Martin Luther King Jr’s Connection to Ghana, West Afrika; and Afrika in General.

Martin Luther King Jr. strongly believed in the interconnectedness of the African American movement for Freedom and Justice and the African movement for Independence and Development. During the time period MLK made the following comments, Ghana was being controlled and exploited by the leaders of Britain, an empire located 5,000 miles away whose people spoke a different language, possessed a very different culture, and looked down upon darker skinned peoples of the world. Yet, due to passionate determination, courageous work, and the belief that righteousness shall prevail Ghana fought and achieved its political independence from Britain.

Ghana’s first President, Kwame Nkrumah, was inspired by Martin Luther King Jr.’s work in liberating Africans in America from the evils of Jim Crow. Effectively, the same people exploiting Africans in Ghana was the same people mistreating Africans in America. Realizing this, Kwame Nkrumah’s invited MLK to Ghana’s Independence Ceremony March 6, 1957 - the day Ghanaians themselves, not people thousands of miles away, began to rule Ghana. In a form of solidarity Martin Luther King Jr. accepted this invitation and arrived in Ghana March 4th 1957.

These quotes have been selected from Martin Luther King Jr’s Autobiography, Chapter 11 ‘Birth Of A New Nation’.

“Ghana has something to say to us. It says to us first that the oppressor never voluntarily gives freedom to the oppressed. You have to work for it. Freedom is never given to anybody. Privileged classes never give up their privileges without strong resistance.”

“The minute I knew I was coming to Ghana I had a very deep emotional feeling. A new nation was being born. It symbolized the fact that a new order was coming into being and an old order was passing away…I wanted to be involved in it, be a part of it, and notice the birth of this new nation with my own eyes.”

“Struggling had been going on in Ghana for years. The British Empire saw that it could no longer rule the Gold Coast and agreed that on the sixth of March, 1957, it would release the nation. All of this was because the persistent protest, the continual agitation, of Prime Minister Kwame Nkrumah and the other leaders who worked along with him and the masses of people who were willing to follow.”

“It seems this morning that I can hear God speaking. I can hear him speaking throughout the Universe, saying, “Be still and know that I am God. And if you don’t stop, if you don’t straighten up, if you don’t stop exploiting people, I’m going to rise up and break the backbone of your power. And your power will be no more!”

“I thought that this event, the birth of this new nation, would give impetus to oppressed peoples all over the world. I thought it would have worldwide implications and repercussions - not only for Asia and Africa, but also for America.”

“Nkrumah realized…Ghana was a one-crop country, cocoa mainly. In order to make the economic system more stable, it would be necessary to industrialize. Nkrumah said to me that one of the first things that he would do would be to work toward industrialization.”

“Ninety percent of the people were illiterate, and it was necessary to lift the whole cultural standard of the community in order to make it possible to stand up in the free world. It was my hope that even people from America would go to Africa as immigrants. American Negroes could lend their technical assistance to a growing new nation.”