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Black Quotidian: Everyday History in African-American Newspapers

Pittsburgh Courier - March 9, 1957 - Ghana

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March - Archived Posts
Click on date to view post:
March 1, 1947: Juanita Jackson Mitchell and Baltimore NAACP protest segregated seating at Ford’s Theater.
March 2, 1956: Tennis champion Althea Gibson trains for French Open and Wimbledon.
March 3, 1985: Atlanta Daily World columnist Dr. Carrie George on the start of National Women’s History Week.
March 4, 1893: Winter Park Advocate on town planning. Guest post by Dr. Julian Chambliss.
March 5, 1969: Bell Plastics’ ads for plastic sofa covers in Los Angeles Sentinel.
March 6, 1915: Chicago Defender on the death of Amanda Smith, founder of the Amanda Smith Industrial School for Colored Girls.
March 7, 1964: Norfolk Journal and Guide reports on “sleeper” antibusing amendment in 1964 Civil Rights Act.
March 8, 1965: Chicago Defender on Selma voting rights movement with reporting from Betty Washington.
March 9, 1957: Pittsburgh Courier celebrates Ghana’s independence with 32-page supplement.
March 10, 1945: Phyllis Daley, Navy’s first African-American nurse, in the New York Amsterdam News.
March 11, 1944: Women’s Army Corps advertisements in Cleveland Call and Post and Chicago Defender.
March 12, 1936: Marian Anderson sets sail for European tour.
March 13, 1954: Cleveland Call and Post on the Connie Morgan, Toni Stone, and Mamie “Peanut” Johnson, the three women who played Negro League baseball.
March 14, 1940: Los Angeles Sentinel on the unsolved murder of Dorothy Lee Gordon.
March 15, 1913: Baltimore Afro-American on the death of Harriet Tubman, “Queen of the Underground.”
March 16, 1991: New York Amsterdam News on International Women’s Day, featuring speaker Rosemari Mealey.
March 17, 1977: Gertrude Gipson profile of Richard Pryor in the Los Angeles Sentinel.
March 18, 1939: New York Amsterdam News on Hattie McDaniel and Gone with the Wind.
March 19, 1910: Ida B. Wells-Barnett letter to the editor of the Chicago Defender.
March 20, 1948: Rosa Lee Ingram case in Pittsburgh Courier.
March 21, 1982: Atlanta Daily World on convictions of Maggie Bozeman and Julia Wilder for voter fraud.
March 22, 1966: High school fencing champions in the Philadelphia Tribune.
March 23, 1957: “Hobo party” covered by Cleveland Call and Post society page, “Women’s Whirl.”
March 24, 1906: Classified ads for clairvoyants, astrologists, and readers in the Baltimore Afro-American.
March 25, 1939: Federal Housing Authority (FHA) discrimination in the New York Amsterdam News, Chicago Defender, and Los Angeles Sentinel and the black press. Guest post by Michael Glass, PhD student.
March 25, 1944: Amy Ashwood Garvey in the New York Amsterdam News. Guest post by Dr. Keisha N. Blain.
March 26, 1955: Claudette Colvin’s arrest reported in the Chicago Defender.
March 27, 1971: South Carolina civil rights activist Victoria DeLee runs for Congress.
March 28, 1946: Los Angeles Sentinel reports on employment breakthrough for black workers in auto production.
March 29, 1930: Tuskegee Institute women’s track team in Norfolk Journal and Guide.
March 30, 1942: Pianist Hazel Scott and Broadway’s “Priorities of 1942” in the Atlanta Daily World.
March 31, 1934: Philadelphia Tribune women’s basketball team in the Norfolk Journal and Guide.
March 9, 1957 On March 9, 1957, the Pittsburgh Courier celebrated the Ghana’s independence from Britain. “At midnight, March 6, a giant was born,” Courier correspondent Alex Rivera wrote. “It was the first of a new nation—Ghana—formerly known as the Gold Coast, a British West African colony. For weeks people from all parts of the world have come here to be present at the birth of this new child into the family of free nations. Precisely at the stroke of 12 midnight the Union Jack was lowered and the red, green and gold flag of Ghana was raised” (click to view PDF of story).

Ghana and the country’s Prime Minister Dr. Kwame Nkrumah captured the imaginations of black people around the world and received extensive coverage in the black press. In addition to the front-page story (“Nation’s Cheer Africa’s Ghana”), the March 9, 1957 issue of the Courier included an advertisement of commemorative postage stamps (“For yourself and your children...to celebrate Ghana Independence”) and a 32-page Ghana Salute Supplement. You can view this supplement as a PDF here: part 1, part 2, and part 3.

Next to a picture of Prime Minister Nkrumah, a Courier editorial made the case for what Ghana’s independence meant to African Americans:
The significance [of Ghana] to American Negroes is more than the extension of a greeting or the hand of welcome. This is because the ancient empire of Ghana was the land of the forefathers of most American Negroes. Traced through centuries, the majority of American Negroes are Ghanaians whose cultural roots have been destroyed, a new people who have lost touch with their original culture and civilization and have failed of full acceptance in the new society where they find themselves. Are American Negroes an inferior people? Can they meet the full challenge of modern Western civilization? We American Negroes look to Ghana to furnish the answers to these questions.
Both the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the Nation of Islam ran advertisements in the Courier celebrating Ghana.

African Americans were not the only people who greeted Ghana’s independence with excitement. The last page of the Courier's Ghana supplement note that “the life-blood of the new nation of Ghana is its exports. Leading the field is cocoa, followed by diamonds, gold, manganese ore, bauxite and timber.” The companies that purchased advertising space to celebrate Ghana’s independence saw the tremendous amount of money to be made from the country’s resources. Advertisers included: Mobil, Goodyear, Firestone, Jones & Laughlin Steel, the Association of Cocoa and Chocolate Manufacturers of the United States, and Columbia Southern Chemical Company. In addition to these manufacturing interests, Pan Am airlines and Farrell Steamship Lines saw Ghana opening up new travel routes, and Thomas Nelson & Sons publishers saw an opportunity to market Kwame Nkrumah’s autobiography.

The Courier's Ghana supplement is a fascinating look at the different types of value that were ascribed to Ghana's independence.