Second Emancipation

The Second Emancipation recasts the liberation of post–Second World War colonial Africa and the American civil rights struggle through the lens of Ghana’s revolutionary visionary Kwame Nkrumah (1909–1972), who emerges as the most significant African leader of the twentieth century. Howard W. French newly dramatises the Nkrumah story, a continent in the throes of liberation and a roiling United States in the Cold War era.In its dramatic depiction of a continent that once exuded the promise of a newly won freedom, The Second Emancipation positions not only Africa but also the American civil rights movement at the forefront of modern-day history.

Howard W. French is a professor of journalism at Columbia University and a former New York Times bureau chief for Central America and the Caribbean, West and Central Africa, Japan and the Koreas, and China, based in Shanghai. The author of six books, including Born in Blackness and The Second Emancipation, French lives in New York City.