mu Chapter of Phi Beta Sigma Fraternity, Inc., and received an STB (Bachelor of Sacred Theology) in 1942. Nkrumah earned a Master of Science in education from the University of Pennsylvania in 1942, and a Master of Arts in philosophy the following year. While lecturing in political science at Lincoln he was elected president of the African Students Organization of America and Canada. As an undergraduate at Lincoln he participated in at least one student theater production and published an essay on European government in Africa in the student newspaper,The Lincolnian.