Kwame Nkrumah rose from colonial Gold Coast politics to lead Ghana to independence in 1957, becoming a global symbol of freedom. International figures including Richard Nixon and Martin Luther King Jr. attended Ghana's independence celebrations. By the mid-1960s, Africa had shifted from colonies to mostly independent states devoted to self-determination in theory. Nkrumah increasingly centralized power, styled himself Osagyefo, the Redeemer, and grew unpopular, leading to a military coup in 1966 with little protest. Many postcolonial leaders experienced truncated or prolonged rule marked by coups, assassinations, and authoritarianism, producing both soaring hopes and bitter aftermaths; figures like Idi Amin exemplified the latter.
""Africa is rather quickly awakening from its 1,000-year slumber," the magazine proclaimed, and it named one figure as the personification of this revival: Kwame Nkrumah, of the Gold Coast, a British colony in West Africa, who had "one of the most illustrious titles held by any Negro anywhere in the world." He was the colony's first Prime Minister-and, people were realizing, its last."
"In many ways, Ebony got it right. Nkrumah became not only a head of state but a global symbol of freedom, and the continent followed his lead. By the mid-nineteen-sixties, Africa had been transformed from a patchwork of colonies to one of mostly independent countries, each devoted, at least in theory, to self-determination. But, in Ghana, Nkrumah grew increasingly authoritarian-he styled himself "Osagyefo," the Redeemer-and increasingly unpopular, and when the military overthrew him, in 1966, there was relatively little protest."
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