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Nuclear Imperialism and the Pan-African Struggle for Peace and Freedom: Ghana, 1959–1962 1

2008; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 10; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/10999940802115419

1548-3843

Jean Allman,

Vietnamese History and Culture Studies

Abstract What is often missing from historical reflections on Pan-Africanism, African nationalism, and movements for independence is the relationship between struggles for the liberation of the continent from colonial rule and pacifist movements in opposition to nuclear armament. This article reconstructs the struggle against “nuclear imperialism” that emerged out of the Pan-African struggle for freedom in the late 1950s and early 1960s through the important work of radical pacifists Bayard Rustin and Bill Sutherland. Based upon a broad range of sources—published and archival—it revisits the dramatic attempt by peace activists to travel from newly independent Ghana to a site in the Sahara desert where the French intended to test their atomic bomb. The movement against nuclear imperialism that took root in the Pan-African freedom struggle not only showcases the “global” and the “transnational” in ways that need to be recovered, but stands as a counter-narrative, a corrective, to the afro-pessimism that has so dominated scholarship on Africa since the 1980s. Keywords: afro-pessimismAlgeriaall-African people's conferencecold wardiasporafellowship for reconciliationGhananational liberationnationalismnuclear disarmamentnuclear weaponsPan-Africanismpeace movementSahara protest teamSouth Africa Notes This article was originally prepared for the conference held in celebration of P. Sterling Stuckey, “Africans, Culture, and Intellectuals in North America,” at the University of California—Riverside (21–22 May 2004). It was subsequently revised and presented at several venues, including the 2005 annual conference of the Association for the Study of the Worldwide African Diaspora (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil) and the College of St. Rose (Albany, NY). I wish to thank those who, in each of these contexts, provided such lively and constructive comments and suggestions, but especially Iris Berger, Michael Gomez, Vincent Harding, Robert Hill, Gariba Abdul-Korah, David Roediger, P. Sterling Stuckey, and Carl Swidorski. Finally, the engaged and constructive suggestions for revision provided by Manning Marable and the anonymous reviewers at Souls helped me understand this story in much broader and more complex terms. I am extremely grateful for their guidance. In the end, Drake was unable to attend, but his paper is included in the volume produced out of the Assembly. A list of those who accepted invitations, along with their affiliation, can be found in the Ghanaian Times, 14 June 1962. See also, Accra Assembly, Conclusions of the Accra Assembly (Secretariat of the Accra Assembly, 1962) and Julian Mayfield, ed., The World Without the Bomb: Selections from the Accra Assembly Papers (Accra: Government Printer, 1962). St. Clair Drake, “The African Revolution and the Accra Assembly,” St. Clair Drake Papers, SC MG 309, Box 67, Schomberg Library. Also reprinted in, Mayfield, ed., World Without the Bomb, 33–37. For an excellent overview of afro-pessimism, see Waful Okumo, “Afro-Pessimism and African Leadership,” The Perspective (5 April 2001), www.theperspective.org/afro_pessimism.html, who makes special mention of the works of Paul Kennedy, David Lamb, Peter Marnham and Robert D. Kaplan. See also, Manthia Diawara, In Search of Africa (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1998) and Goren Hyden, “African Studies in the Mid-1990s: Between Afro-Pessimism and Amero-Skepticism,” African Studies Review 39(2) (September 1996): 1–17. For a defense of afro-pessimism, see David Rieff, “In Defense of Afro-Pessimism,” World Policy Journal15(4) (1998/99): www.worldpolicy.org/journal/rieff.html. Disillusionment set in early with scholars of Ghana, see especially, Dennis Austin, Ghana Observed: Essays on the Politics of a West African Republic (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1976), 2–5. See the special issue of Radical History Review 87 (2003), “Transnational Black Studies,” ed. by Lisa Brock, Robin D.G. Kelley, and Karen Sotiropoulos. Among the many scholars who have grappled with this question for Ghana since 1966 are: Bob Fitch and Mary Oppenheimer, Ghana: End of an Illusion (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1967); Samir Amin, Neo-Colonialism in West Africa (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1973); Dennis Austin and Robert Luckham, Politicians and Soldiers in Ghana, 1966–1972 (London: Frank Cass, 1975); Dennis Austin, Ghana Observed; C.L.R. James, Nkrumah and the Ghana Revolution (London: Allison and Busby, 1977); Manning Marable, African and Caribbean Politics: From Kwame Nkrumah to Maurice Bishop (London: Verso Books, 1987); Kofi Buenor Hadjor, Nkrumah and Ghana: The Dilemma of Postcolonial Power (London: Kegal Paul International, 1988); David Rooney, Kwame Nkrumah: The Political Kingdom in the Third World (New York: St. Martin's, 1988); and most recently, Kevin Gaines, American Africans in Ghana (Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina, 2006). The promise of those years is eloquently captured in Gaines, American Africans, esp. 19–26. The difficulty of finding beginnings and examining “intricate connections” is described in the preface to Marable's African and Caribbean Politics, vii. See firstly, Paul Robeson, Here I Stand (New York: Othello Associates, 1958; reprinted with introduction by Sterling Stuckey, Boston: Beacon Press, 1988) and W.E.B. Du Bois, The World and Africa (New York: International Publishers, 1979). The literature produced by U.S based scholars, particularly over the last decade, on the development of Black internationalism during World War II and the fate of that radical agenda during the Cold War is quite substantial. See, for example (by date of publication): Gerald Horne, Black & Red: W.E.B. Du Bois and the Afro-American Response to the Cold War, 1944–1963 (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1986); Brenda Gayle Plummer, Rising Wind: Black Americans and U.S. Foreign Affairs, 1935–1960: (Chapel Hill University of North Carolina Press, 1996); Robin D.G. Kelley, Race Rebels: Culture Politics and the Black Working Class (New York: Basic Books, 1996); Penny Von Eschen, Race against Empire: Black Americans and Anticolonialism, 1937–1957 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997); Yevette Richards, “African and African-American Labor Leaders in the Struggle over International Affiliation,” International Journal of African Historical Studies 31(2) (1998): 301–34; Gerald Horne, Race Woman: The Lives of Shirley Graham Du Bois (New York: New York University Press, 2000); Yevette Richards. Maida Springer: Pan-Africanist and International Labor Leader (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2000); Robin D.G. Kelley, “Stormy Weather: Reconstructing Black (Inter) Nationalism in the Cold War Era,” in Eddie S. Glaude Jr., ed., Is It Nation Time? Contemporary Essays on Black Power and Black Nationalism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002), 67–90; James H. Meriwether, Proudly We Can Be Africans: Black Americans and Africa, 1935–1961 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002); Penny Von Eschen, Satchmo Blows Up the World: Jazz Ambassadors Plays the Cold War (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2004); Brenda Gayle Plummer, ed., Window on Freedom: Race, Civil Rights, and Foreign Affairs, 1945–1988 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003); Nikhil Pal Singh, Black is a Country: Race and the Unfinished Struggle for Democracy (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 2004). Gaines, American Africans. In addition to the above, see the following, which look specifically at U.S. foreign policy and race within the U.S.: Mary L. Dudziak, Cold War Civil Rights: Race and the Image of American Democracy (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2000); Azza Salama Layton, International Politics and Civil Rights Policies in the United States, 1941–1960 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000); Thomas Borstelmann, The Cold War and the Color Line: American Race Relations in the Global Arena (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 2001); George White Jr., Holding the Line: Race, Racism, and American Foreign Policy toward Africa, 1953–1961 (Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 2005). On the Council on African Affairs, see Robeson, Here I Stand, esp. Appendix D, “A Note on the Council on African Affairs,” by Alphaeus Hunton, 117–21; Horne, Black and Red, esp. Chapter 11 passim; Plummer, Rising Wind, esp. 116–18; Von Eschen, Race Against Empire; Meriwether, Proudly We Can Be Africans, esp. 59–68. Horne, Red and Black, 28–30; Meriwether, Proudly We Can Be Africans, 63–64. On the Pan African Congress and its connections to U.S. Black internationalism, see Horne, Black and Red, 29–47; Plummer, Rising Wind, 154–61; Von Eschen, Race Against Empire, 45–53; Meriwether, Proudly We Can Be Africans, 182–85. See also, Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana: The Autobiography of Kwame Nkrumah (London: Thomas Nelson and Sons, 1957), 52–55. Von Eschen, Race Against Empire, 103–107. See Horne, Black and Red, 119–26. see Robeson, Here I Stand, 41–47. Plummer, Rising Wind, 213. The argument was first set out in Horne, Red and Black. Von Eschen, Race Against Empire, 2–33. For a similar argument, but utilizing the life and work of Lorraine Hansberry, see Fanon Che Wilkins, “Beyond Bandung: The Critical Nationalism of Lorraine Hansberry, 1950–1965,” Radical History Review 95 (spring 2006): 191–210. The Asian–African Conference received wide coverage in the African–American press. See, for example, Horne, Black and Red, 190–91. Robeson, Here I Stand, 45–47. See also, Richard Wright, The Color Curtain (New York, World Press, 1956). Von Eschen points out that in Drake's subsequent overviews of Pan-Africanism, “The work of Paul Robeson, Alphaeus Hunton, and the CAA was invisible.” Even in discussions of Padmore and Nkrumah, there is “scant mention of their roots in the left and without reference to their early alliances with African Americans or the repercussions of the Cold War for that generation of anticolonial activists.” Von Eschen, Race Against Empire, 176. See St. Clair Drake, “Diaspora Studies and Pan-Africanism,” in Global Dimensions of the African Diaspora, ed. Joseph Harris (Washington, D.C.: Howard University, 1982), 451–514. Du Bois to Wallerstein, dd. 3 May 1961. Cited in Horne, Black and Red, 336. Text reproduced in Colin Legum, Pan-Africanism: A Short Political Guide (New York: Praeger, 1963), 147. See also Kennett Loves, “African Nations Ask Nuclear Ban,” New York Times, 23 April 1958, and Kwame Nkrumah, I Speak of Freedom: A Statement of African Ideology (New York: Praeger, 1961), 130. As Kwesi Armah points out, Ghana's commitment to a nuclear-free world actually pre-dated independence: “Ghana was consistent in this policy as expressed in the position taken on the eve of independence with regard to the Bandung Conference of Afro-Asian Countries in 1955.” Kwesi Armah, Peace without Power: Ghana's Foreign Policy, 1957–1966 (Accra: Ghana Universities Press, 2004), 137. See also Michael Dei-Anang, The Administration of Ghana's Foreign Relations, 1957–1965 (London: Athlone Press, 1975), 19–20. Nkrumah, I Speak of Freedom, 151. Homer A. Jack, “African Confab Results,” Chicago Defender, 17 January 1959. See, for example, Bill Sutherland's account in his and Matt Meyer's Guns and Gandhi in Africa: Pan African Insights on Nonviolence, Armed Struggle and Liberation in Africa (Trenton, N.J.: Africa World Press, 2000), 35. Horne, Black and Red, 342 and Horne, Race Woman, 156. All-African People's Conference News Bulletin, 1(4) (Accra: AAPC, 1959): 2. “Special Conferences,” International Organization 16(2) (Spring 1962): 445. Reported in the Ghanaian Times, 3 October 1959. See Nkrumah, Ghana, 49–63; Gaines, American Africans, 34–39. As Gaines writes, “Padmore was the leading theoretician, strategist, and publicist of anticolonialism and African liberation, linking metropolitan agitation to the nationalist movements on the African continent.” (34). He first met Nkrumah in London in 1947. After Ghanaian independence, he relocated to Ghana and worked as Nkrumah's key advisor on African Affairs. Padmore died suddenly in London on 23 September 1959. See also Marable, African and Caribbean Politics, 120–23 and Von Eschen, 13–15 and 45, as well as Padmore's Africa and World Peace (London, M. Secker and Warburg, Ltd., 1937) and Pan-Africanism or Communism (London: Dobson, 1956). For Rustin's life story, see John D'Emilio's authoritative, Lost Prophet: The Life and Times of Bayard Rustin (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003). For Sutherland, see Bill Sutherland and Matt Meyer, Guns and Gandhi. See also, Gaines, American Africans, 103–106. To situate Rustin and Sutherland in the broader context of African–American international activism, see Brenda Gayle Plummer's introduction to her edited, Window on Freedom: Race, Civil Rights, and Foreign Affairs, 1945–1988 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 2003), 1–16. Nkrumah joined the Fellowship while he was teaching philosophy at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania. See Gaines, American Africans, 43. Sutherland and Meyer, Guns and Gandhi, 5–7 and 21–22. See also, Ernest Dunbar, The Black Expatriates: A Study of American Negroes in Exile (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1968), 88–109. Sutherland and Meyer, Guns and Gandhi, 36. See also D'Emilio, Lost Prophet, 280. For an account of Rustin's work in Montgomery, see D'Emilio, Lost Prophet, 223–48. D'Emilio, Lost Prophet, 280. Gaines, American Africans, 13. D'Emilio, Lost Prophet, 283–86. D'Emilio, Lost Prophet, 285, citing Muste and Levison to Bayard Rustin, 11/14/59, Bayard Rustin Papers, University Publications of America. D'Emilio, Lost Prophet, 286. April Carter, “The Sahara Protest Team,” in Carter, Liberation without Violence, ed. A. Paul Hare and Herbert H. Blubert (London: Rex Collings, 1980), 130. When Rustin arrived in London, he began to meet with officials and various embassies, including the Moroccan Embassy, which offered to secretly provide financing for the team. According to D'Emilio, Rustin was concerned about the strings that might be attached to such an offer. See D'Emilio, Lost Prophet, 281. National Archives of Ghana, Accra [NAG], ADM 13/2/65, Cabinet Memorandum, 23 October 1959. NAG, ADM 13/1/28, Cabinet Minutes, 23 October 1959 NAG, Special Collections, Bureau of African Affairs [SC/BAA] 251, African Affairs Committee Minutes, 19 November 1959. [File is in the process of being renumbered as RG 17/1/465.] Committee members included: Nkrumah himself, Ako Adjei, N.A. Welbeck, Kofi Baako, Abdullai Diallo, Tawiah Adamafio, T.R. Makonnen, E.J. Du Plain, John Tettegah, Kwaku Boateng, Yankeh, Joe Fio Meyer, Eric Heymann, A.K. Barden, Kojo Botsio, Amoah Awuah, A.Y.K. Djin, and Mbiyu Boinange. For Scott's life story, see Michael Scott, A Search for Peace and Justice: Reflections of Michael Scott, ed. Paul Hare and Herbert H. Blumbert (London: Rex Collings, 1980). Ghanaian Times, 1 October 1959 and 22 October 1959. For reconstructions of the protest based on participants' accounts, see Bayard Rustin, The Reminiscences of Bayard Rustin, no. 8: Interview of Bayard Rustin by Ed Edwin, 6 November 1985 (Alexandria, VA: Alexander St. Press, 2004), 341–44. D'Emilio, Lost Prophet, 279–88; Scott, Search for Peace, 131–37. For brief secondary accounts of the Sahara protest, see also, Armah, Peace without Power, 138. Gaines, American Africans, 103–106. Ghanaian Times, 30 November 1959. Ghanaian Times, 21 November 1959. Full text reprinted in Ghanaian Times, 23 November 1959. Daily Graphic, 5 December 1959. Many scholars have noted the decline in coverage of African affairs in African–American newspapers in the wake of the Cold War. See esp. Meriwether, Proudly We Can Be Africans, 153–57 and Von Eschen, Race Against Empire, 107, 118, and 152. Ghana's leadership role in the anti-nuclear movement received some coverage in the African–American press before Rustin, Sutherland, and others assembled in Accra. See, for example, Chicago Defender, 13 Sept. 1958, 17 Jan. 1959, 8 Aug. 1959; 16 Sept. 1959. The Sahara protest itself was covered in the mainstream U.S. press: New York Times, 15 Oct. 1959, 5 Nov. 1959; 20 Nov. 1959; 5 Jan. 1960; 31 Jan. 1960; 10 Feb. 1960; Washington Post, 15 Oct. 1959, 20 Nov. 1959. However, it did not receive coverage in the Chicago Defender or the Pittsburgh Courier—two of the leading African–American papers. Muste, Essays, 398. For a full account see Muste, Essays, 398–400. Ibid., 400. Sutherland and Meyer, Guns and Gandhi, 38. Daily Graphic, 14 December 1959. From late December until early January, Pierre Martin, a peace activist and teacher in a mass education unit in North Africa fasted outside the French Embassy in Accra to protest the proposed French tests. See Daily Graphic, 5 January 1950 and Ghana Evening News, 1 January 1950. In an interview with Mabel Dove, Martin explained, “There are two Embassies in Ghana today. I, Pierre Martin, I am the Ambassador presenting the people of France and the Embassy on the fifth floor of Ghana House represents French Officialdom.” Ghana Evening News, 1 January 1950. Sutherland and Meyer, Guns and Gandhi, 38–39. For Scott's account see his Search for Peace, 132. Scott, Search for Peace, 131. Ibid., 132. In early January, Sutherland and Randle traveled to Accra to confer with government officials and activists there. See Daily Graphic, 7 January 1960. Sutherland and Meyer, 39. Scott, Search for Peace, 131. See Sutherland and Meyer, Guns and Gandhi, 39–40 and Daily Graphic 19 January 1960. See NAG, SC/BAA 514, Sutherland to Nkrumah, dd. Accra, 26 August 1960. Ghana Evening News, 1, 29–60. Ibid. NAG, ADM 13/1/29, Cabinet Minutes, 13 February 1960. See also, “Ghana to Freeze Assets of French,” New York Times, 14 February 1960. Over the next ten days, Professors R.W.H. Wright, A.H. Ward, and John Marr of the University College of Ghana conducted extensive testing to measure fallout. They noted that there was a dramatic increase in levels of radiation throughout Ghana, all the way to Accra, but nowhere did measures exceed “what is considered to be the maximum safe dose.” See ADM 13/2/69, “Confidential: Radioactive Fallout Effect in Ghana Following the French Atom Bomb Test,” 23 February 1960. Ghana Evening News, 4 April 1960. NAG, ADM 13/2/71, Cabinet Memorandum, “Second French Nuclear Test in the Sahara,” 1 April 1960. See also, Armah, Peace without Power, 138–39. David Birmingham, Kwame Nkrumah: The Father of African Nationalism (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1998), 104. Ghana Evening News, 17 February 1960. A pamphlet, “Positive Action Conference for Peace and Security, April, 1960,” which includes Nkrumah's opening and closing speeches, resolutions of the conference, and the manifesto submitted by the Sahara Protest Team can be found in NAG, ADM 16/24. NAG, SC/BAA 68, Abubakar Balewa to Nkrumah, dd. Lagos, 25 March 1960. NAG, SC/BAA 68, Nkrumah to Balewa, dd. Accra, 2 April 1960. For Nkrumah's opening address, see ADM 16/24, “Positive Action Conference.” A slightly different version of the speech is reprinted in Nkrumah, I Speak of Freedom, 211–22. ADM 16/24. Ibid. Sutherland and Meyer, Guns and Gandhi, 40. Ibid., 41. Ibid. In August, 1960, after conversations with Scott, Muste, and Rustin, Sutherland wrote to Nkrumah to follow up on plans for the “Non-Violent Positive Action Training Centre,” but realized that “the Congo Crisis naturally took precedence over everything else.” See NAG, SC/BAA 514, Sutherland to Nkrumah, dd. Accra, 26 August 1960. [File to be renumbered as RG 17/1/411] St. Clair Drake, “Nkrumah's ‘Ban the Bomb’ Conference” (handwritten note, no date), St. Clair Drake Papers, SC MG 309, Box 67, Schomberg Library. Sutherland also believed the murder of Lumumba was crucial: “After the 1961 murder of Lumumba—a murder that was originally planned by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)—Nkrumah's disillusionment with nonviolent strategies became solidified.” Sutherland and Meyer, Guns and Gandhi, 47. The papers and proceedings of the Assembly were edited and introduced by playwright Julian Mayfield. See Mayfield, ed., World Without the Bomb. For a brief account, see Gaines, American Africans, 164. See NAG, SC/BAA 137, “The Accra Assembly, 10–17 May 1962,” [pamphlet]. Invitees to the Assembly were to come as individuals, not as delegates or representatives. As the preliminary program explained, “The Assembly will be composed of about one hundred individuals invited in their personal capacity who have been active in putting forward proposals independent of the policies of any Power Bloc.” Sutherland and Meyer, Guns and Gandhi, 42. Nkrumah, I Speak of Freedom, 215. Sutherland and Meyer, Guns and Gandhi, 59, citing 1993 conversation in Brooklyn, NY. Muste, Essays, 397. Many years later, as Scott reflected on both the significance of the Sahara protest and its limitations, he considered the government's support of the protest or rather the reliance on the government a problem: “any time we wanted to go further, we had to send people back to Accra to find out whether the government would be willing to put up the necessary funds to allow the action to continue. Bayard Rustin and Michael Randle had to go back to Accra for several days in order to keep us ‘on location’, so to speak. In the end the decision was really made by the Ghanaian government, that they were willing to risk their trucks.” Scott, Search for Peace, 134. Gaines, American Africans, 285. On “radical experimentation,” see Sutherland and Meyer, 42. C.L.R. James, At the Rendezvous of Victory: Selected Writings (London: Allison and Busby, 1984), 184. Nkrumah, I Speak of Freedom, 220.