Q&A with Howard W. French

 

 

 

Howard W. French is the author of the new book The Second Emancipation: Nkrumah, Pan-Africanism, and Global Blackness at High Tide. His other books include Born in Blackness. He is a professor of journalism at Columbia University and a former New York Times journalist, and he lives in New York City. 

 

Q: Why did you decide to focus on the late Ghanaian president Kwame Nkrumah (1909-1972) in your new book?

 

A: I chose to write about Nkrumah because he was the most important African of the 20th century, a man who sparked a continent-wide drive for independence from European domination and fought for an African future free of the control of West and East during the Cold War. 

 

Q: The scholar Annette Gordon-Reed said of the book, “Howard W. French illuminates a period of time when people believed that standards of justice and equality could prevail for African people on the continent and in the diaspora, especially in the United States during the civil rights movement.” What do you think of that description?

 

A: Nkrumah came to an early understanding of the importance of reconnecting African Americans and Africa, and he saw their concurrent  struggles for freedom and equality as essentially being one. My book revives a lost sense of just how large and inspiring figure Nkrumah cut in the United States in the 1950s and early 1960s. 

Q: How was the book’s title chosen, and what does it signify for you?

 

A: The phrase The Second Emancipation signifies the continuum that existed between the era of the Atlantic slave trade and the colonial period in Africa, when Western democracies like Britain and France employed forced labor for Africans well into the 20th century.

 

The reference to Global Blackness at High Tide speaks to the period of deep synergies between the African independence struggle and the US civil rights movement. Nkrumah was a hero to both.

 

Q: What do you see as Nkrumah’s legacy today?

 

A: Nkrumah is the most widely admired person on the African continent today, surpassing Nelson Mandela, who is much better known in the West.

 

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: I'm not going to reveal much here except to say that I'm working on a book about jazz, urban renewal, a horrible euphemism, and cultural life in New York City in the mid 20th century.

 

Q: Anything else we should know?

 

A: The Second Emancipation is a reinterpretation of the last century from perspective of Africa and its diaspora, and no matter how well you think you know the 20th century, you are bound to learn tons about things you were unaware of.

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb. Here's a previous Q&A with Howard W. French.