America can use its Black citizens to infiltrate Africa and sabotage our struggle because the Negro’s complexion is a perfect disguise. Be wary, Africa, of the Peace Corps Blacks, the AID Blacks, and the Foreign Service Blacks.
(Angelou Reference Angelou1986:80).According to the civil rights activist, poet, and dramatist Maya Angelou, the above epigraph was taken from a speech by a high-ranking Ghanaian politician in 1962. He issued his warning about Black saboteurs amid rumors that the American CIA had been trying to assassinate Ghanaian president Kwame Nkrumah and that it was using African Americans as spies to gather information toward that end. That same year, Adger Emerson Player, a young African American, moved with his wife and daughter to Ghana to take up the position of Political Affairs Officer at the American Embassy. On February 4, 1964, Player became the “reluctant hero of an international dispute” when he “rescued” the U.S. flag from a Ghanaian anti-American demonstration in front of the U.S. embassy (Ebony 1964:164). While many Americans, including President Lyndon B. Johnson, congratulated Player for his bravery and patriotism in rescuing the flag, voices from within the Ghanaian and African-American press had a different take on Player and his “patriotism.” An editorial in the Ghanaian Times, a major Ghanaian newspaper, for example, labeled Player “Judas” for betraying not only Ghanaians but the entire Black race.Footnote 1 For the editor of the Ghanaian Times, Player’s action reinforced existing notions of African Americans as tools of American imperialism in Africa.
Mainstream U.S. and African American newspapers covered the Player incident for months, as diverse groups, ranging from politicians to everyday citizens, weighed in on the affair. On February 14, 1964, the Philadelphia Daily News, a major news tabloid in the Philadelphia metropolitan area, ran an editorial titled “Loyalty and the Negro.” It discussed how proud Americans were of Player’s act and added that the loyalty of African Americans belonged with the United States, not with Ghana (Philadelphia Daily News 1964a). Furthermore, the editorial asserted that Ghanaians’ expectation of racial loyalty from African Americans (exemplified by Player) was misplaced. Amid the dialectics of Ghanaian and American sentiments and expectations, Americans sought to know to which side Player belonged and what his action of raising the U.S. flag meant to him. Player was quoted in the Baltimore Afro-American that his decision to retrieve the U.S. flag “was not anti-African, but pro-American,” and that “a man needs to make no apology for his patriotism” (1964b:20). He insisted that he was doing his duty as an American, just as the Ghanaian demonstrators saw their protest as their duty and right to challenge what they regarded as American interventionism.
The Player incident offers a window into conceptions of pan-Africanism, racial solidarity, and most importantly, the quest to end Western hegemony and neocolonialism. I employ these events within the context of post-independence Ghana and the U.S. civil rights struggle to rethink transnational racial solidarity in Africa and the African diaspora. What do these events reveal about the theory and practice of pan-Africanism? And how do they help to historicize W.E.B. Du Bois’ idea of double consciousness concerning Africa and diasporic African relations? The differing interpretations of the Player incident among African Americans highlight the complexity of diasporic Africans’ relations with Africa and ongoing debates about the substance of pan-Africanism and global Blackness. They also reveal how the postwar era pitted racial identity against national identities. For the Ghanaian demonstrators and many White Americans, Player was either for Blacks everywhere or for America. When Player declared that his actions were pro-American and not anti-African, he upset this binary. Moreover, Player’s defense of the United States articulated a sense of Blackness that was nationalized and not globalized or pan-Africanized. Scholarly focus on activists who embody a pan-African sense of Blackness overlooks the contestation between race and nationality and its implications for pan-Africanism and global Black liberation.
Racial solidarity is crucial for pan-Africanism, which is a movement for the cultural, political, and economic liberation of Africans and people of African descent (Rabaka Reference Rabaka2020:10). In 1951, Kwame Nkrumah, who was elected Leader of Government Business in the Gold Coast colony and who would become Ghana’s prime minister in 1957, told an African American gathering at the historically Black Lincoln University that “there was never a better period for the ‘Back to Africa’ movement of Marcus Garvey than today. Let the negro scientists and technicians and teachers flow in ever larger numbers to Gold Coast to help build the new Gold Coast.” He added, “Freedom for the Gold Coast is a test case for Africa and the African race all over the world.”Footnote 2 Thus, according to Nkrumah, the mobilization of diasporic Africans’ support to end colonial rule in Africa employed concepts of racial solidarity.
In the wake of this call for solidarity, diasporic Africans residing in Africa faced a dilemma of expectations, which reflects sociologist W.E.B. Du Bois’ idea of double consciousness. In this case, however, the duality was a global pan-African Blackness and Americanness. Du Bois’ The Souls of Black Folks described double consciousness as the internal conflict African Americans face as they try to survive in a racialized country by navigating both their African and American identities. He noted that “he would not Africanize America because America had too much to teach the world. He would not bleach his negro soul in a flood of white Americanism because he knows that negro blood has a message for the world” (Du Bois Reference DuBois, Levitt and Khagram2008:220). Du Bois emphasized the need for African Americans to be both Black and American without having to give up one identity for the other. This duality within Blackness challenged White American rule and Black cultural nationalists like Marcus Garvey, who emphasized Black pride based on racial purity.
Double consciousness has been discussed in the context of American racial politics, referring to the duality of Blackness and Americanness (Gilroy Reference Gilroy1993; Grusser Reference Gruesser2000). But the lived experiences of diasporic Africans in Africa indicate that they have dealt with this internal conflict even in spaces such as post-independence Ghana, where the prevailing assumption was that race was not a social factor. Beyond facing the challenges of living on a very diverse continent with multiethnic groups and languages, African Americans in Africa also experienced the repercussions of U.S. imperialist projects in Africa, which sometimes used them as cultural brokers (Von Eschen Reference Von Eschen1997:128; Pierre Reference Pierre2013:165). The trope of African Americans as agents of U.S. imperialism—as CIA spies in Africa during the Cold War—caused them to contest and negotiate their duality, both African and American (Bedasse Reference Bedasse2017:68). Furthermore, the nationalism of the post-WWII era stereotyped people along such dividing lines as “us” versus “them,” anti-colonialists versus colonialists, and communist versus non-communists. People attempted to transcend these binaries but found it difficult. However, regardless of one’s ideological position, nation-state interest in binary identities proved to be a powerful force that pulled individual and group allegiances in a manner that further complicated African Americans’ navigation of their double-ness in Africa.
The different interpretations of and responses to the Player incident demonstrate Du Bois’ double consciousness in the African context, which I describe as the dilemma of diasporic Africans. This dilemma reveals how the expectations of Africanness clashed with expectations of Americanness and with the aspirations of African countries to assert their national identities and interests. Player was firmly rooted in his identity as an American. However, for those who witnessed the flag incident and the hundreds who weighed in on it, expectations of double-ness were very much present. The responses to the Player incident highlight the burden of these expectations for diasporic Africans in Ghana, which at times undermined the prospect and promise of racial solidarity. Here, I call attention to possible discussions of triple consciousness: African, pan-African, and the American sense of Blackness and its impact on global Black politics.
This article foregrounds U.S. perspectives on the incident, particularly those articulated by American newspapers. On the one hand, the pseudo-anonymity of the newspapers allowed people to engage in thought-provoking discussions about race, identity, and nationality. In the often self-reflective responses to the incident in editorials, letters to the editor, and opinion columns, Player is viewed not just as an American, but also as a Black American or an African American. The diverse viewpoints found in the newspapers are crucial to historicizing double consciousness beyond the U.S., because people drew upon American racial politics and global trends such as African nationalism to arrive at their individual conclusions about Player’s act. At the same time, these responses demonstrate how people deliberated and personalized ideas of pan-Africanism such as unity and political liberation to bridge the gap between the theory and practice of pan-Africanism. Likewise, newspapers served as discursive spaces for those who were unable to visit the ancestral continent to stay connected to events in Africa. Hence, in writing to the newspapers, reading, and commenting on issues, diasporic Africans engaged in the global struggle for Black liberation. To a certain extent, U.S. newspapers allowed for varied views on the Player incident, represented by mainstream media such as the New York Times as well as the Black press, such as the Chicago Defender. I rely more on U.S. newspapers than on the state-controlled Ghanaian media like the Ghanaian Times because people were careful not to articulate opinions in the Ghanaian press that would have cast them as saboteurs of the African revolution.
According to African American scholar Ronald W. Walters, an approach which studies pan-Africanism by examining the relations between Africans and diasporic Africans without “emphasizing travels or movements” is needed (Walters Reference Walters1997:41). The Player incident offers an opportunity to employ such an approach. Mindful of the contradictions and complexities of the term “African diaspora,” this study focuses entirely on the engagement of African Americans with Ghana (Patterson & Kelley Reference Patterson and Robin2000:20). The Player incident exposes the competing and often fraught positionalities within African diasporic communities and the relationships of these communities with African nations. It also shows how pan-African consciousness was not a given, but rather it was contingent on locality and socio-political factors.
Ghana’s Independence in Context
Ghana’s independence on March 6, 1957, was celebrated as the crowning achievement of the series of pan-African congresses spanning the period from 1900 to 1945. Black people from across the globe joined in the celebration of Ghana’s liberation. Notable figures at Ghana’s independence celebration included the Trinidadian Marxist and labor organizer George Padmore, U.S. civil rights activists Martin Luther King, Jr. and A. Philip Randolph, and U.N. official and Nobel Peace Prize recipient Ralph Bunche. For those who were unable to visit Ghana in person, African-American newspapers such as the Chicago Defender served as a platform to share in this momentous occasion. Days before Ghana’s independence celebration, the Chicago Defender published an article detailing plans for the celebration of Ghana’s independence in the United States (Chicago Defender 1957a:1). For other Black Americans, Ghana’s independence was to be a lesson for the African American struggle for racial equality (Daily Defender 1957b:9).
While Black Americans were content to witness the historic birth of a new nation in Africa and to celebrate it from their position in the U.S., others chose to join in Ghana’s development and moved to Ghana. W.E.B Du Bois, Alphaeus Hunton, Shirley Graham Du Bois, and Pauli Murray were among those who relocated. Besides acting as an affirmation of the pan-African sentiment and racial solidarity which was expressed at the time, for those who went to Ghana, the journey also served as an escape from Jim Crow America (Gaines Reference Gaines2006:8). For instance, civil rights activist Julian Mayfield moved to Ghana to escape political oppression (Gaines Reference Gaines2006:144–47). For the most part, African Americans in Ghana formed a diasporic network that worked with African nationalists to develop independent countries, to promote and support African revolutions, and to solidify pan-Africanism.
Scholarship exploring the interactions between African Americans and Africans is often framed around a racial uplift ideology in which African Americans, as missionaries, activists, politicians, or government officials, visit Africa with the intention of rescuing it. Other times, these interactions are configured as racial solidarity against global White hegemonic power, as demonstrated in various pan-African conferences and meetings. While the lines between these two approaches are not always firm, they nonetheless delineate such scholarship. For instance, James H. Meriwether’s Proudly We Can Be Africans (2002) argues that developments in Africa compelled African Americans to change their views about Africa and to see the continent as a source of pride. He explores the changing views of African Americans regarding the continent through their attempts to help Africa, such as their opposition to the Italian invasion of Ethiopia, their financial and political support of the anti-apartheid campaign in South Africa, and their discontent over the Congo Crisis and the murder of Patrice Lumumba (Meriwether Reference Meriwether2002:209). Kevin Gaines’ American Africans in Ghana not only focuses on how modern Black expatriates used Ghana as a base and political refuge from which to continue their struggle for civil rights but also explores their participation in Nkrumah’s post-independence projects (Reference Gaines2006:14). These frameworks are essential to shaping this article’s narrative which unravels the evolving relationship between continental and diasporic Africans.
Furthermore, this scholarship centers not only on giants of Black liberation movements, but also on activists who expressed a pan-African sense of Blackness in their engagement with Africa. For instance, Gaines’ work follows the activism of W.E.B. Du Bois, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr., and Julian Mayfield, who were not only Nkrumaists in their approach but also articulated a pan-African Blackness. This sense of Blackness allowed them to connect the struggle of the Ghanaians with that of African Americans and to criticize the United States government while they were in Ghana. James Campbell uses a similar approach in Middle Passages, following the journeys of the poet Langston Hughes, novelist Richard Wright, and activist George Padmore, among others (Campbell Reference Campbell2006:xxiv). Unlike Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Player displayed a Black identity rooted in his nationality.
Player represented the contingent of African Americans who articulated a nationalized rather than pan-African Blackness in Africa. Focusing on activists who displayed pan-African Blackness masks how they negotiated their dual identities in Africa, especially in the face of anti-Americanism. While Gaines cites the Player incident as one of the many factors that led to the search for anti-Nkrumaists (Gaines Reference Gaines2006:188–89), this article offers an in-depth analysis of the incident which underscores the contestation between race and nation within the context of pan-Africanism. The Player incident shows that substantiative pan-Africanism is contingent on grappling with racial, national, and other forms of identities within the pan-African community.
Ghana, as Malcolm X described it in the 1960s, was the fountainhead of pan-Africanism (X Reference Malcolm2015:404). Unfortunately, its independence, like that of many African countries, was entangled with Cold War politics. The ideological contest between the United States and the Soviet Union led newly independent African countries such as Ghana, Egypt, and Cameroon to participate in the Non-Aligned Movement, which refused to side with either the Soviet Union or the United States in their rivalry (Scarnecchia Reference Scarnecchia and Worger2018:385). But this non-aligned position did not eliminate U.S. and Soviet interventionist politics in newly independent African nations, as the superpowers sought to establish control in these countries through their diplomats as well as through other means. In September 1962, African American journalist Charles P. Howard wrote an article titled, “Nkrumah on the List of African Leaders to Be Murdered?” which was published in the Afro-American (Howard Reference Howard1962:A1). Howard was concerned about Nkrumah because some radical African leaders had been assassinated, most notably Patrice Lumumba of Congo in 1961. Howard’s question was equally valid following the August 1962 Kulungugu bombing, which targeted President Nkrumah, injuring him and killing two others (Ahlman Reference Ahlman2017:156). The following year, Ghana’s neighbor, Togo, witnessed the assassination of its president, Sylvanus Olympio (Afro-American 1963:13). Some Ghanaians viewed these assassination attempts as being driven by American interventionist politics in Africa. U.S. government officials viewed Nkrumah as a popular radical communist whom they feared had the potential to influence other African leaders to accept communism in the emerging New Africa. The quest to contain communism in Africa and to stake a claim to Africa’s natural resources was one of the main drivers of U.S. interventionism in Africa (Black Reference Black2018:118–19).
Ghanaian political leaders and intellectuals debated the nature and consequences of American interventionism, particularly after the murder of Lumumba. By 1964 there was a palpable anti-American sentiment within many political circles in Ghana. Economic factors further contributed to Ghana’s volatile political environment. Ghana’s booming cocoa industry had taken a downturn, and the mounting cost of Nkrumah’s modernization projects, particularly his mammoth Volta River Project, had by 1964 proven disastrous for everyday Ghanaians (Geiss Reference Geiss1969:199). There was a prevailing sense of vulnerability among the public, despite the government’s projected image of national unity and economic and upward mobility. Consequently, when people demonstrated, they were also expressing their disillusionment with certain African leadership styles. The crisis of sovereignty and the assassination attempts led to the search for spies and the expulsion of foreigners by Nkrumah’s government. Significant among the targeted “spies” were Americans, particularly African Americans. Therefore, when Player put up the flag, his actions were interpreted by many Ghanaians as upholding American intervention in Ghanaian politics, thus reinforcing their existing suspicions about African Americans as agents of U.S. imperialism in Africa (Zimmerman Reference Zimmerman2012:136–38; Campbell Reference Campbell2006:69–73).
Adger Emerson Player: “The Reluctant Hero of An International Dispute”
Adger Emerson Player was born on May 6, 1932, in Denver, Colorado, to Moses A. Player, a World War I veteran, and his wife, who worked as a cook at Colorado Women’s College in Denver. Player, the elder of two sons, attended East Denver High School and the University of Colorado, where he studied International Relations. After earning his bachelor’s degree, Player received a scholarship to study in Germany at Erlangen University. Between 1956 and 1958, he served in the U.S. Army, and in 1960 he received a master’s degree in Political Science at the University of Colorado, where his studies had focused on Africa. After earning his M.A., Player worked for the U.S. Defense Department and later transferred to the State Department before his assignment to Ghana (Coleman Reference Coleman1964:3). In July 1962, Player moved to Ghana to take up his position at the U.S. embassy. It was his first diplomatic appointment.
Player joined a community of African Americans in Accra that numbered around four hundred in 1964. One of its members, Leslie Alexander Lacy, observed that Black Americans in the country fell into three categories; the politicals, those who were non-political, and the “opportunists” (Lacy Reference Lacy1970:175). He described the first group as “religiously loyal to Kwame Nkrumah, zealously rationalizing his political moves and followed the ruling party” (Lacy Reference Lacy1970:175). The Nkrumah loyalists included Alphaeus Hunton, Graham Du Bois, W.E.B. Du Bois, and Preston King. The non-political group included Alice Windom, Vicki Garvin, Maya Angelou, and Ted Pontiflet. These individuals fell outside of Nkrumah’s political elite circle, but they still expressed support for the African Revolution (Lacy Reference Lacy1970:177). Lacy described the “opportunists” as African Americans who were “always coming, always leaving, always stealing, never feeling” (Lacy Reference Lacy1970:179). These were the “loners” who, like the non-politicals, had come mainly to enhance their social and economic status. Lacy’s description of the last group is flawed, in that all the groups were in one way or another looking for the full benefits of citizenship, which Jim Crow America had denied its non-White population. Player belonged to a category most African Americans in the country avoided—U.S. government personnel. Angelou observed that fellow African Americans shunned this group because as a rule they associated with White Europeans, looked down on Africans, and were suspected of being spies for the U.S. government (Angelou Reference Angelou1986:23). It is unclear whether Player embodied those characteristics. He was, however, in the service of the United States government, which made him a suspect even before he put up the U.S. flag.
According to news reports, on February 4, 1964, some Ghanaians in trucks with speakers rode through the streets of Accra, urging people to go to the U.S. embassy and protest American interference in Ghana’s politics. A group of about two hundred Ghanaians went to demonstrate at the embassy around 11:30 a.m., carrying signs bearing such slogans as, “Go Home Yankee,” “You Killed Lumumba We Know,” “Down With Capitalism, Forward with Socialism,” and “UNCLE SAM THIS IS NOT CUBA THIS IS NOT PANAMA” (Muhammed Speaks 1964:11). These signs summed up the general Ghanaian grievances against the United States. At the embassy, they pulled down the American flag, and Player ran through the crowd, risking his life to put the U.S. flag back up. According to the Washington Post, the police arrived and formed a ring around the flag to prevent further efforts to take it down (1964a:A9). Although the demonstrators departed shortly thereafter, there was a second demonstration the following day, albeit with fewer people and of a shorter duration than the first. William P. Mahoney, the U.S. ambassador to Ghana, sent a formal complaint regarding the protest to Kojo Botsio, Ghana’s foreign minister, while Assistant Secretary of State G. Mennen Williams issued similar complaints to Ghana’s envoy in the United States, Ambassador Miguel A. Ribeiro. American officials believed that the protests had been instigated by Nkrumah (Frankel Reference Frankel1964:1).
Tensions between the two countries continued to rise in the wake of the Player incident (Daily Graphic 1964:7). Five days after the incident, six foreign lecturers at the University of Ghana, two of whom were African Americans, were accused of subversive acts and expelled from the country. One was Dr. Louis H. Schuster, who taught business management at the university and who had only arrived in Ghana a few months before the incident under a U.S. government-sponsored program, and the other was Wendell A. Jeanpierre, who had taught French (Garrison Reference Garrison1964a:1). The Atlanta Daily ran the headline, “Ghana Expels Seven Educators in Wild Move Against Americans” (Landrey Reference Landrey1964:1).
While people in the U.S. pondered the causes of the demonstration and of the Ghanaian government’s expulsion of the professors, the Ghanaian Times troubled the waters further by labeling Player a “Judas.” Its editorial had a message for Player to take home, that the revolutionaries knew and were prepared to deal with the “Judases” and “skunks” within the Black community. It further read, “One would think that Mr. Player would be the last one to perform such a disgraceful and shameful act. For no people have suffered more under the yoke of Yankee arrogance and racialism than Afro-Americans” (Ghanaian Times 1964a:2). This editorial reflected the expectation of racial solidarity against Black oppression and neocolonialism that was believed to be exemplified by the United States’ presence in Ghana. However, the editor of the Ghanaian Times overlooked Player’s background of military and civil rights engagements. His father, Moses A. Player, was a WWI veteran who had lost a lung in a gas attack during the Meuse-Argonne offensive (Chicago Defender 1964a:4). His brother, Monty Player, was a nine-year veteran of the Air Force, stationed at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, Arizona. Ebony magazine reported that before being assigned to Accra, Player had participated in demonstrations in support of sit‐ins in the South and had picketed in the boycott campaign directed at the Woolworth chain, which forced the company to desegregate its stores (Ebony 1964:164). Thus, Player had a good understanding of racial politics and of the possible implications of his act, even as he held up the U.S. flag.
Meanings to the United States
In 1964, there were several attacks on U.S. embassies in locations such as Zanzibar, Panama City, and Nicosia, Cyprus. So, why did the demonstration at the embassy in Ghana, which did not record any destruction of property, receive so much attention in the newspapers? In the initial newspaper coverage, Player was rarely mentioned. Instead, the story was framed as a Cold War story with Nkrumah as the central character.
New York Times journalist Max Frankel wrote that U.S. officials were not only surprised by the “sudden” anti-American campaigns, but that they also believed that these were a ploy to cover up the internal opposition to Nkrumah’s dictatorship and Ghana’s declining economy (Frankel Reference Frankel1964:1). The Washington Post added to the narrative in an editorial titled “Outrage in Ghana,” which likened Nkrumah to Haiti’s Papa Doc Duvalier, describing him as “a leader haunted by fears of assassination who has turned his country into a police–state despotism” (Washington Post 1964b:A16). For Frankel, as well as other Americans, the demonstration was not about American interventionism in African or Ghanaian politics, but it was political propaganda promoted by Nkrumah to divert attention from Ghana’s internal problems. Ambassador Mahoney was recalled to the United States to register American discontent with the incident (Rusk Reference Rusk1964; Atlanta Daily World 1964b).
The different perspectives about the incident in the mainstream and African American presses outline the divergent views on the U.S. position in Africa. While some Americans viewed the U.S. government as assisting decolonization by containing communism, others saw it as using containment to interfere with and undermine the young African governments. In the African American community, these polarizing views created distinctions between radical versus moderate anti-colonialists (Von Eschen Reference Von Eschen1997:143). During the days following the incident, U.S. officials and newspapers such as the Washington Post and New York Times used it to show the “far-reaching hand” of Soviet rule over Africa. There were dissenting voices in major Black newspapers such as the Chicago Defender, the Atlanta Daily, and the Afro-American. Whereas the New York Times critiqued Nkrumah’s government as having influenced the demonstration, the Defender criticized the Times for its one-sided view of the incident. The author of “The Ghana Incident,” an editorial in the Defender, concluded that what had happened was unfortunate and that Nkrumah’s government had apologized for it. Still, the American press continued to discredit Nkrumah (Defender 1964c:8). The editorial cited the Washington Post as an example of how a paper “which is usually devoid of racism in its editorial and news columns became hysterical about the Ghana Incident.” It added that the Washington Post’s comparison of Nkrumah to Haiti’s President Duvalier, who had turned Haiti into a police state, was a “ludicrous comparison” because, unlike Haitians under Duvalier, Ghanaians were actively engaged in democratic governance. Furthermore, the American White press was looking for an opportunity to discredit Nkrumah, and the incident had presented them with just such an opportunity (Chicago Defender 1964c:8). This view not only reflected the sentiments of some Ghanaians about the United States, but it also was at odds with perspectives expressed by the Washington Post and the New York Times.
When the U.S. charged Nkrumah’s government with instigating the demonstration, Ghana issued an apology which was ignored or half-reported by some newspapers. The Atlanta Daily and Chicago Defender published Ghana’s apology in response to the comments by mainstream newspapers that the Convention People’s Party (CPP) and the government had instigated the demonstration. Ghana’s apology to the U.S., delivered by Ambassador Ribeiro, read: “The attention of the Ghana government has been drawn to the allegation that demonstrations and other incidents which took place at the American embassy in Accra… have been inspired or condoned by the Ghana government. This Ghana government dis-associates itself from and deeply regrets the incidents” (Atlanta Daily World 1964a:1). Nkrumah’s government added, “The Ghana government has no desire to subvert the loyalty of American citizens in the same way it deplores any attempt at the subversion of Ghanaian citizens…The Ghana government hopes that the embassy will accept this note in the spirit of friendly relations” (Journal-News 1964:A10). Unlike most newspapers, the Chicago Defender discussed some of the causes behind the demonstration, highlighting central issues such as rumors of CIA involvement in the assassination attempts on President Nkrumah. The paper noted, “Whether this is true or not, the point is the natives are convinced that the plot to kill their leader has some international ingredients in it…To date, there have been six attempts on President Nkrumah’s life…The plot may eventually succeed” (Chicago Defender 1964b:8).
The Chicago Defender’s stance represented the pan-African response to the struggle of Black people across the globe. It also reflected a broader culture among African Americans who identified strongly with Africa. They refrained from critiquing African national leaders, especially those heralded as the “voice” of Africa. This is what Benjamin Talton has referred to as African Americans’ sacrilegious approach to Black internationalism (Talton Reference Talton2019:89).Footnote 3 Similarly, the Chicago Defender and Afro-American overlooked Nkrumah’s Preventive Detention Act, press censorship, the oppression of anti-Nkrumaist Ghanaian and foreign academics, corruption among many CPP officials, and other matters that adversely affected the country’s development (Hasty Reference Hasty2005:33–34). The uniformity and progressivism that the Ghanaian state-run newspapers projected were often not the reality. Nevertheless, editors were correct in their view that President Nkrumah was a target for neo-imperialists in Britain and the U.S.
A week after the incident, there were discussions among U.S. officials about replacing Nkrumah with General Joseph Arthur Ankrah, who was the head of Ghana’s army. Ankrah became the head of state after the overthrow of Nkrumah, between 1966 and 1969. U.S. government officials also discussed the possibility of retracting the U.S.’s pledge to support the Volta River Project. Andrew Pearson, who was one of the most vocal and critical U.S. journalists of the 1960s, wrote an article in the Washington Post in response to the incident titled, “U.S. Could Spank Nkrumah Easily.” Pearson not only described President Nkrumah as a dictator and “the No. 1 egomaniac in Africa” who needed to be taught a lesson, but also suggested that the U.S. should divest funds from the Volta River Project and invest instead in Nigeria, where it would receive applause (Pearson Reference Pearson1964:B23). The threat of economic sanctions confirmed Nkrumah’s argument about neocolonialism as the last stage of colonialism, wherein developed countries exert control over developing countries through foreign aid. This threat continues to loom over Third World countries even today.
The incident also elicited nationalist sentiments and responses. The raising of the flag, the deportation of four Americans, and the Ghanaian Times denouncing Player as “Judas” turned the incident into a quest for national pride. American nationalism and patriotism shone a light on Player, hailing him as a hero, as politicians and people of all walks of life called for him to be rewarded. First, President Johnson wrote a letter to Player, saying, “I want to personally thank you and congratulate you for your devotion to duty and country. You also have the gratitude of freemen everywhere who respect the principles and ideals for which our flag stands” (Garrison Reference Garrison1964b:1). Congressman Clement J. Zablocki recommended that Player be awarded the presidential medal of freedom, the highest civilian honor, because what he had done “was an act of great personal courage” (Philadelphia Daily News 1964b). The most well-known call to reward Player came from Republican Representative Oliver P. Bolton. He was one of the three sons of Rep. Frances P. Bolton (R-Ohio), and was known to be a leading authority on African affairs. Bolton’s letter to the president emphasized that “more important than any other consideration is the example Mr. Player has set for millions of American schoolchildren who should be constantly reminded by their Flag’s proud heritage.”Footnote 4
For Bolton, Player had become a role model, exemplifying true patriotism. Bolton was not alone in thinking of Player as a model American. For some White readers of the Delaware County Daily Times like Joseph Boucher, Player’s deed deserved more publicity because it showed the difference “between him and Negro leaders in the U.S. who seem to be trying their best to rip the country apart!” Boucher added, “I’m not colored but will take my hat off to a man like Player any day. Would that we had one of his unbiased, unselfish kind here at home” (Boucher Reference Boucher1964). Boucher’s statement reflected the opinions of many White liberals who rejected the radicalism of the Civil Rights movement.
Race was at the core of the interpretations of the Player incident in the U.S. For Whites such as Boucher and Bolton, Player was a model African American who, despite the government’s failure to allow him his constitutional rights, still placed himself in a dangerous situation to perform his civic duty toward the nation. For African Americans, Player was one of the many figures demonstrating why the government needed to honor their rights to full citizenship and protection. Thus, praise for Player reflected the contradictory nature of American nationalism. Yet Player considered such praise and the prospect of a medal of freedom to be undeserved, because he believed that any American would have done what he did. In the spirit of nationalism, Player hoped his actions had helped to strengthen the relations among all Americans. While Americans celebrated the raising of the flag in Ghana, the Civil Rights Bill was still in Congress waiting to be passed, and for some civil rights activists, the Player incident provided another opportunity to make a case for its passage.
Meanings to Civil Rights Activists
One of the avenues which African Americans have used to advocate for full citizenship is by demonstrating their patriotism to the land of their birth. African Americans from the time of the American Revolution have fought to preserve the ideals of Americanism, both at home and abroad. In response, the U.S. government has sometimes addressed racial inequality. However, the benefits of full citizenship had until the civil rights era been denied them. Amid Cold War politics and U.S. racial liberalism, some civil rights activists used the Player incident to confirm African American patriotism and to demand an end to racial discrimination. Of particular importance to activists was the wide circulation of Player’s article explaining his actions in Ghana. It was cited multiple times in the case for the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Player also made a case for better treatment of African Americans, remarking:
White Americans must allow the American dream of equality, freedom, and justice to live in their hearts and to be reflected in their everyday actions toward their black brothers. It will never be enough to pass civil rights laws and to speak in glowing terms about the patriotic deed of one American negro…I hope that all the word of praise for my deed in raising the American flag in Ghana will be translated now in the United States into respect and full acceptance of American negroes. If this full respect does not take place, then one must draw the sad conclusion—as many American negroes and other people throughout the world will—that the American flag was raised once again in vain.Footnote 5
During a congressional hearing, Congressman Charles C. Diggs (D-Michigan) submitted Player’s letter to the official record. For Diggs, the letter not only reflected Player’s character, which spoke of courage and patriotism, but it was also relevant to the discussion of the Civil Rights Act. Diggs was an ardent civil rights activist, the first African-American member of Congress from Michigan, and a leading voice on African issues throughout his twenty-five years in Congress. He submitted the article into the congressional record because he felt it necessary to help his colleagues understand its relevance to the Act (Diggs Reference Diggs1964). Representative Augustus F. Hawkins, the first African-American member of Congress from California, also praised Player in Congress. Hawkins was impressed with Player’s reluctance to receive applause for his act. According to Hawkins, other people would have just ignored the desecration of the flag or aimed to profit from what they did by talking and writing about it. Concerning the Civil Rights Act, Hawkins stated: “It is up to us in Congress where a civil rights program is pending to make sure that the American flag in Ghana was not again raised in vain” (Hawkins Reference Hawkins1964). Congressman William Fitts Ryan of New York, another supporter of the Civil Rights movement, concurred with his colleagues over the connections between the incident and the pending Civil Rights bill (Ryan Reference Ryan1964). Meanwhile, in Durham, North Carolina, while speaking on “Dimensions of Race Relations in a Crisis,” Representative William Robinson of Illinois cited the incident as the result of “the failure of the United States to practice true brotherhood at home” (New Pittsburgh Courier 1964:11).
The irony of the Civil Rights Act moving through Congress at the time of the Player incident was on full display in the Pittsburgh Press on February 12, 1964. On the same page as an article responding to the Player incident was a cartoon of Abraham Lincoln and Lyndon Johnson, with the former looking at the Civil War battle raging on February 12, 1864, and the latter looking at the civil rights battle raging on February 12, 1964. The date marked exactly one hundred years since the struggle for Black freedom had been fought, yet it appeared freedom was still a long way from reality. (Pittsburgh Press 1964). The response of White Americans to the Player incident, including the proposal to reward him, was indicative of American postwar racial liberalism, which sought to demonstrate to the world its racial harmony to counter Soviet propaganda. The U.S. government used African-American intellectuals, entertainers, and politicians to promote its image abroad, especially among African nations (Von Eschen Reference Von Eschen2006:4). Those who refused to stick to the party line or to remain silent about racial discrimination in the U.S. and abroad became “threats” to national security (Horne Reference Horne2009:116). Paul Robeson, W.E.B. Du Bois, Graham Du Bois, and Alphaeus Hunton were among such “dissidents.”
The Dilemma and the Silences
The early 1960s were not only the peak of decolonization and the Civil Rights movement, but also the climax of pan-Africanism and the trans-Atlantic alliance between Africans on the continent and diasporic Africans, especially between Nkrumah’s Ghana and African Americans. After Ghana’s independence, President Nkrumah invited diasporic Africans to join in the rebuilding of Ghana and the African continent. Nkrumah appointed George Padmore as head of the African Affairs Bureau, while W.E.B. Du Bois directed the Encyclopedia Africana project. Graham Dubois was director of Ghana’s television service, and William Smith Gardner was appointed as the head of Ghana’s Institute of Journalism.
While these diasporic Africans joined Nkrumah in his African Revolution, Ghanaian journalists used their platforms to call for an end to racial discrimination in the United States. For instance, one correspondent for the Ghanaian Evening Newspaper wrote an article titled “President Kennedy Where Is the Civil Rights Bill?” Another wrote “Help Civilize American Racialists,” critiquing racial discrimination against African Americans and even against Africans living in America. The first Ghanaian female member of parliament, pan-Africanist Mabel Dove, also wrote articles criticizing racial inequality in the U.S., for example, “We Want Freedom Afro-Americans Cry” and “Teach White America the Afro-America Story.”Footnote 6 Ghanaian news stories also ridiculed the United States government’s attempt to promote democracy in Africa. These sources point to the awareness of Ghanaians, and Africans at large, of racial problems in the U.S. Some scholars speculate that Ghanaians and, by extension, Africans generally were oblivious to the realities of African Americans’ lives in the United States (Pierre Reference Pierre2013:167). This assertion is flawed, as demonstrated by the articles written by Ghanaian journalists. Moreover, as Jonathan Zimmerman observes, in the remotest areas in Africa, Africans were well aware of American racial issues (Zimmerman Reference Zimmerman1995:1018).
After the Player incident, T.D. Baffoe, editor of the Ghanaian Times, published an article which stated, “Indeed it has been observed with regret that the black Americans work twice as hard as the whites in spreading vicious rumors and attempting to corrupt our youth with money, gifts and false tales about the happy lot of black Americans” (Ghanaian Times 1964b:2). Baffoe’s choice of “regret” and “the happy lot” reflected the troubled relationship that emerged between Ghanaians and their African American comrades. For instance, Maya Angelou and Julian Mayfield, two influential Black Americans, were friends with Baffoe and wrote news articles for the Ghanaian Times during their time in Nkrumah’s Ghana. It was public knowledge that President Nkrumah had emphasized the unity among people of African descent across the globe. Finally, many Ghanaians, especially those who, like Baffoe, maintained strong connections with African Americans, were aware of racial discrimination against Black people in the United States. They were equally aware of U.S. propaganda which used African Americans as “Goodwill Ambassadors” to counter images of racism in the United States, which was often difficult to do when the likes of Malcolm X visited Africa (Dudziak Reference Dudziak2000:56). In Ghana, Malcolm X discussed the challenges faced by African Americans in the U.S. and connected them to colonialism (X Reference Malcolm2015:387–88). Also, Zimmerman observed that in 1964, Malcolm X informed a Nigerian audience that American Peace Corps volunteers were spies sent to sabotage Africa’s development, and that he “reserved special venom for Black volunteers, [as] traitors to their race” (Zimmerman Reference Zimmerman1995:1012). Such statements not only cast a shadow on the U.S. attempt to win the hearts and minds of Africans, but it also fueled the rhetoric depicting African Americans as spies, which led to billboards in Ghana reading “Beware of the Afro-American” (Lacy Reference Lacy1970:142).
In an editorial titled “Medal for Uncle Sam’s Agent,” the Ghanaian Times responded to the call to reward Player’s patriotism, stating, “In his gush of super-patriotism for whom was Mr. Player raising the flag? Was it for the six black children killed by dynamite in Birmingham…was it for the slain civil rights leader Medgar Evers…was it for all the millions of whites in the United States who will go to almost any length to avoid living in the same neighborhood with Mr. Player and anyone else of his complexion?” (Ghanaian Times 1964b:2). The paper seemed to suggest that Player lacked a global Black consciousness and, by extension, an understanding of the power of White supremacy in the form of neocolonialism and Jim Crowism. Although Player had engaged in sit-ins before assuming his post in Ghana, the Ghanaian Times editor and many like-minded Ghanaians regarded Player’s action not just as a betrayal of brotherhood or racial solidarity, but also as a betrayal of the pan-African agenda to fight White supremacy, which continued to deny Blacks all over the world their basic political, cultural, and economic rights. The Ghanaian articles about U.S. racism and Baffoe’s response demonstrate Ghanaians’ understanding of race, particularly of American racial politics. It also reveals their conception of global Blackness, what Molefi Kete Asante described saying, “to be Black is to be against all forms of oppression,” in this case American imperial politics in Africa (Asante Reference Asante2003:2). Player’s response was for some contrary to such a notion of Blackness or racial solidarity. However, Baffoe’s expectations overlooked the multiple identities within Blackness, which for Player were his American citizenship and his position as a representative of U.S. power in Ghana. When Player said his action “was not anti-African, but pro-American,” he showed an awareness of his dual role as an American with African roots (Afro-American 1964b:20). Player chose his Americanness, whereas Baffoe expected him to choose a pan-African Blackness.
The response of one African American, Bishop Joe Shannon, further illustrates the dilemma Player faced. In the Afro-American, Shannon explained that because of American racism, Player’s accolades would only last for a short while, and only if he did not go to the South. He added, “I would not do anything to harm America, nor am I fool enough to be patriotic to America” (Shannon Reference Shannon1964:4). Shannon’s choice neither to celebrate Player’s act as heroic nor to support the Ghanaian stance reflected the difficult position of being loyal to a country which had denied Black Americans full citizenship and of joining in the revolution of a country whose victories did not necessarily translate into victories for African Americans.
Meanwhile, in the view of others like the Tuskegee Airman and first president of the National Association of Black Journalists, Charles Sumner “Chuck” Stone, the incident would not have occurred had the American ambassador in Ghana been an African American. In “A Stone’s Throw: Ghana and the United States,” Stone stated that one could send any kind of ambassador to any country, but to countries that were “ideologically independent or who even work assiduously to cultivate such posture, the most skilled, the toughest and the most brilliant ambassadors should be assigned” (Stone Reference Stone1964:2). He further addressed the slur cast on Player in the Ghanaian Times, noting that Ghana had expelled the African American professors without considering relations between Ghanaians and African Americans. Implicit in Stone’s assertion was the idea that Ghana’s expulsion of the two African American lecturers equalized Player’s deed. Stone ended by asserting that the events in Ghana would not have occurred if the U.S. had sent an African American ambassador to Ghana, someone perhaps such as Rev. James H. Robinson or Mrs. Etta Moten Barnett (Stone Reference Stone1964:2). Stone’s statements underscored the pan-African relationship between African Americans and Ghanaians. His argument for a Black ambassador to Ghana was premised on the belief that Ghanaians wanted a person in that position who also understood the global Black struggle, such as Rev. Robinson, who was a strong advocate of African independence and the founder of Operation Crossroad Africa, an organization which sent volunteers to work on projects in Africa. Like Robinson, Mrs. Barnett was a civil rights activist and an active member of organizations such as the Institute of African and American Relations, which supported nation-building projects in Africa.
The reaction to the Player incident in most African American newspapers and magazines was decidedly pro-pan-African, discussing only the political implications of the incident and being silent on the “Judas” narrative. Stone’s article was the closest to any critique of the Judas rhetoric. In others, such as the Negro Digest, the incident was not examined at all. The Negro Digest often addressed issues about Ghana, reporting its economic, political, and social advancements. However, no report of the 1964 incident appeared in any of its issues. Instead, its March 1964 publication analyzed Julian Mayfield’s “In Ghana Sketches” as a counter to Smith Hempstone’s “An Expatriate in Africa (Kenya).” Mayfield, an African American living in Nkrumah’s Ghana, wrote about his wonderful experiences, which for the magazine were true reflections of events in Africa, compared to the problems reported by Smith Hempstone, a White journalist (Negro Digest 1964a:52). In June 1964, the Negro Digest published an article by pan-Africanist and social scientist St. Claire Drake titled “The Meaning of ‘Negritude’: The Negro’s Stake in Africa” (Drake Reference Drake1964), which highlighted the need for diasporic Africans to engage with Africa and not to consider their racial struggles as isolated from the struggles in Africa. Interestingly, the birth of Sekou, President Nkrumah’s second son, received mention in the magazine, with the paper asserting that “the event received little international publicity” (Negro Digest 1964b:53). Yet the Player incident made no appearance in its 1964–1965 Negro Digest publications. In these pan-African projections of the paper, a discussion of the Player incident could be interpreted as detracting from the pan-African solidarity which the paper and the African American community sought to promote.
For African Americans in Ghana during this period, silence or an anti-Player response were the best reactions they could express because of the trope of African Americans as CIA spies. Angelou remembered that some of them joined the “witch hunt” to deflect attention from themselves or became silent, “hoping to become invisible and avoid the flaming tongues” (Angelou Reference Angelou1986:80). Lacy observed that after the deportation of Jeanpierre, they were shocked, but even if the Ghanaian government came for Julian Mayfield or Graham Du Bois’ blood, they would not have questioned it because Nkrumah’s Ghana was where they had actual Black power (Lacy Reference Lacy1970:183–84). In other words, to survive in this pan-African state, they had to give up their Americanness. Du Bois, who renounced his American citizenship for Ghanaian citizenship towards the end of his life, may have defeated his own advocacy for not giving one identity for the other in double consciousness. But perhaps such was the price to pay for living in the promised land.
In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Ghana was the seat of pan-Africanism, where key events such as the All-African Peoples Conference and Conference of Women of Africa and African Descent were birthed. These pan-African meetings emphasized racial uplift and solidarity against colonialism, apartheid, and racism. Some African Americans and Ghanaians understood that they faced similar challenges and that their mutual liberation was dependent on a transatlantic alliance against the oppressors. This theory of collaboration, however, was complicated, because sometimes the oppressor was the legitimizer of some members within the group. For instance, the U.S., a global power, shaped and validated the identities of people such as Player, which required them to defend American power even outside its national boundaries. At the same time, others such as Baffoe felt that the U.S. was an imperialist nation that interfered, assassinated, and sometimes engineered the overthrow of legitimate governments. Different attitudes sometimes silenced or isolated people within the pan-African community, which reflected a gap between the theory and practice of pan-Africanism.
Conclusion
While it is difficult to argue that the Player incident had a direct impact on the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, its influence on the appointment of Franklin H. Williams as ambassador to Ghana in 1965 is undeniable. Ambassador Williams and President Nkrumah both attended Lincoln University. Williams was a civil rights activist and, before being assigned to Ghana, he was the United States representative at the United Nations. Williams had been a member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) for fifteen years and became the third African American ambassador of the United States in Africa in 1965. Perhaps Williams fit the profile of the kind of ambassador that Ghana or an African country needed according to Stone: one who was skilled, tough, brilliant, and most importantly, Black and not an “Uncle Tom” (Stone Reference Stone1964:2). Unfortunately, less than a year after Williams assumed his position in Ghana, Nkrumah’s government was overthrown. Some Ghanaians and African Americans speculated that the CIA, aided by African American spies and Ambassador Williams, had been involved in the coup. Nkrumah, who believed some of those reports, noted in Dark Days in Ghana, “It’s particularly disgraceful that it should have been an African American who sold himself out to the imperialists” (Reference Nkrumah1968:50). For Black Panther Party Secretary Kathleen Neal Cleaver, Ambassador Williams’ involvement in the overthrow of Nkrumah was the deed of a “bootlicker” for Whites and thus a “traitor to blacks” (Cleaver Reference Cleaver1969). Ambassador Williams continued to defend himself against these accusations beyond his career in Ghana. The slandering of Ambassador Williams and of Player is the kind of story often overlooked by pan-Africanist scholars, who fail to acknowledge that pan-African consciousness is not a given.
Ghana, following its independence, became the model post-colonial and pan-African state. It also became a hotbed for Cold War politics as the United States and the Soviet Union both tried to exert their influence over it, with an awareness of its power to influence and inspire other African countries. Superpower interference, in addition to Ghana’s economic crises and assassination attempts on President Nkrumah, sent the country into a frenzied search for spies and rumormongers who were deemed saboteurs of Black liberation. In Nkrumah’s Ghana, anti-Americanism epitomized the turmoil just as anti-Sovietism defined the post-coup government under General Ankrah. Since Black Americans were crucial to the development of postcolonial Ghana, examining their responses to anti-Americanism reveals the contest between race and nation and expands our understanding of pan-Africanism, global Blackness, and double consciousness.
According to Paul Gilroy, being Black and American or Black and European requires some degree of double consciousness, and people who become aware of this double consciousness try to live within the spaces it provides (Gilroy Reference Gilroy1993:1). The problem with Gilroy’s analysis is its fracture from Africa and its location within the Black Atlantic. Meanwhile, Du Bois’ conceptualization reflected a continuity of diasporic identity connected to Africa. This article goes beyond the U.S. frame of Black Americans versus White Americans. It demonstrates that the destinies of continental and diasporic Africans are inextricably connected, and that double consciousness has been experienced by African Americans in Ghana as well as in the U.S. (Holsey Reference Holsey2008:14). The struggle to be both American and African creates a dilemma. In Africa, Africanness is prized above Americanness, and African Americans feel compelled to embrace the former. Conversely, their Americanness is emphasized in the U.S., and they often choose that identity in the spirit of patriotism. Angelou notes that she and her African American colleagues refrained from critiquing Nkrumah while they were in Ghana and instead chose to celebrate him or criticize anyone who spoke negatively about his administration (Reference Angelou1986:78). This choice of African consciousness in a sense protected them from discrimination or suspicious monitoring by Ghanaians. In contrast, people such as the civil rights activist Pauli Murray, who chose her Americanness over her Africanness in Ghana and critiqued the government while contributing her share to the development of the country, were viewed as threats and suspected of being CIA agents (Murray Reference Murray1989:342; Gaines Reference Gaines2006:131–32). Like the patriotism of Player, that of Murray and Ambassador Williams transcended loyalty to any brotherhood. Pan-Africanism has overlooked this challenge, where dissenting voices are considered anti-Black, ignoring the fact that citizenship and racial allegiance construct an individual’s life in complex ways. The burden of expectation, the burden of representation, and the burden of collective identity can lead to alienation within the confines of pan-Africanism (Lacy Reference Lacy1970:184).
With the increase in reverse migration (diasporic Africans returning to Africa), there is a need to reexamine pan-Africanism. To that end, when double consciousness is extended beyond the U.S. frame of African Americans’ encounter with racism to a state of consciousness caused by displacement, it becomes a useful framework for tracing the correlation between migration and state development as well as intra-group engagements. The Player incident encourages conversations about possible triple consciousness: U.S. Black, pan-African, and American consciousness and its implications for global Black liberation.
The Player incident helps us to understand and appreciate racial solidarity, despite criticism that it is racist and insufficient. Kwame Anthony Appiah argues that pan-Africanism has operated within a racist framework and therefore rejects what Appiah perceives as racial pan-Africanism, which is basically racial solidarity. In its place, he calls for a humanistic form of solidarity against oppression (Appiah Reference Appiah1992:66). Racial solidarity is crucial to pan-Africanism and Black liberation as Opoku Agyemang observes: “The insult, the stigmatization, the contempt is erased only when a collective valorization occurs” (Reference Agyemang1997:38). The Chicago Defender, Atlanta Daily, Afro-American, and the reactions of many African Americans to the Player incident demonstrated a sense of racial solidarity that went beyond skin color, transcending the nation-state. However, Player’s position of being pro-American and at the same time not anti-African demonstrates how citizenship, self-fashioning, and other forms of identities complicate transnational racial solidarity and pan-Africanism.
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank Dr. Kim Gallon, Dr. Benjamin Talton, and Dr. Benjamin N. Lawrance for their comments, suggestions, and edits of this article. I would also like to thank the African Studies Review’s three anonymous reviewers for their advice, as well as the editors who worked on this article.
Open access
