Kwame Nkrumah Resource Guide: Manuscripts, Archives, and Rare Books Division

Research notes, interviews and correspondence relating to Kwame Nkrumah, compiled by Marika Sherwood during completion of her book "Kwame Nkrumah: The Years Abroad, 1935-1947." The material covers several subjects: the former president's life in the United States and England, discrepancies between claims he made in his autobiography and the evidence from Linclon University and University of Pennsylvania, London-based black student organizations such as the West African National Secretariat, and the influence and views of such Nkrumah associates as George Padmore, Emmanuel Dadzie and Kojo Botsio.

Nkrumah, Kwame, 1909-1972.
[Accra?] : C.P.P. Pamphleteering Committee, [1951?] (Accra : Nyaniba Press & Pub. Co.)
Call Number: Sc Rare C 84-17

The Clarence L. Holte papers reflect Holte's desire to educate people about Black history and culture, and his attempts to assist with the economic development of Nigeria, Ghana, and Liberia through the advertising company he represented. 1947-1976. This series includes information on Batten, Barton, Durstine and Osborne's initiatives in establishing American companies in West Africa. Included are plans to construct plants and mills in Nigeria and investment opportunities in Ghana. Holte's long-standing personal relationship with prime ministers Nnamdi Azikiwe of Nigeria and Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, which was utilized by the advertising agency, is documented through correspondence and news clippings, 1947-1965. Included are files pertaining to Holte's role in hosting Nkrumah's 1951 visit to the United States, sponsored by Lincoln University, where both Nkrumah and Holte were classmates.

Personal papers including biographical statements, and correspondence with other scholars and African political leaders including E.U. Essien, Kenneth Kaunda of Zambia, and Nnamdi Azikiwe of Eastern Nigeria. Correspondence, court summonses and subpoenas, petitions, press releases, and printed matter related to Hunton's imprisonment for refusing to submit the records of the Civil Rights Bail Fund to the Dies Committee on Un-American Activities. Other papers concern his teaching activities. Hunton's work for the Encyclopedia Africana Project is represented by administrative files, personnel records, correspondence with Dr. J. Yanney-Wilson, Secretary of the Ghana Academy of Sciences, area editors, and Africanist scholars, and minutes, administrative reports and memoranda. Correspondence with Kwame Nkrumah, 1962-1970; and a clipping file on Nkrumah. Material pertaining to the National Negro Congress consisting mainly of press releases and printed matter relating to the Labor Committee of the Washington Branch of the National Negro Congress, and to the Dies Committee allegation that Hunton was a communist. Hunton's involvement with the Council on African Affairs is represented by correspondence, administrative and financial records, legal and financial documents, and printed matter.

The Robert Freeman Papers document Freeman's career as a pioneer of the life insurance industry in Ghana, and to some degree Nigeria. The papers are divided into Personal and Professional papers. The latter consist mainly of business correspondence with some financial documents pertaining especially to the Ghana Insurance, Ghana General Insurance, and Great Nigeria Insurance companies. The scanty personal record includes a few letters to family and associates, curriculum vitae, a biographical sketch, a file on Pauli Murray and clippings about Kwame Nkrumah. The folder on Murray contains a travelogue of her experiences in Ghana and other countries, a letter reflecting on non-violence and women's liberation among other things, and an unpublished paper "The Law as it Affects Desegregation."

As an educator and social anthropologist, Drake worked and conducted research in West Africa intermittently between 1954 and 1965. He was a visiting professor at the University of Liberia in 1954, and a Ford Foundation Fellow in Nigeria and Ghana in 1955. He served as the head of the Sociology Department at the University College of Ghana between 1958 and 1961, and was an adviser to the Nkrumah government on the development of Tema, a small fishing village, into a new town with a deep harbor and associated industries. He also assisted in the implementation of Peace Corps programs in Ghana and Sierra Leone. Among his research projects for that period are: "Nudity as a Social Problem in Ghana", a study of drought and rain-making among the Ghanaian people, and a joint project with his wife on mass media and communications in tropical Africa. After the overthrow of the Nkrumah government in 1965, which began an era of military regimes in Africa, Drake refocused his energies on the Caribbean and the civil rights movement in the United States.

The Irving Davis/Pan-African Skills Project collection consists of a memorial program for Irving Davis, proposals and policies of PASP, and correspondence relating to the Project, 1970-1981. There are also flyers documenting PASP's projects and fundraisers.

Irving Davis, an activist during the 1960s and 1970s, conceived and founded the Pan-African Skills Project (PASP), based on Pan-African/Black Nationalist philosophies. The main aim of PASP was to send skilled African Americans to work in newly independent African nations to assist with their development programs. Started as a project of the Africa Commission of the National Committee of Black Churchmen, within a few years of its inception it was mutually agreed that PASP should be an independent organization. PASP projects included the sponsorship of the Economic Development and African-Afro-American Relations conference in 1971 in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. The conference provided a platform for Afro-American and African churchmen to discuss Black/African theology, education, economic development and trans-continental relations. The proceedings of the conference can be found in the book "Black Faith and Black Solidarity".

William Edward Burghardt Du Bois was an influential intellectual, professor, editor, writer and Pan-Africanist. Born in 1868, he received a bachelor's degree from Fisk University in 1888, and by 1895 he had received three degrees from Harvard University, culminating with the Ph.D.; the first African American to do so. Du Bois taught economics and history at Atlanta University (1897-1910). This civil rights leader/scholar founded the Niagara Movement in opposition to the conservative policies of Booker T. Washington. One of the founders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1909, Du Bois served as that organization's director of publications and editor of Crisis magazine until 1934. From 1944-1948 he headed the NAACP's special research department. He authored a great number of books, articles and essays. In 1961 he joined the Communist Party in the United States and that same year emigrated to Ghana. There he became editor-in-chief of the Encyclopedia Africana. Du Bois died in Accra in 1963 at the age of 95.

The Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) Miscellaneous Collections are formed by several file-folder level collections. The collections contain materials dating from the early 1920s and include such memorabilia as membership certificates and loan books, Black Star Line certificates, and receipts for shares in the shipping line. Correspondence in the collection from UNIA and Garvey Club officials include letters from Marcus and Amy Jacques Garvey, Gershom Harris, Uriah Gittens and Cecil A. Walters and disclose such concerns as the negative portrayal of blacks in film and the on-going development of both the UNIA and Garvey Clubs. Antithetically opposed to such growth, the correspondence from British colonial officials in West Africa and the Caribbean reveal their anxieties about the increasing presence of UNIA members and propaganda in their colonies.

Akua Weekes is an activist, Black Nationalist, freelance journalist, and writing professor at Touro College. Her activism dates to her undergraduate years at American University in Washington, D. C. Weekes participated in the student take-over of a building at Howard University in 1968; at American University, she organized residents of the Capital View Community, where she lived, to publish "The People's Voice", a community newsletter. In 1977, while a graduate student at Howard University, Weekes was recruited by the All-African People's Revolutionary Party (AAPRP), a socialist political party founded in 1972 that strove for Pan-Africanism and the freedom and unification of Africa; according to its brochure, the AAPRP organized students on the campus to "organize the masses of African people scattered all over the world". Weekes became the lead organizer of the press for African Liberation Day, which was organized by the AAPRP. In 1982, she moved to New York City and worked with the Pan Africanist Congress of Azania, the Afrikan Nationalist Pioneer Movement, Women for Justice, the Amadou Diallo Coalition, and the Grassroots Leadership Council of the Amadou Diallo Coalition.

Rabbi Matthew believed that the ancient Hebrews were Black, and that Judaism was as much a part of Black people's culture and religious heritage as Christianity. In bringing Judaism to Blacks, he believed he was reclaiming part of their heritage as opposed to converting them to Judaism. Although Matthew incorporated many customs, songs, and foods of European Jewish origin into the religious practices he taught, he also introduced African, Caribbean, and American traditions to his congregation. His teachings combined Jewish religious traditions with Black nationalism and Pan-Africanism as a method of instilling pride in Black people. For decades he tried without success to find common ground with white Jews by speaking at white synagogues around the country and at B'nai Brith lodges. He was also unsuccessful in his efforts to join the New York Board of Rabbis, but was accepted by the Tifereth Israel Rabbinical Academy of America. As an adjunct to his congregation, he created a masonic lodge called the Royal Order of Aethiopian Hebrews (1919) in Harlem, New York.