Kwame Nkrumah led Ghana to independence from Britain in 1957 and served as its first prime minister and president. Nkrumah first gained power as leader of the colonial Gold Coast, and held it until he was deposed in 1966.He was a founding member of the Organization of African Unity and was the winner of the Lenin Peace Prize in 1962. According to intelligence documents released by the American Office of the Historian, "Nkrumah was doing more to undermine the U.S. government interests than any other black African.
Kwame Nkrumah was born in about 1909 in Nkroful, Gold Coast. Nkroful was a small village, in the far southwest of the Gold Coast, close to the frontier with the French colony of the Ivory Coast. His father did not live with the family, but worked in Half Assini before his death while Kwame was a boy. Kwame Nkrumah was raised by his mother and his extended family, which lived together in traditional fashion, with more distant relatives often visiting. He lived a carefree childhood, spent in the village, in the bush, and on the nearby sea. His mother, whose name was Nyan bah, later stated his year of birth was 1912. Because of the naming customs of the Akan people he was given the name Kwame, that being the name given to males born on a Saturday. The name of his father is not known; most accounts say he was a goldsmith.
Nkrumah's mother sent him to the elementary school run by a Catholic mission at Half Assini, where he proved a proficient student. He progressed through the ten-year elementary programme in only eight. By about 1925 he was a student-teacher in the school, and had been baptised into the faith. While at the school, he was noticed by the Reverend Alec Garden Fraser, principal of the Achimota School in the Gold Coast's capital, Accra. Fraser arranged for Nkumrah to train as a teacher at his school. Here, Columbia-educated deputy headmaster exposed him to the ideas of Marcus Garvey and W. E. B. Du Bois. After graduating from Achimota in 1930, Nkrumah was given a teaching post at the Catholic primary school in Elmina, and after a year there, he was made headmaster of the school at Axim. In Axim, he started to get involved in politics and founded the Nzima Literary Society.
The young teacher decided to further his education. One of his friends had attended Lincoln College, a historically black college in Chester County, Pennsylvania, west of Philadelphia, and he advised Nkrumah to enroll there. Nkrumah failed the entrance examination for London University gained funds for the trip and his education from relatives. He travelled by way of Britain, where he learned about Italy's invasion of Ethiopia, one of the few independent African nations. Nkrumah returned to London in May 1945 and enrolled at the London School of Economics as a PhD candidate in anthropology. He withdrew after one term and the next year enrolled at University College, with the intent to write a philosophy dissertation on "Knowledge and Logical Positivism".
Nkrumah designed the new national flag of Ghana, inverting Ethiopia's green-yellow-red Lion of Judah flag and replacing the lion with a black star. Red symbolizes bloodshed, green stands for beauty, agriculture, and abundance, yellow represents mineral wealth, and the Black Star represents African freedom. Nkrumah was the first of the new African statesmen to emulate the Ethiopian flag as a symbol of resistance to colonialism.[
Nkrumah had only a short honeymoon before there was unrest among his people. A serious bus strike in Accra stemmed from resentments among the Ga people, who believed members of other tribes were getting preferred treatment in government promotion, and this led to riots there in August. Nkrumah's response was to repress local movements by the Avoidance of Discrimination Act, which banned regional or tribally-based political parties. Another strike at tribalism fell in Ashanti, where Nkrumah and the CPP got most local chiefs who were not party supporters. These repressive actions concerned the opposition parties, who came together to form the United Party under Kofi Abrefa Busia.
In 1958, an opposition MP was arrested on charges of trying to obtain arms abroad for a planned infiltration of the Ghana Army. Nkrumah was convinced there had been an assassination plot against him, and his response was to have the parliament pass the Preventive Detention Act, allowing for incarceration for up to five years without charge or trial, with only Nkrumah empowered to release prisoners early. According to Nkrumah's biographer, David Birmingham, "no single measure did more to bring down Nkrumah's reputation than his adoption of internment without trial for the preservation of security." Nkrumah intended to bypass the British-trained judiciary, which he saw as opposing his plans when they subjected them to constitutional security.
Queen Elizabeth II remained sovereign over Ghana from 1957–1960. William Hare, and Nkrumah remained Prime Minister. On 6 March 1960, Nkrumah announced plans for a new constitution which would make Ghana a republic, headed by a president with broad executive and legislative powers. The draft included a provision to surrender Ghanaian sovereignty to a Union of African States. On 27 April 1960 a presidential election and plebiscite on the constitution were held. The constitution was ratified and Nkrumah was elected president over J. B. Danquah, the UP candidate. Ghana remained a part of the British-led Commonwealth of Nations. In February 1966, while Nkrumah was on a visit to North Vietnam and China his government was overthrown by a military coup.
When his cook died mysteriously, he feared that someone would poison him, and began hoarding food in his room. He suspected that foreign agents were going through his mail, and lived in constant fear of assassination. While in bad health, he flew to Bucharest, Romania, for medical treatment in August 1971. He died of prostate cancer in April 1972 at the age of 62. Nkrumah was buried in a tomb in the village of his birth, Nkroful, Ghana. While the tomb remains in Nkroful, his remains were transferred to a large national memorial tomb and park in Accra.