title: Cunt

text: Similarly John Donne alludes to the obscene meaning of the word without being explicit in his poem "The Good-Morrow", referring to sucking on "country pleasures". The 1675 Restoration comedy "The Country Wife" also features such word play, even in its title.


title: Cunt

text: By the 17th century a softer form of the word, "cunny", came into use. A well-known use of this derivation can be found in the 25 October 1668 entry of the diary of Samuel Pepys. He was discovered having an affair with Deborah Willet: he wrote that his wife "coming up suddenly, did find me embracing the girl con [with] my hand sub [under] su [her] coats; and endeed I was with my main [hand] in her cunny. I was at a wonderful loss upon it and the girl also ..."


title: Cunt

text: "Cunny" was probably derived from a pun on "coney", meaning "rabbit", rather as "pussy" is connected to the same term for a cat. (Philip Massinger (1583–1640): "A pox upon your Christian cockatrices! They cry, like poulterers' wives, 'No money, no coney.'") Because of this slang use as a synonym for a taboo term, the word "coney", when it was used in its original sense to refer to rabbits, came to be pronounced as (rhymes with "phoney"), instead of the original (rhymes with "honey"). Eventually, the taboo association led to the word "coney" becoming deprecated entirely and replaced by the word "rabbit".


title: Cunt

text: Robert Burns (1759–1796) used the word in his "", a collection of bawdy verses which he kept to himself and were not publicly available until the mid-1960s. In "Yon, Yon, Yon, Lassie", this couplet appears: "For ilka birss upon her cunt, Was worth a ryal ransom" ("For every hair upon her cunt was worth a royal ransom").


title: Cunt

text: Merriam-Webster states it is a "usually disparaging and obscene" term for a woman, and that it is an "offensive way to refer to a woman" in the United States. In American slang, the term can also be used to refer to "a fellow male homosexual one dislikes". Australian scholar Emma Alice Jane describes how the term as used on modern social media is an example of what she calls "gendered vitriol", and an example of misogynistic e-bile. As a broader derogatory term, it is comparable to "prick" and means "a fool, a dolt, an unpleasant person – of either sex". This sense is common in New Zealand, British, and Australian English, where it is usually applied to men or as referring "specifically" to "a despicable, contemptible or foolish" "man".


title: Cunt

text: During the 1971 Oz trial for obscenity, prosecuting counsel asked writer George Melly, "Would you call your 10-year-old daughter a cunt?" Melly replied, "No, because I don't think she is."


title: Cunt

text: In the 1975 film "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest", the central character McMurphy, when pressed to explain exactly why he does not like the tyrannical Nurse Ratched, says, "Well, I don't want to break up the meeting or nothing, but she's something of a cunt, ain't she, Doc?"


title: Cunt

text: In informal British, Irish, New Zealand, and Australian English, and occasionally but to a lesser extent in Canadian English, it can be used with no negative connotations to refer to a (usually male) person. In this sense, it may be modified by a positive qualifier (funny, clever, etc.). For example, "This is my mate Brian. He's a good cunt."


title: Cunt

text: In the Survey of English Dialects the word was recorded in some areas as meaning "the vulva of a cow". This was pronounced as [kʌnt] in Devon, and [kʊnt] in the Isle of Man, Gloucestershire and Northumberland. Possibly related was the word "cunny" [kʌni], with the same meaning, in Wiltshire.


title: Cunt

text: The word "cunty" is also known, although used rarely: a line from Hanif Kureishi's "My Beautiful Laundrette" is the definition of England by a Pakistani immigrant as "eating hot buttered toast with cunty fingers", suggestive of hypocrisy and a hidden sordidness or immorality behind the country's quaint façade. This term is attributed to British novelist Henry Green. In the United States, "cunty" is sometimes used in cross-dressing drag ball culture for a drag queen that "projects feminine beauty" and was the title of a hit song by Aviance. A visitor to a New York drag show tells of the emcee praising a queen with "cunty, cunty, cunty" as she walks past.


title: Cunt

text: Frequency of use varies widely. According to research in 2013 and 2014 by Aston University and the University of South Carolina, based on a corpus of nearly 9 billion words in geotagged tweets, the word was most frequently used in the United States in New England and was least frequently used in the south-eastern states. In Maine, it was the most frequently used "cuss word" after "asshole".


title: Cunt

text: James Joyce was one of the first major 20th-century novelists to put the word "cunt" into print. In the context of one of the central characters in "Ulysses" (1922), Leopold Bloom, Joyce refers to the Dead Sea and to


title: Cunt

text: Joyce uses the word figuratively rather than literally; but while Joyce used the word only once in "Ulysses", with four other wordplays ('cunty') on it, D. H. Lawrence used the word ten times in "Lady Chatterley's Lover" (1928), in a more direct sense. Mellors, the gamekeeper and eponymous lover, tries delicately to explain the definition of the word to Lady Constance Chatterley: "If your sister there comes ter me for a bit o' cunt an' tenderness, she knows what she's after." The novel was the subject of an unsuccessful UK prosecution in 1961 against its publishers, Penguin Books, on grounds of obscenity.


title: Cunt

text: Samuel Beckett was an associate of Joyce, and in his "Malone Dies" (1956), he writes: "His young wife had abandoned all hope of bringing him to heel, by means of her cunt, that trump card of young wives." In 1998, Inga Muscio published "". In Ian McEwan's novel "Atonement" (2001), set in 1935, the word is used in the draft of a love letter mistakenly sent instead of a revised version and, although not spoken, is an important plot pivot.


title: Cunt

text: Irvine Welsh uses the word widely in his novels, such as "Trainspotting", generally as a generic placeholder for a man, and not always negatively, e.g. "Ah wis the cunt wi the fuckin pool cue in ma hand, n the plukey cunt could huv the fat end ay it in his pus if he wanted, like."


title: Cunt

text: The word is occasionally used in the titles of works of art, such as Peter Renosa's portrait of the pop singer Madonna, "I am the Cunt of Western Civilization", a 1990 quote from the singer. One of the first works of Gilbert & George was a self-portrait in 1969 entitled "Gilbert the Shit and George the Cunt". The London performance art group the Neo Naturists had a song and an act called "Cunt Power", a name which potter Grayson Perry borrowed for one of his early works: "An unglazed piece of modest dimensions, made from terracotta like clay – labia carefully formed with once wet material, about its midriff". Australian artist Greg Taylor's display of scores of white porcelain vulvas, "CUNTS and other conversations" (2009), was deemed controversial for both its title and content, with Australia Post warning the artist that the publicity postcards were illegal.


title: Cunt

text: Theatre censorship was effectively abolished in the UK in 1968; prior to that, all theatrical productions had to be vetted by the Lord Chamberlain's Office. English stand-up comedian Roy "Chubby" Brown claims that he was the first person to say the word on stage in the United Kingdom.


title: Cunt

text: Broadcast media are regulated for content, and media providers such as the BBC have guidelines as to how "cunt" and similar words should be treated. In a survey of 2000 commissioned by the British Broadcasting Standards Commission, Independent Television Commission, BBC and Advertising Standards Authority, "cunt" was regarded as the most offensive word which could be heard, above "motherfucker" and "fuck". Nevertheless, there have been occasions when, particularly in a live broadcast, the word has been aired outside editorial control:


title: Cunt

text: The first scripted uses of the word on British television occurred in 1979, in the ITV drama "No Mama No". In "Jerry Springer – The Opera" (BBC, 2005), the suggestion that the Christ character might be gay was found more controversial than the chant describing the Devil as "cunting, cunting, cunting, cunting cunt".


title: Cunt

text: In July 2007 BBC Three broadcast an hour-long documentary, entitled "The 'C' Word", about the origins, use and evolution of the word from the early 1900s to the present day. Presented by British comedian Will Smith, viewers were taken to a street in Oxford once called "Gropecunt Lane" and presented with examples of the acceptability of "cunt" as a word. (Note that "the C-word" is also a long-standing euphemism for cancer; Lisa Lynch's book led to a BBC1 drama, both with that title.)


title: Cunt

text: The "Attitudes to potentially offensive language and gestures on TV and radio" report by Ofcom, based on research conducted by Ipsos MORI, categorised the usage of the word 'cunt' as a highly unacceptable pre-watershed, but generally acceptable post-watershed, along with 'fuck' and 'motherfucker'. Discriminatory words were generally considered as more offensive than the most offensive non-discriminatory words such as 'cunt' by the UK public, with discriminatory words being more regulated as a result.


title: Cunt

text: The first scripted use on US television was on the "Larry Sanders Show" in 1992, and a notable use occurred in "Sex and the City". In the US, an episode of the NBC TV show "30 Rock", titled "The C Word", centered around a subordinate calling protagonist Liz Lemon (Tina Fey) a "cunt" and her subsequent efforts to regain her staff's favour. Characters in the popular TV series "The Sopranos" often used the term. Jane Fonda uttered the word on a live airing of the "Today Show", a network broadcast-TV news program, in 2008 when being interviewed about "The Vagina Monologues". In 2018, Canadian comedian Samantha Bee had to apologise after calling Ivanka Trump, a White House official and the daughter of US President Donald Trump, a "feckless cunt".


title: Cunt

text: On 6 December 2010 on the BBC Radio 4 Today programme, presenter James Naughtie referred to the British Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt as "Jeremy Cunt"; he later apologized for what the BBC called the inadvertent use of "an offensive four-letter word". In the programme following, about an hour later, Andrew Marr referred to the incident during "Start the Week" where it was said that "we won't repeat the mistake" whereupon Marr slipped up in the same way as Naughtie had.


title: Cunt

text: In the United States, the word's first appearance was in graffiti on a wall in the 1969 film "Bronco Bullfrog". The first spoken use of the word in mainstream cinema occurs in "Carnal Knowledge" (1971), in which Jonathan (Jack Nicholson) asks, "Is this an ultimatum? Answer me, you ball-busting, castrating, son of a cunt bitch! Is this an ultimatum or not?" In the same year, the word was used in the film "Women in Revolt", in which Holly Woodlawn shouts "I love cunt" whilst avoiding a violent boyfriend. Nicholson later used it again, in "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" (1975). Two early films by Martin Scorsese, "Mean Streets" (1973) and "Taxi Driver" (1976), use the word in the context of the virgin-whore dichotomy, with characters using it after they were rejected (in "Mean Streets") or after they have slept with the woman (in "Taxi Driver").


title: Cunt

text: In notable instances, the word has been edited out. "Saturday Night Fever" (1977) was released in two versions, "R" (Restricted) and "PG" (Parental Guidance), the latter omitting or replacing dialogue such as Tony Manero (John Travolta)'s comment to Annette (Donna Pescow), "It's a decision a girl's gotta make early in life, if she's gonna be a nice girl or a cunt". This differential persists, and in "The Silence of the Lambs" (1991), Agent Starling (Jodie Foster) meets Dr. Hannibal Lecter (Anthony Hopkins) for the first time and passes the cell of "Multiple Miggs", who says to Starling: "I can smell your cunt." In versions of the film edited for television the word is dubbed with the word scent. The 2010 film "Kick-Ass" caused a controversy when the word was used by Hit-Girl because the actress playing the part, Chloë Grace Moretz, was 11 years old at the time of filming.


title: Cunt

text: In Britain, use of the word "cunt" may result in an "18" rating from the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC), and this happened to Ken Loach's film "Sweet Sixteen", because of an estimated twenty uses of "cunt". Still, the BBFC's guidelines at "15" state that "very strong language may be permitted, depending on the manner in which it is used, who is using the language, its frequency within the work as a whole and any special contextual justification". Also directed by Loach, "My Name is Joe" was given a 15 certificate despite more than one instance of the word. The 2010 Ian Dury biopic "Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll" was given a "15" rating despite containing seven uses of the word. The BBFC have also allowed it at the "12" level, in the case of well known works such as Hamlet.


title: Cunt

text: In their Derek and Clive dialogues, Peter Cook and Dudley Moore, particularly Cook, used the word in the 1976 sketch "This Bloke Came Up To Me", with "cunt" used 35 times. The word is also used extensively by British comedian Roy 'Chubby' Brown, which ensures that his stand-up act has never been fully shown on UK television.


title: Cunt

text: Australian stand-up comedian Rodney Rude frequently refers to his audiences as "cunts" and makes frequent use of the word in his acts, which got him arrested in Queensland and Western Australia for breaching obscenity laws of those states in the mid-1980s. Australian comedic singer Kevin Bloody Wilson makes extensive use of the word, most notably in the songs "Caring Understanding Nineties Type" and "You Can't Say "Cunt" in Canada".


title: Cunt

text: The word appears in American comic George Carlin's 1972 standup routine on the list of the seven dirty words that could not, at that time, be said on American broadcast television, a routine that led to a U. S. Supreme Court decision. While some of the original seven are now heard on US broadcast television from time to time, "cunt" remains generally taboo except on premium paid subscription cable channels like HBO or Showtime. Comedian Louis C.K. uses the term frequently in his stage act as well as on his television show "Louie" on FX network, which bleeps it out.


title: Cunt

text: In 2018, Canadian comedian Samantha Bee had to apologise after calling Ivanka Trump a cunt on American late night TV show Full Frontal with Samantha Bee.


title: Cunt

text: The 1977 Ian Dury and The Blockheads album, "New Boots and Panties" used the word in the opening line of the track "Plaistow Patricia", thus: "Arseholes, bastards, fucking cunts and pricks", particularly notable as there is no musical lead-in to the lyrics.


title: Cunt

text: In 1979, during a concert at New York's Bottom Line, Carlene Carter introduced a song about mate-swapping called "Swap-Meat Rag" by stating, "If this song doesn't put the cunt back in country, nothing will." However use of the word in lyrics is not recorded before the Sid Vicious's 1978 version of "My Way", which marked the first known use of the word in a UK top 10 hit, as a line was changed to "You cunt/I'm not a queer". The following year, "cunt" was used more explicitly in the song "Why D'Ya Do It?" from Marianne Faithfull's album "Broken English":


title: Cunt

text: The Happy Mondays song, "Kuff Dam" (i.e. "Mad fuck" in reverse), from their 1987 debut album, "Squirrel and G-Man Twenty Four Hour Party People Plastic Face Carnt Smile (White Out)", includes the lyrics "You see that Jesus is a cunt / And never helped you with a thing that you do, or you don't". Biblical scholar James Crossley, writing in the academic journal, "Biblical Interpretation", analyses the Happy Mondays' reference to "Jesus is a cunt" as a description of the "useless assistance" of a now "inadequate Jesus". A phrase from the same lyric, "Jesus is a cunt" was included on the notorious Cradle of Filth T-shirt which depicted a masturbating nun on the front and the slogan "Jesus is a cunt" in large letters on the back. The T-shirt was banned in New Zealand, in 2008.


title: Cunt

text: Liz Phair in "Dance of Seven Veils" on her 1993 album "Exile in Guyville", uses the word in the line "I only ask because I'm a real cunt in spring".


title: Cunt

text: The word has been used by numerous non-mainstream bands, such as the Australian band TISM, who released an extended play in 1993 "Australia the Lucky Cunt" (a reference to Australia's label the "lucky country"). They also released a single in 1998 entitled "I Might Be a Cunt, but I'm Not a Fucking Cunt", which was banned. The American grindcore band Anal Cunt, on being signed to a bigger label, shortened their name to AxCx.


title: Cunt

text: The 2004 video game "" was the first major video game to use the word, along with being the first in the series to use the words "nigga", "motherfucker", and "cocksucker". It was used just once, by the British character Kent Paul (voiced by Danny Dyer), who refers to Maccer as a "soppy cunt" in the mission "Don Peyote."


title: Cunt

text: In the 2008 title "Grand Theft Auto IV" (developed by Rockstar North and distributed by Take Two Interactive), the word, amongst many other expletives, was used by James Pegorino who, after finding out that his personal bodyguard had turned states, exclaimed "The world is a cunt!" while aiming a shotgun at the player.


title: Cunt

text: Various euphemisms, minced forms and in-jokes are used to imply the word without actually saying it, thereby escaping obvious censure and censorship.


title: Cunt

text: Deriving from a dirty joke: "What's the difference between a circus and a strip club?"- "The circus has a bunch of cunning stunts..." The phrase "cunning stunt" has been used in popular music. Its first documented appearance was by the English band Caravan, who released the album "Cunning Stunts" in July 1975; the title was later used by Metallica for a CD/Video compilation, and in 1992 the Cows released an album with the same title. In his 1980s BBC television programme, Kenny Everett played a vapid starlet, "Cupid Stunt".


title: Cunt

text: There are numerous informal acronyms, including various apocryphal stories concerning academic establishments, such as the "Cambridge University National Trust Society".


title: Cunt

text: There are many variants of the covering phrase "See you next Tuesday". Creative works with that phrase as a title include a play by Ronald Harwood, the second album by hip hop group FannyPack, a 2013 independent film by Drew Tobia, a song by deathcore band The Acacia Strain on their 2006 album "The Dead Walk", a song by Kesha from the 2010 EP "Cannibal", and an experimental deathcore band.


title: Cunt

text: The name "Mike Hunt" is a frequent pun on "my cunt"; it has been used in a scene from the movie "Porky's", and for a character in the BBC radio comedy "Radio Active" in the 1980s. "Has Anyone Seen Mike Hunt?" were the words written on a "pink neon sculpture" representing the letter C, in a 2004 exhibition of the alphabet at the British Library in collaboration with the International Society of Typographic Designers.


title: Cunt

text: As well as obvious references, there are also allusions. On "I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue", Stephen Fry once defined "countryside" as the act of "murdering Piers Morgan".


title: Cunt

text: The title of the BBC comedy game show "Stupid Punts", which ran from 2001 to 2003, appears to have been a pun on "Stupid Cunts".


title: Cunt

text: Even Parliaments are not immune from punning uses; as recalled by former Australian prime minister Gough Whitlam:


title: Cunt

text: and Mark Lamarr used a variation of this same gag on BBC TV's "Never Mind the Buzzcocks". "Stuart Adamson was a Big Country member... and we do remember".


title: Cunt

text: Several celebrities have had their names used as euphemisms, including footballer Roger Hunt, actor Gareth Hunt, singer James Blunt, politician Jeremy Hunt, and 1970s motor-racing driver James Hunt, whose name was once used to introduce the British radio show "I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue" as "the show that is to panel games what James Hunt is to rhyming slang".


title: Cunt

text: An old canting form is "berk", short for "Berkeley Hunt" or "Berkshire Hunt", and in a Monty Python sketch, an idioglossiac man replaces the initial "c" of words with "b", producing "silly bunt". This line was cut prior to airing. Scottish comedian Chic Murray claimed to have worked for a firm called "Lunt, Hunt & Cunningham".


title: Kwame Nkrumah

text: Kwame Nkrumah (born 21 September 190927 April 1972) was a Ghanaian politician, political theorist, and revolutionary. He was the first Prime Minister and President of Ghana, having led the Gold Coast to independence from Britain in 1957. An influential advocate of Pan-Africanism, Nkrumah was a founding member of the Organization of African Unity and winner of the Lenin Peace Prize from the Soviet Union in 1962.


title: Kwame Nkrumah

text: After twelve years abroad pursuing higher education, developing his political philosophy, and organizing with other diasporic pan-Africanists, Nkrumah returned to the Gold Coast to begin his political career as an advocate of national independence. He formed the Convention People's Party, which achieved rapid success through its unprecedented appeal to the common voter. He became Prime Minister in 1952 and retained the position when Ghana declared independence from Britain in 1957. In 1960, Ghanaians approved a new constitution and elected Nkrumah President.


title: Kwame Nkrumah

text: His administration was primarily socialist as well as nationalist. It funded national industrial and energy projects, developed a strong national education system and promoted a pan-Africanist culture. Under Nkrumah, Ghana played a leading role in African international relations during the decolonization period.


title: Kwame Nkrumah

text: Nkrumah led an authoritarian regime in Ghana, as he repressed political opposition and conducted elections that were not free and fair. In 1964, a constitutional amendment made Ghana a one-party state, with Nkrumah as president for life of both the nation and its party. Nkrumah was deposed in 1966 by the National Liberation Council, under whose supervision international financial institutions privatized many of the country's state corporations. Nkrumah lived the rest of his life in Guinea, where he was named honorary co-president.


title: Kwame Nkrumah

text: Kwame Nkrumah was born on 21 September 1909 in Nkroful, Gold Coast (now Ghana). Nkroful was a small village in the Nzema area, in the 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 where he pursued his goldsmith business until his death. Kwame Nkrumah was raised by his mother and his extended family, who lived together traditionally, with more distant relatives often visiting. He lived a carefree childhood, spent in the village, in the bush, and on the nearby sea. By the naming customs of the Akan people, he was given the name Kwame, the name given to males born on Saturday. During his years as a student in the United States, though, he was known as Francis Nwia Kofi Nkrumah, Kofi being the name given to males born on Fridays. He later changed his name to Kwame Nkrumah in 1945 in the UK, preferring the name "Kwame". According to Ebenezer Obiri Addo in his study of the future president, the name "Nkrumah", a name traditionally given to a ninth child, indicates that Kwame probably held that place in the house of his father, who had several wives.


title: Kwame Nkrumah

text: His father, Opanyin Kofi Nwiana Ngolomah, came from Nkroful, belonging to Akan tribe of the Asona clan. Sources indicated that Ngolomah stayed at Tarkwa-Nsuaem and dealt in the goldsmith business. In addition, Ngolomah was respected for his wise counsel by those who sought his advice on traditional issues and domestic affairs. He died in 1927.


title: Kwame Nkrumah

text: Kwame was the only child of his mother. Nkrumah's mother sent him to the elementary school run by a Catholic mission at Half Assini, where he proved an adept student. A German Roman Catholic priest by the name of George Fischer was said to have profoundly influenced his elementary school education. Although his mother, whose name was Elizabeth Nyanibah (1876/77–1979), later stated his year of birth was 1912, Nkrumah wrote that he was born on 21 September 1909. Nyanibah, who hailed from Nsuaem and belongs to the Agona family, was a fishmonger and petty trader when she married his father. Eight days after his birth, his father named him as Francis Nwia-Kofi after a relative but later his parents named him as Francis Kwame Ngolomah. He progressed through the ten-year elementary programme in eight years. By about 1925 he was a student-teacher in the school, and had been baptized into the Catholic faith. While at the school, he was noticed by the Reverend Alec Garden Fraser, principal of the Government Training College (soon to become Achimota School) in the Gold Coast's capital, Accra. Fraser arranged for Nkrumah to train as a teacher at his school. Here, Columbia-educated deputy headmaster Kwegyir Aggrey exposed him to the ideas of Marcus Garvey and W. E. B. Du Bois. Aggrey, Fraser, and others at Achimota taught that there should be close co-operation between the races in governing the Gold Coast, but Nkrumah, echoing Garvey, soon came to believe that only when the black race governed itself could there be harmony between the races.


title: Kwame Nkrumah

text: After obtaining his teacher's certificate from the Prince of Wales' College at Achimota in 1930, Nkrumah was given a teaching post at the Roman Catholic primary school in Elmina in 1931, and after a year there, was made headmaster of the school at Axim. In Axim, he started to get involved in politics and founded the Nzima Literary Society. In 1933, he was appointed a teacher at the Catholic seminary at Amissano. Although the life there was strict, he liked it, and considered becoming a Jesuit. Nkrumah had heard journalist and future Nigerian president Nnamdi Azikiwe speak while a student at Achimota; the two men met and Azikiwe's influence increased Nkrumah's interest in black nationalism. The young teacher decided to further his education. Azikiwe had attended Lincoln University, a historically black college in Chester County, Pennsylvania, west of Philadelphia, and he advised Nkrumah to enroll there. Nkrumah, who had 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, to his outrage, of Italy's invasion of Ethiopia, one of the few independent African nations. He arrived in the United States, in October 1935.


title: Kwame Nkrumah

text: According to historian John Henrik Clarke in his article on Nkrumah's American sojourn, "the influence of the ten years that he spent in the United States would have a lingering effect on the rest of his life." Nkrumah had sought entry to Lincoln University some time before he began his studies there. On 1 March 1935, he sent the school a letter noting that his application had been pending for more than a year. When he arrived in New York in October 1935, he traveled to Pennsylvania, where he enrolled despite lacking the funds for the full semester. He soon won a scholarship that provided for his tuition at Lincoln University. He remained short of funds through his time in the US. To make ends meet, he worked in menial jobs, including as a dishwasher. On Sundays, he visited black Presbyterian churches in Philadelphia and in New York.


title: Kwame Nkrumah

text: Nkrumah completed a Bachelor of Arts degree in economics and sociology in 1939. Lincoln then appointed him an assistant lecturer in philosophy, and he began to receive invitations to be a guest preacher in Presbyterian churches in Philadelphia and New York. In 1939, Nkrumah enrolled at Lincoln's seminary and at the Ivy League University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia and in 1942, he was initiated into the Mu chapter of Phi Beta Sigma fraternity at Lincoln University. Nkrumah gained a Bachelor of Theology degree from Lincoln in 1942, the top student in the course. He earned from Penn the following year a Master of Arts degree in philosophy and a Master of Science in education. While at Penn, Nkrumah worked with the linguist William Everett Welmers, providing the spoken material that formed the basis of the first descriptive grammar of his native Fante dialect of the Akan language.


title: Kwame Nkrumah

text: Nkrumah spent his summers in Harlem, a center of black life, thought and culture. He found housing and employment in New York City with difficulty and involved himself in the community. He spent many evenings listening to and arguing with street orators, and according to Clarke, Kwame Nkrumah in his years in America stated;


title: Kwame Nkrumah

text: Nkrumah was an activist student, organizing a group of expatriate African students in Pennsylvania and building it into the African Students Association of America and Canada, becoming its president. Some members felt that the group should aspire for each colony to gain independence on its own; Nkrumah urged a Pan-African strategy. Nkrumah played a major role in the Pan-African conference held in New York in 1944, which urged the United States, at the end of the Second World War, to help ensure Africa became developed and free.


title: Kwame Nkrumah

text: His old teacher Aggrey had died in 1929 in the US, and in 1942 Nkrumah led traditional prayers for Aggrey at the graveside. This led to a break between him and Lincoln, though after he rose to prominence in the Gold Coast, he returned in 1951 to accept an honorary degree. Nevertheless, Nkrumah's doctoral thesis remained uncompleted. He had adopted the forename Francis while at the Amissano seminary; in 1945 he took the name Kwame Nkrumah.


title: Kwame Nkrumah

text: Nkrumah read books about politics and divinity, and tutored students in philosophy. In 1943 Nkrumah met Trinidadian Marxist C. L. R. James, Russian expatriate Raya Dunayevskaya, and Chinese-American Grace Lee Boggs, all of whom were members of an American-based Marxist intellectual cohort. Nkrumah later credited James with teaching him "how an underground movement worked". Federal Bureau of Investigation files on Nkrumah, kept from January to May 1945, identify him as a possible communist. Nkrumah was determined to go to London, wanting to continue his education there now that the Second World War had ended. James, in a 1945 letter introducing Nkrumah to Trinidad-born George Padmore in London, wrote: "This young man is coming to you. He is not very bright, but nevertheless do what you can for him because he's determined to throw Europeans out of Africa."


title: Kwame Nkrumah

text: 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". His supervisor, A. J. Ayer, declined to rate Nkrumah as a "first-class philosopher", saying, "I liked him and enjoyed talking to him but he did not seem to me to have an analytical mind. He wanted answers too quickly. I think part of the trouble may have been that he wasn't concentrating very hard on his thesis. It was a way of marking time until the opportunity came for him to return to Ghana." Finally, Nkrumah enrolled in, but did not complete, a study in law at Gray's Inn.


title: Kwame Nkrumah

text: Nkrumah spent his time on political organizing. He and Padmore were among the principal organizers, and co-treasurers, of the Fifth Pan-African Congress in Manchester (15–19 October 1945). The Congress elaborated a strategy for supplanting colonialism with African socialism. They agreed to pursue a federal United States of Africa, with interlocking regional organizations, governing through separate states of limited sovereignty. They planned to pursue a new African culture without tribalism, democratic within a socialist system, synthesizing traditional aspects with modern thinking, and for this to be achieved by nonviolent means if possible. Among those who attended the congress was the venerable W. E. B. Du Bois along with some who later took leading roles in leading their nations to independence, including Hastings Banda of Nyasaland (which became Malawi), Jomo Kenyatta of Kenya and Obafemi Awolowo of Nigeria.


title: Kwame Nkrumah

text: The congress sought to establish ongoing African activism in Britain in conjunction with the West African National Secretariat (WANS) to work towards the decolonisation of Africa. Nkrumah became the secretary of WANS. In addition to seeking to organize Africans to gain their nations' freedom, Nkrumah sought to succour the many West African seamen who had been stranded, destitute, in London at the end of the war, and established a Coloured Workers Association to empower and succour them. The U.S. State Department and MI5 watched Nkrumah and the WANS, focusing on their links with Communism. Nkrumah and Padmore established a group called The Circle to lead the way to West African independence and unity; the group aimed to create a Union of African Socialist Republics. A document from The Circle, setting forth that goal was found on Nkrumah upon his arrest in Accra in 1948, and was used against him by the British authorities.


title: Kwame Nkrumah

text: The 1946 Gold Coast constitution gave Africans a majority on the Legislative Council for the first time. Seen as a major step towards self-government, the new arrangement prompted the colony's first true political party, founded in August 1947, the United Gold Coast Convention (UGCC). The UGCC sought self-government as quickly as possible. Since the leading members were all successful professionals, they needed to pay someone to run the party, and their choice fell on Nkrumah at the suggestion of Ako Adjei. Nkrumah hesitated, realizing the UGCC was controlled by conservative interests, but decided that the new post gave him huge political opportunities, and accepted. After being questioned by British officials about his communist affiliations, Nkrumah boarded the MV "Accra" at Liverpool in November 1947 for the voyage home.


title: Kwame Nkrumah

text: After brief stops in Sierra Leone, Liberia, and the Ivory Coast, he arrived in the Gold Coast, and after a brief stay and reunion with his mother in Tarkwa, began work at the party's headquarters in Saltpond on 29 December 1947 where he worked as a general secretary. Nkrumah quickly submitted plans for branches of the UGCC to be established colony-wide, and for strikes if necessary to gain political ends. This activist stance divided the party's governing committee, which was led by J. B. Danquah. Nkrumah embarked on a tour to gain donations for the UGCC and establish new branches.


title: Kwame Nkrumah

text: Although the Gold Coast was politically more advanced than Britain's other West Africa colonies, there was considerable discontent. Postwar inflation had caused public anger at high prices, leading to a boycott of the small stores run by Arabs which began in January 1948. The cocoa bean farmers were upset because trees exhibiting swollen-shoot disease, but still capable of yielding a crop, were being destroyed by the colonial authorities. There were about 63,000 ex-servicemen in the Gold Coast, many of whom had trouble obtaining employment and felt the colonial government was doing nothing to address their grievances. Nkrumah and Danquah addressed a meeting of the Ex-Service men's Union in Accra on 20 February 1948, which was in preparation for a march to present a petition to the governor. When that demonstration took place on 28 February, there was gunfire from the British, prompting the 1948 Accra riots, which spread throughout the country. According to Nkrumah's biographer, David Birmingham, "West Africa's erstwhile "model colony" witnessed a riot and business premises were looted. The African Revolution had begun."


title: Kwame Nkrumah

text: The government assumed that the UGCC was responsible for the unrest, and arrested six leaders, including Nkrumah and Danquah. The Big Six were incarcerated together in Kumasi, increasing the rift between Nkrumah and the others, who blamed him for the riots and their detention. After the British learned that there were plots to storm the prison, the six were separated, with Nkrumah sent to Lawra. They were freed in April 1948. Many students and teachers had demonstrated for their release, and been suspended; Nkrumah, using his own funds, began the Ghana National College. This, among other activities, led UGCC committee members to accuse him of acting in the party's name without authority. Fearing he would harm them more outside the party than within, they agreed to make him honorary treasurer. Nkrumah's popularity, already large, was increased with his founding of the "Accra Evening News", which was not a party organ but was owned by Nkrumah and others. He also founded the Committee on Youth Organization (CYO) as a youth wing for the UGCC. It soon broke away and adopted the motto "Self-Government Now". The CYO united students, ex-servicemen, and market women. Nkrumah recounted in his autobiography that he knew that a break with the UGCC was inevitable, and wanted the masses behind him when the conflict occurred. Nkrumah's appeals for "Free-Dom" appealed to the great numbers of underemployed youths who had come from the farms and villages to the towns. "Old hymn tunes were adapted to new songs of liberation which welcomed traveling orators, and especially Nkrumah himself, to mass rallies across the Gold Coast."


title: Kwame Nkrumah

text: According to a public speech delivered by Prof. Oquaye, he claimed a meeting occurred in Saltpond, a town in the Central region, between Nkrumah and the members of UGCC where Nkrumah was said to have rejected a proposal for the promotion of fundamental human rights.


title: Kwame Nkrumah

text: Beginning in April 1949, there was considerable pressure on Nkrumah from his supporters to leave the UGCC and form his own party. On 12 June 1949, he announced the formation of the Convention People's Party (CPP), with the word "convention" chosen, according to Nkrumah, "to carry the masses with us". There were attempts to heal the breach with the UGCC; at one July meeting, it was agreed to reinstate Nkrumah as secretary and disband the CPP. But Nkrumah's supporters would not have it, and persuaded him to refuse the offer and remain at their head.


title: Kwame Nkrumah

text: The CPP adopted the red cockerel as its symbol – a familiar icon for local ethnic groups, and a symbol of leadership, alertness, and masculinity. Party symbols and colours (red, white, and green) appeared on clothing, flags, vehicles and houses. CPP operatives drove red-white-and-green vans across the country, playing music and rallying public support for the party and especially for Nkrumah. These efforts were wildly successful, especially because previous political efforts in the Gold Coast had focused exclusively on the urban intelligentsia.


title: Kwame Nkrumah

text: The British convened a selected commission of middle-class Africans, including all of the Big Six except Nkrumah, to draft a new constitution that would give Ghana more self-government. Nkrumah saw, even before the commission reported, that its recommendations would fall short of full dominion status, and began to organize a Positive Action campaign. Nkrumah demanded a constituent assembly to write a constitution. When the governor, Charles Arden-Clarke, would not commit to this, Nkrumah called for Positive Action, with the unions beginning a general strike to begin on 8 January 1950. The strike quickly led to violence, and Nkrumah and other CPP leaders were arrested on 22 January, and the "Evening News" was banned. Nkrumah was sentenced to a total of three years in prison, and he was incarcerated with common criminals in Accra's Fort James.


title: Kwame Nkrumah

text: Nkrumah's assistant, Komla Agbeli Gbedemah, ran the CPP in his absence; the imprisoned leader was able to influence events through smuggled notes written on toilet paper. The British prepared for an election for the Gold Coast under their new constitution, and Nkrumah insisted that the CPP contest all seats. The situation had become calmer once Nkrumah was arrested, and the CPP and the British worked together to prepare electoral rolls. Nkrumah stood, from prison, for a directly elected Accra seat. Gbedemah worked to set up a nationwide campaign organization, using vans with loudspeakers to blare the party's message. The UGCC failed to set up a nationwide structure, and proved unable to take advantage of the fact that many of its opponents were in prison.


title: Kwame Nkrumah

text: In the February 1951 legislative election, the first general election to be held under universal franchise in colonial Africa, the CPP was elected in a landslide. The CPP secured 34 of the 38 seats contested on a party basis, with Nkrumah elected for his Accra constituency. The UGCC won three seats, and one was taken by an independent. Arden-Clarke saw that the only alternative to Nkrumah's freedom was the end of the constitutional experiment. Nkrumah was released from prison on 12 February, receiving a rapturous reception from his followers. The following day, Arden-Clarke sent for him and asked him to form a government.


title: Kwame Nkrumah

text: Nkrumah had stolen Arden-Clarke's secretary Erica Powell after she was dismissed and sent home for getting too close to Nkrumah. Powell returned to Ghana in January 1955 to be Nkrumah's private secretary, a position she held for ten years. Powell was very close to him and during their time together time Powell largely wrote Nkrumah's (auto)biography, although this was not admitted until much later.


title: Kwame Nkrumah

text: Nkrumah faced several challenges as he assumed office. He had never served in government, and needed to learn that art. The Gold Coast was composed of four regions, several former colonies amalgamated into one. Nkrumah sought to unite them under one nationality, and bring the country to independence. Key to meeting the challenges was convincing the British that the CPP's programmes were not only practical, but inevitable, and Nkrumah and Arden-Clarke worked closely together. The governor instructed the civil service to give the fledgling government full support, and the three British members of the cabinet took care not to vote against the elected majority.


title: Kwame Nkrumah

text: Prior to the CPP taking office, British officials had prepared a ten-year plan for development. With demands for infrastructure improvements coming in from all over the colony, Nkrumah approved it in general, but halved the time to five years. The colony was in good financial shape, with reserves from years of cocoa profit held in London, and Nkrumah was able to spend freely. Modern trunk roads were built along the coast and within the interior. The rail system was modernized and expanded. Modern water and sewer systems were installed in most towns, where housing schemes were begun. Construction began on a new harbor at Tema, near Accra, and the existing port, at Takoradi, was expanded. An urgent programme to build and expand schools, from primary to teacher and trade training, was begun. From 1951 to 1956, the number of pupils being educated at the colony's schools rose from 200,000 to 500,000. Nevertheless, the number of graduates being produced was insufficient to the burgeoning civil service's needs, and in 1953, Nkrumah announced that though Africans would be given preference, the country would be relying on expatriate European civil servants for several years.


title: Kwame Nkrumah

text: Nkrumah's title was Leader of Government Business in a cabinet chaired by Arden-Clarke. Quick progress was made, and in 1952, the governor withdrew from the cabinet, leaving Nkrumah as his prime minister, with the portfolios that had been reserved for expatriates going to Africans. There were accusations of corruption, and of nepotism, as officials, following African custom, attempted to benefit their extended families and their tribes. The recommendations following the 1948 riots had included elected local government rather than the existing system dominated by the chiefs. This was uncontroversial until it became clear that it would be implemented by the CPP. That party's majority in the Legislative Assembly passed legislation in late 1951 that shifted power from the chiefs to the chairs of the councils, though there was some local rioting as rates were imposed.


title: Kwame Nkrumah

text: Nkrumah's re-titling as prime minister had not given him additional power, and he sought constitutional reform that would lead to independence. In 1952, he consulted with the visiting Colonial Secretary, Oliver Lyttelton, who indicated that Britain would look favorably on further advancement, so long as the chiefs and other stakeholders had the opportunity to express their views. Initially skeptical of Nkrumah's socialist policies, Britain's MI5 had compiled large amounts of intelligence on Nkrumah through several sources, including tapping phones and mail interception under the code name of SWIFT. Beginning in October 1952, Nkrumah sought opinions from councils and from political parties on reform, and consulted widely across the country, including with opposition groups. The result the following year was a White Paper on a new constitution, seen as a final step before independence. Published in June 1953, the constitutional proposals were accepted both by the assembly and by the British, and came into force in April of the following year. The new document provided for an assembly of 104 members, all directly elected, with an all-African cabinet responsible for the internal governing of the colony. In the election on 15 June 1954, the CPP won 71, with the regional Northern People's Party forming the official opposition.


title: Kwame Nkrumah

text: A number of opposition groups formed the National Liberation Movement. Their demands were for a federal, rather than a unitary government for an independent Gold Coast, and for an upper house of parliament where chiefs and other traditional leaders could act as a counter to the CPP majority in the assembly. They drew considerable support in the Northern Territory and among the chiefs in Ashanti, who petitioned the British queen, Elizabeth II, asking for a Royal Commission into what form of government the Gold Coast should have. This was refused by her government, who in 1955 stated that such a commission should only be used if the people of the Gold Coast proved incapable of deciding their own affairs. Amid political violence, the two sides attempted to reconcile their differences, but the NLM refused to participate in any committee with a CPP majority. The traditional leaders were also incensed by a new bill that had just been enacted, which allowed minor chiefs to appeal to the government in Accra, bypassing traditional chiefly authority. The British were unwilling to leave unresolved the fundamental question as to how an independent Gold Coast should be governed, and in June 1956, the Colonial Secretary, Alan Lennox-Boyd announced that there would be another general election in the Gold Coast, and if a "reasonable majority" took the CPP's position, Britain would set a date for independence. The results of the July 1956 election were almost identical to those from four years before, and on 3 August the assembly voted for independence under the name Nkrumah had proposed in April, Ghana. In September, the Colonial Office announced independence day would be 6 March 1957.


title: Kwame Nkrumah

text: The opposition was not satisfied with the plan for independence, and demanded that power be devolved to the regions. Discussions took place through late 1956 and into 1957. Although Nkrumah did not compromise on his insistence on a unitary state, the nation was divided into five regions, with power devolved from Accra, and the chiefs having a role in their governments. On 21 February 1957, the British prime minister, Harold Macmillan, announced that Ghana would be a full member of the Commonwealth of Nations with effect from 6 March.


title: Kwame Nkrumah

text: Ghana became independent on 6 March 1957. As the first of Britain's African colonies to gain majority-rule independence, the celebrations in Accra were the focus of world attention; over 100 reporters and photographers covered the events. United States President Dwight D. Eisenhower sent congratulations and his vice president, Richard Nixon, to represent the U.S. at the event. The Soviet delegation urged Nkrumah to visit Moscow as soon as possible. Political scientist Ralph Bunche, an African American, was there for the United Nations, while the Duchess of Kent represented Queen Elizabeth. Offers of assistance poured in from across the world. Even without them, the country seemed prosperous, with cocoa prices high and the potential of new resource development.


title: Kwame Nkrumah

text: As the fifth of March turned to the sixth, Nkrumah stood before tens of thousands of supporters and proclaimed, "Ghana will be free forever." He spoke at the first session of the Ghana Parliament that Independence Day, telling his new country's citizens that "we have a duty to prove to the world that Africans can conduct their own affairs with efficiency and tolerance and through the exercise of democracy. We must set an example to all Africa."


title: Kwame Nkrumah

text: Nkrumah was hailed as the "Osagyefo" – which means "redeemer" in the Akan language. This independence ceremony included the Duchess of Kent and Governor General Charles Arden-Clarke. With more than 600 reporters in attendance, Ghanaian independence became one of the most internationally reported news events in modern African history.


title: Kwame Nkrumah

text: The flag of Ghana designed by Theodosia Okoh, 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. The country's new coat of arms, designed by Amon Kotei, includes eagles, a lion, a St. George's Cross, and a Black Star, with copious gold and gold trim. Philip Gbeho was commissioned to compose the new national anthem, "God Bless Our Homeland Ghana".


title: Kwame Nkrumah

text: As a monument to the new nation, Nkrumah opened Black Star Square near Osu Castle in the coastal district of Osu, Accra. This square would be used for national symbolism and mass patriotic rallies.


title: Kwame Nkrumah

text: Under Nkrumah's leadership, Ghana adopted some social democratic policies and practices. Nkrumah created a welfare system, started various community programs, and established schools.


title: Kwame Nkrumah

text: Nkrumah had only a short honeymoon before there was unrest among his people. The government deployed troops to Togo-land to quell unrest following a disputed plebiscite on membership in the new country. A serious bus strike in Accra stemmed from resentments among the Ga people, who believed members of other tribes were getting preferential 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 (6 December 1957), which banned regional or tribal-based political parties. Another strike at tribalism fell in Ashanti, where Nkrumah and the CPP got most local chiefs who were not party supporters destooled. These repressive actions concerned the opposition parties, who came together to form the United Party under Kofi Abrefa Busia.


title: Kwame Nkrumah

text: In 1958, an opposition MP was arrested on charges of trying to obtain arms abroad for a planned infiltration of the Ghana Army (GA). 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 scrutiny.


title: Kwame Nkrumah

text: Another source of irritation was the regional assemblies, which had been organized on an interim basis pending further constitutional discussions. The opposition, which was strong in Ashanti and the north, proposed significant powers for the assemblies; the CPP wanted them to be more or less advisory. In 1959, Nkrumah used his majority in the parliament to push through the Constitutional Amendment Act, which abolished the assemblies and allowed the parliament to amend the constitution with a simple majority.


title: Kwame Nkrumah

text: Queen Elizabeth II remained sovereign over Ghana from 1957 to 1960. William Hare, 5th Earl of Listowel was the Governor-General, 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 19, 23, and 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, 1,016,076 to 124,623. Ghana remained a part of the British-led Commonwealth of Nations.


title: Kwame Nkrumah

text: Nkrumah also sought to eliminate "tribalism", a source of loyalties held more deeply than those to the nation-state. Thus, as he wrote in "Africa Must Unite": "We were engaged in a kind of war, a war against poverty and disease, against ignorance, against tribalism and disunity. We needed to secure the conditions which could allow us to pursue our policy of reconstruction and development." To this end, in 1958, his government passed "An Act to prohibit organizations using or engaging in racial or religious propaganda to the detriment of any other racial or religious community, or securing the election of persons on account of their racial or religious affiliations, or for other purposes in connection therewith." Nkrumah attempted to saturate the country in national flags, and declared a widely disobeyed ban on tribal flags.


title: Kwame Nkrumah

text: Kofi Abrefa Busia of the United Party (Ghana) gained prominence as an opposition leader in the debate over this Act, taking a more classically liberal position and criticizing the ban on tribal politics as repressive. Soon after, he left the country. Nkrumah was also a very flamboyant leader. "The New York Times" in 1972 wrote: "During his high‐flying days as the leader of Ghana in the 1950s and early 1960s, Kwame Nkrumah was a flamboyant spellbinder. At home, he created a cult of personality and gloried in the title of 'Osagyefo' (Redeemer). Abroad, he rubbed elbows with the world's leaders as the first man to lead an African colony to independence after World War II."


title: Kwame Nkrumah

text: During his tenure as Prime Minister and then President, Nkrumah succeeded in reducing the political importance of the local chieftaincy (e.g., the Akan chiefs and the Asantehene). These chiefs had maintained authority during colonial rule through collaboration with the British authorities; in fact, they were sometimes favored over the local intelligentsia, who made trouble for the British with organizations like the Aborigines' Rights Protection Society. The Convention People's Party had a strained relationship with the chiefs when it came to power, and this relationship became more hostile as the CPP incited political opposition chiefs and criticized the institution as undemocratic. Acts passed in 1958 and 1959 gave the government more power to dis-stool chiefs directly, and proclaimed government of stool land – and revenues. These policies alienated the chiefs and led them to looking favorably on the overthrow of Nkrumah and his Party.


title: Kwame Nkrumah

text: In 1962, three younger members of the CPP were brought up on charges of taking part in a plot to blow up Nkrumah's car in a motorcade. The sole evidence against the alleged plotters was that they rode in cars well behind Nkrumah's car. When the defendants were acquitted, Nkrumah sacked the chief judge of the state security court, then got the CPP-dominated parliament to pass a law allowing a new trial. At this second trial, all three men were convicted and sentenced to death, though these sentences were subsequently commuted to life imprisonment. Shortly afterward, the constitution was amended to give the president the power to summarily remove judges at all levels.


title: Kwame Nkrumah

text: In 1964, Nkrumah proposed a constitutional amendment which would make the CPP the only legal party, with Nkrumah as president for life of both nation and party. The amendment passed with 99.91 percent of the vote, an implausibly high total that led observers to condemn the vote as "obviously rigged". Ghana had effectively been a one-party state since independence. The amendment transformed Nkrumah's presidency into a "de facto" legal dictatorship.


title: Kwame Nkrumah

text: After substantial Africanization of the civil service in 1952–60, the number of expatriates rose again from 1960 to 1965. Many of the new outside workers came not from the United Kingdom but from the Soviet Union, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, and Italy.


title: Kwame Nkrumah

text: In 1951, the CPP created the Accelerated Development Plan for Education. This plan set up a six-year primary course, to be attended as close to universally as possible, with a range of possibilities to follow. All children were to learn arithmetic, as well as gain "a sound foundation for citizenship with permanent literacy in both English and the vernacular." Primary education became compulsory in 1962. The plan also stated that religious schools would no longer receive funding, and that some existing missionary schools would be taken over by government.


title: Kwame Nkrumah

text: In 1961, Nkrumah laid the first stones in the foundation of the Kwame Nkrumah Ideological Institute created to train Ghanaian civil servants as well as promote Pan-Africanism. In 1964, all students entering college in Ghana were required to attend a two-week "ideological orientation" at the institute. Nkrumah remarked that "trainees should be made to realize the party's ideology is religion, and should be practiced faithfully and fervently."


title: Kwame Nkrumah

text: In 1964, Nkrumah brought forth the Seven Year Development Plan for National Reconstruction and Development, which identified education as a key source of development and called for the expansion of secondary technical schools. Secondary education would also include "in-service training programmes". As Nkrumah told Parliament: "Employers, both public and private, will be expected to make a far greater contribution to labour training through individual factory and farm schools, industry-wide training schemes, day release, payment for attendance at short courses and evening classes." This training would be indirectly subsidized with tax credits and import allocations.


title: Kwame Nkrumah

text: In 1952, the Artisan Trading Scheme, arranged with the Colonial Office and UK Ministry of Labour, provided for a few experts in every field to travel to Britain for technical education. Kumasi Technical Institute was founded in 1956. In September 1960, it added the Technical Teacher Training Centre. In 1961, the CPP passed the Apprentice Act, which created a general Apprenticeship Board along with committees for each industry.


title: Kwame Nkrumah

text: Nkrumah was an ardent promoter of pan-Africanism, seeing the movement as the "quest for regional integration of the whole of the African continent". The period of Nkrumah's active political involvement has been described as the "golden age of high pan-African ambitions"; the continent had experienced rising nationalist movements and decolonization by most European colonial powers, and historians have noted that "the narrative of rebirth and solidarity had gained momentum within the pan-Africanist movement". Reflecting his African heritage, Nkrumah frequently eschewed Western fashion, donning a fugu (a Northern attire) made with Southern-produced Kente cloth, a symbol of his identity as a representative of the entire country. He oversaw the opening of the Ghana Museum on 5 March 1957; the Arts Council of Ghana, a wing of the Ministry of Education and Culture, in 1958; the Research Library on African Affairs in June 1961; and the Ghana Film Corporation in 1964. In 1962, Nkrumah opened the Institute of African Studies.


title: Kwame Nkrumah

text: A campaign against nudity in the northern part of the country received special attention from Nkrumah, who reportedly deployed Propaganda Secretary Hannah Cudjoe to respond. Cudjoe also formed the Ghana Women's League, which advanced the Party's agenda on nutrition, raising children, and wearing clothing. The League also led a demonstration against the detonation of French nuclear weapons in the Sahara. Cudjoe was eventually demoted with the consolidation of national women's groups, and marginalized within the Party structure.


title: Kwame Nkrumah

text: Laws passed in 1959 and 1960 designated special positions in parliament to be held by women. Some women were promoted to the CPP Central Committee. Women attended more universities, took up more professions including medicine and law, and went on professional trips to Israel, the Soviet Union, and the Eastern Bloc. Women also entered the army and air force. Most women remained in agriculture and trade; some received assistance from the Co-operative Movement.


title: Kwame Nkrumah

text: Nkrumah's image was widely disseminated, for example, on postage stamps and on money, in the style of monarchs – providing fodder for accusations of a Nkrumahist personality cult.


title: Kwame Nkrumah

text: In 1957 Nkrumah created a well-funded Ghana News Agency to generate domestic news and disseminate it abroad. In ten years time the GNA had 8045 km of domestic telegraph line, and maintained stations in Lagos, Nairobi, London and New York City.


title: Kwame Nkrumah

text: Nkrumah consolidated state control over newspapers, establishing the "Ghanaian Times" in 1958 and then in 1962 obtaining its competitor, the "Daily Graphic", from the Mirror Group of London. As he wrote in "Africa Must Unite": "It is part of our revolutionary credo that within the competitive system of capitalism, the press cannot function in accordance with a strict regard for the sacredness of facts, and that the press, therefore, should not remain in private hands." Starting in 1960, he invoked the right of pre-publication censorship of all news.


title: Kwame Nkrumah

text: The Gold Coast Broadcasting Service was established in 1954 and revamped as the Ghana Broadcasting Corporation (GBC). Many television broadcasts featured Nkrumah, commenting for example on the problematic "insolence and laziness of boys and girls". Before celebrations of May Day, 1963, Nkrumah went on television to announce the expansion of Ghana's Young Pioneers, the introduction of a National Pledge, the beginning of a National Flag salute in schools, and the creation of a National Training program to inculcate virtue and the spirit of service among Ghanaian youth. Quoth Nkrumah (to Parliament, on 15 October 1963), "Ghana's television will not cater for cheap entertainment or commercialism; its paramount objective will be education in its broadest and purest sense."


title: Kwame Nkrumah

text: As per the 1965 Instrument of Incorporation of the Ghana Broadcasting Corporation, the Minister of Information and Broadcasting had "powers of direction" over the media, and the President had the power "at any time, if he is satisfied that it is in the national interest to do so, take over the control and management of the affairs or any part of the functions of the Corporation," hiring, firing, reorganizing, and making other commands at will.


title: Kwame Nkrumah

text: Radio programmes, designed in part to reach non-reading members of the public, were a major focus of the Ghana Broadcasting Corporation. In 1961, the GBC formed an external service broadcasting in English, French, Arabic, Swahili, Portuguese and Hausa. Using four 100-kilowatt transmitters and two 250-kilowatt transmitters, the GBC External Service broadcast 110 hours of Pan-Africanist programming to Africa and Europe each week.


title: Kwame Nkrumah

text: The Gold Coast had been among the wealthiest and most socially advanced areas in Africa, with schools, railways, hospitals, social security, and an advanced economy.


title: Kwame Nkrumah

text: Nkrumah attempted to rapidly industrialize Ghana's economy. He reasoned that if Ghana escaped the colonial trade system by reducing dependence on foreign capital, technology, and material goods, it could become truly independent.


title: Kwame Nkrumah

text: After the Ten Year Development Plan, Nkrumah brought forth the Second Development Plan in 1959. This plan called for the development of manufacturing: 600 factories producing 100 varieties of product.


title: Kwame Nkrumah

text: The Statutory Corporations Act, passed in November 1959 and revised in 1961 and 1964, created the legal framework for public corporations, which included state enterprises. This law placed the country's major corporations under the direction of government ministers. The State Enterprises Secretariat office was located in Flagstaff House and under the direct control of the president.


title: Kwame Nkrumah

text: After visiting the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe and China in 1961, Nkrumah apparently became still more convinced of the need for state control of the economy.


title: Kwame Nkrumah

text: Nkrumah's time in office began successfully: forestry, fishing, and cattle-breeding expanded, production of cocoa (Ghana's main export) doubled, and modest deposits of bauxite and gold were exploited more effectively. The construction of a dam on the River Volta (launched in 1961) provided water for irrigation and hydro-electric power, which produced enough electricity for the towns and for a new aluminum plant. Government funds were also provided for village projects in which local people built schools and roads, while free health care and education were introduced.


title: Kwame Nkrumah

text: A Seven-Year Plan introduced in 1964 focused on further industrialization, emphasizing domestic substitutes for common imports, modernization of the building materials industry, machine making, electrification and electronics.


title: Kwame Nkrumah

text: Nkrumah's advocacy of industrial development, with help of longtime friend and Minister of Finance, Komla Agbeli Gbedema, led to the Volta River Project: the construction of a hydroelectric power plant, the Akosombo Dam on the Volta River in eastern Ghana. The Volta River Project was the centrepiece of Nkrumah's economic programme. On 20 February 1958, he told the National Assembly: "It is my strong belief that the Volta River Project provides the quickest and most certain method of leading us towards economic independence." Ghana invoked assistance from the United States, Israel and the World Bank in constructing the dam.


title: Kwame Nkrumah

text: Kaiser Aluminum agreed to build the dam for Nkrumah, but restricted what could be produced using the power generated. Nkrumah borrowed money to build the dam, and placed Ghana in debt. To finance the debt, he raised taxes on the cocoa farmers in the south. This accentuated regional differences and jealousy. The dam was completed and opened by Nkrumah amidst global publicity on 22 January 1966.


title: Kwame Nkrumah

text: Nkrumah initiated the Ghana Nuclear Reactor Project in 1961, created the Ghana Atomic Energy Commission in 1963, and in 1964 laid the first stone in the building of an atomic energy facility.


title: Kwame Nkrumah

text: In 1954 the world price of cocoa rose from £150 to £450 per ton. Rather than allowing cocoa farmers to keep the windfall, Nkrumah appropriated the increased revenue via central government levies, then invested the capital into various national development projects. This policy alienated one of the major constituencies that helped him come to power.


title: Kwame Nkrumah

text: Prices continued to fluctuate. In 1960 one ton of cocoa sold for £250 in London. By August 1965 this price had dropped to £91, one fifth of its value ten years before. The quick price decline caused the government's reliance on the reserves and forced farmers to take a portion of their earning in bonds.


title: Kwame Nkrumah

text: Nkrumah actively promoted a policy of Pan-Africanism from the beginning of his presidency. This entailed the creation of a series of new international organizations, which held their inaugural meetings in Accra. These were:


title: Kwame Nkrumah

text: Meanwhile, Ghana withdrew from colonial organizations including West Africa Airways Corporation, the West African Currency Board, the West African Cocoa Research Institute, and the West African Court of Appeal.


title: Kwame Nkrumah

text: In the Year of Africa, 1960, Nkrumah negotiated the creation of a Union of African States, a political alliance between Ghana, Guinea, and Mali. Immediately there formed a women's group called Women of the Union of African States.


title: Kwame Nkrumah

text: Nkrumah was a leading figure in the short-lived Casablanca Group of African leaders, which sought to achieve pan-African unity and harmony through deep political, economic, and military integration of the continent in the early 1960s prior to the establishment of the Organization of African Unity (OAU).


title: Kwame Nkrumah

text: Nkrumah was instrumental in the creation of the OAU in Addis Ababa in 1963. He aspired to create a united military force, the African High Command, which Ghana would substantially lead, and committed to this vision in Article 2 of the 1960 Republican Constitution:"In the confident expectation of an early surrender of sovereignty to a union of African states and territories, the people now confer on Parliament the power to provide for the surrender of the whole or any part of the sovereignty of Ghana."


title: Kwame Nkrumah

text: He was also a proponent of the United Nations, but critical of the Great Powers' ability to control it.


title: Kwame Nkrumah

text: Nkrumah opposed entry of African states into the Common Market of the European Economic Community, a status given to many former French colonies and considered by Nigeria. Instead, Nkrumah advocated, in a speech given on 7 April 1960,


title: Kwame Nkrumah

text: an African common market, a common currency area and the development of communications of all kinds to allow the free flow of goods and services. International capital can be attracted to such viable economic areas, but it would not be attracted to a divided and balkanized Africa, with each small region engaged in senseless and suicidal economic competition with its neighbours.


title: Kwame Nkrumah

text: In 1956, Ghana took control of the Royal West African Frontier Force (RWAFF), Gold Coast Regiment, from the British War Office. This force had formerly been deployed to quell internal dissent, and occasionally to fight in wars: most recently, in World War II, against the Japanese in India and Burma. The most senior officers in this force were British, and, although training of African officers began in 1947, only 28 of 212 officers in December 1956 were indigenous Africans. The British officers still received British salaries, which vastly exceeded those allotted to their Ghanaian counterparts. Concerned about a possible military coup, Nkrumah delayed the placement of African officers in top leadership roles.


title: Kwame Nkrumah

text: Nkrumah quickly established the Ghanaian Air Force, acquiring 14 "Beaver" airplanes from Canada and setting up a flight school with British instructors. "Otters", "Caribou," and "Chipmunks" were to follow. Ghana also obtained four Ilyushin-18 aircraft from the Soviet Union. Preparation began in April 1959 with assistance from India and Israel.


title: Kwame Nkrumah

text: The Ghanaian Navy received two inshore minesweepers with 40mm and 20mm guns, the "Afadzato" and the "Yogaga", from Britain in December 1959. It subsequently received the "Elmina" and the "Komenda", seaward defence boats with 40-millimetre guns. The Navy's flagship, and training ship, was the "Achimota", a British yacht constructed during World War II. In 1961, the Navy ordered two 600-ton corvettes, the "Keta" and "Kromantse," from Vosper & Company and received them in 1967. It also procured four Soviet patrol boats. Naval officers were trained at the Britannia Royal Naval College in Dartmouth. The Ghanaian military budget rose each year, from $9.35 million (US dollars) in 1958 to $47 million in 1965.


title: Kwame Nkrumah

text: The first international deployment of the Ghanaian armed forces was to Congo (Léopoldville/Kinshasa), where Ghanaian troops were airlifted in 1960 at the beginning of the Congo crisis. One week after Belgian troops occupied the lucrative mining province of Katanga, Ghana dispatched more than a thousand of its own troops to join a United Nations force. The use of British officers in this context was politically unacceptable, and this event occasioned a hasty transfer of officer positions to Ghanaians. The Congo war was long and difficult. On 19 January 1961 the Third Infantry Battalion mutinied. On 28 April 1961, 43 men were massacred in a surprise attack by the Congolese army.


title: Kwame Nkrumah

text: Ghana also gave military support to rebels fighting against Ian Smith's white-minority government in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), which had unilaterally declared independence from Britain in 1965.


title: Kwame Nkrumah

text: In 1961, Nkrumah went on tour through Eastern Europe, proclaiming solidarity with the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China. Nkrumah's clothing changed to the Chinese-supplied Mao suit.


title: Kwame Nkrumah

text: In February 1966, while Nkrumah was on a state visit to North Vietnam and China, his government was overthrown in a violent "coup d'état" led by the national military and police forces, with backing from the civil service. The conspirators, led by Joseph Arthur Ankrah, named themselves the National Liberation Council and ruled as a military government for three years. Nkrumah did not learn of the coup until he arrived in China. After the coup, Nkrumah stayed in Beijing for four days and Premier Zhou Enlai treated him with courtesy.


title: Kwame Nkrumah

text: Nkrumah alluded to American involvement in the coup in his 1969 memoir "Dark Days in Ghana"; he may have based this conclusion on documents shown to him by the KGB. In 1978 John Stockwell, former Chief of the Angola Task Force of the CIA turned critic, wrote that agents at the CIA's Accra station "maintained intimate contact with the plotters as a coup was hatched". Afterward, "inside CIA headquarters the Accra station was given full, if unofficial credit for the eventual coup. ...None of this was adequately reflected in the agency's written records." Later the same year, Seymour Hersh of "The New York Times", citing "first hand intelligence sources," defended Stockwell's account, claiming that "many CIA operatives in Africa considered the agency's role in the overthrow of Dr. Nkrumah to have been pivotal." These claims have never been verified.


title: Kwame Nkrumah

text: Following the coup, Ghana realigned itself internationally, cutting its close ties to Guinea and the Eastern Bloc, accepting a new friendship with the Western Bloc, and inviting the International Monetary Fund and World Bank to take a leading role in managing the economy. With this reversal, accentuated by the expulsion of immigrants and a new willingness to negotiate with apartheid South Africa, Ghana lost a good deal of its stature in the eyes of African nationalists.


title: Kwame Nkrumah

text: In assessing Nkrumah's legacy, Edward Luttwak argued that he was undone by the growth of political consciousness and his inability to repress potential opponents:


title: Kwame Nkrumah

text: Nkrumah never returned to Ghana, but he continued to push for his vision of African unity. He lived in exile in Conakry, Guinea, as the guest of President Ahmed Sékou Touré, who made him honorary co-president of the country. Nkrumah read, wrote, corresponded, gardened, and entertained guests. Despite retirement from public office, he felt that he was still threatened by Western intelligence agencies. 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 abduction and assassination. In failing 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 while in Romania.


title: Kwame Nkrumah

text: 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, Ghana.


title: Kwame Nkrumah

text: Over his lifetime, Nkrumah was awarded honorary doctorates by many universities including Lincoln University (Pennsylvania), Moscow State University (USSR), Cairo University (Egypt), Jagiellonian University (Poland) and Humboldt University (East Germany).


title: Kwame Nkrumah

text: In 2000, he was voted African Man of the Millennium by listeners to the BBC World Service, being described by the BBC as a "Hero of Independence", and an "International symbol of freedom as the leader of the first black African country to shake off the chains of colonial rule."According to intelligence documents released by the U.S. Department of State's Office of the Historian, "Nkrumah was doing more to undermine [U.S. government] interests than any other black African."


title: Kwame Nkrumah

text: In September 2009, President John Atta Mills declared 21 September (the 100th anniversary of Kwame Nkrumah's birth) to be Founders' Day, a statutory holiday in Ghana to celebrate the legacy of Kwame Nkrumah. In April 2019, President Akufo-Addo approved the Public Holidays (Amendment) Act 2019 which changed 21 September from Founders' Day to Kwame Nkrumah Memorial Day.


title: Kwame Nkrumah

text: He generally took a non-aligned Marxist perspective on economics, and believed capitalism had malignant effects that were going to stay with Africa for a long time. Although he was clear on distancing himself from the African socialism of many of his contemporaries, Nkrumah argued that socialism was the system that would best accommodate the changes that capitalism had brought, while still respecting African values. He specifically addresses these issues and his politics in a 1967 essay entitled "African Socialism Revisited":


title: Kwame Nkrumah

text: We know that the traditional African society was founded on principles of egalitarianism. In its actual workings, however, it had various shortcomings. Its humanist impulse, nevertheless, is something that continues to urge us towards our all-African socialist reconstruction. We postulate each man to be an end in himself, not merely a means; and we accept the necessity of guaranteeing each man equal opportunities for his development. The implications of this for sociopolitical practice have to be worked out scientifically, and the necessary social and economic policies pursued with resolution. Any meaningful humanism must begin from egalitarianism and must lead to objectively chosen policies for safeguarding and sustaining egalitarianism. Hence, socialism. Hence, also, scientific socialism.


title: Kwame Nkrumah

text: Nkrumah was also best-known politically for his strong commitment to and promotion of pan-Africanism. He was inspired by the writings of black intellectuals such as Marcus Garvey, W. E. B. Du Bois, and George Padmore, and his relationships with them. Much of his understanding and relationship to these men was created during his years in America as a student. Some would argue that his greatest inspiration was Marcus Garvey, although he also had a meaningful relationship with C. L. R. James. Nkrumah looked to these men to craft a general solution to the ills of Africa. To follow in these intellectual footsteps Nkrumah had intended to continue his education in London, but found himself involved in direct activism. Then, motivated by advice from Du Bois, Nkrumah decided to focus on creating peace in Africa. He became a passionate advocate of the "African Personality" embodied in the slogan "Africa for the Africans" earlier popularised by Edward Wilmont Blyden and he viewed political independence as a prerequisite for economic independence. Nkrumah's dedications to pan-Africanism in action attracted these intellectuals to his Ghanaian projects. Many Americans, such as Du Bois and Kwame Ture, moved to Ghana to join him in his efforts. These men are buried there today. His press officer for six years was the Grenadian anticolonialist Sam Morris. Nkrumah's biggest success in this area was his significant influence in the founding of the Organisation of African Unity.


title: Kwame Nkrumah

text: Nkrumah also became a symbol for black liberation in the United States. When in 1958 the Harlem Lawyers Association had an event in Nkrumah's honour, diplomat Ralph Bunche told him:


title: Kwame Nkrumah

text: We salute you, Kwame Nkrumah, not only because you are Prime Minister of Ghana, although this is cause enough. We salute you because you are a true and living representation of our hopes and ideals, of the determination we have to be accepted fully as equal beings, of the pride we have held and nurtured in our African origin, of the freedom of which we know we are capable, of the freedom in which we believe, of the dignity imperative to our stature as men.


title: Kwame Nkrumah

text: In 1961, Nkrumah delivered a speech called "I Speak Of Freedom". During this speech he talked about how "Africa could become one of the greatest forces for good in the world". He mentions how Africa is a land of "vast riches" with mineral resources from that "range from gold and diamonds to uranium and petroleum". Nkrumah says that the reason Africa isn't thriving right now is because the European powers have been taking all the wealth for themselves. If Africa could be independent of European rule, he said, then it could truly flourish and contribute positively to the world. In the ending words of this speech Nkrumah calls his people to action by saying "This is our chance. We must act now. Tomorrow may be too late and the opportunity will have passed, and with it the hope of free Africa's survival". This rallied the nation in a nationalistic movement.


title: Kwame Nkrumah

text: Kwame Nkrumah married Fathia Ritzk, an Egyptian Coptic bank worker and former teacher, on the evening of her arrival in Ghana: New Year's Eve, 1957–1958. Fathia's mother refused to bless their marriage, due to reluctance to see another one of her children leave with a foreign husband.


title: Kwame Nkrumah

text: As a married couple, the Nkrumah family had three children: Gamal (born 1959), Samia (born 1960), and Sekou (born 1963). Gamal is a newspaper journalist, while Samia and Sekou are politicians. Nkrumah also has another son, Francis, a paediatrician (born 1962). There appears to be another son, Onsy Anwar Nathan Kwame Nkrumah, born to an Egyptian mother and an additional daughter, Elizabeth. Onsy's claim to be Nkrumah's son is disputed by Nkrumah's other children.


title: Kwame Nkrumah

text: In the 2010 book "The Other Wes Moore," Nkrumah, during his time in the United States, is noted to have served as a mentor to the author's grandfather for several months upon the immigration of the author's family into the country.


title: Kwame Nkrumah

text: Nkrumah is played by Danny Sapani in the Netflix television series "The Crown" (season 2, episode 8 "Dear Mrs Kennedy"). The show's portrayal of the historical significance of the Queen's visit to Ghana and dance with Nkrumah has been described as exaggerated in one source interviewing Nat Nuno-Amarteifio, later mayor of Accra, who was a teenage student at the time.


title: Kwame Nkrumah

text: "African's Black Star: The Legacy of Kwame Nkrumah" is a 2011 film about the rise and fall of this colonial rebellion leader.


title: Kwame Nkrumah

text: A golden statue of Nkrumah is a center piece in Ghanaian rapper Serious Klein's 2021 video "Straight Outta Pandemic".


title: Formula 1: Drive to Survive

text: Formula 1: Drive to Survive is a documentary series produced in a collaboration between Netflix and Formula One to give a behind-the-scenes look at the drivers and races of the Formula One World Championship.


title: Formula 1: Drive to Survive

text: The first season covering the 2018 World Championship premiered on 8 March 2019, the second season covering the 2019 World Championship premiered on 28 February 2020, and the third season covering the 2020 World Championship premiered on 19 March 2021. A fourth season covering the 2021 World Championship was premiered on 11 March 2022. On 5 May 2022, the series was renewed for a fifth and a sixth season.


title: Formula 1: Drive to Survive

text: The ten-part series is the "first to truly immerse the audience inside the cockpits, the paddock and the lives of the key players in Formula 1". The series covers the 2018 Formula One World Championship and has "unparalleled and exclusive access to the world's fastest drivers, team principals and owners, as well as Formula 1's own management team".


title: Formula 1: Drive to Survive

text: The ten-part series covers the 2019 Formula One World Championship and included every team, including Ferrari and Mercedes who had not allowed Netflix to cover their teams in the first season. The second season "revisit[ed] Daniel Ricciardo at Renault, follow[ed] Pierre Gasly's emotional rollercoaster of a year, and cast a spotlight on the Belgian Grand Prix weekend, which was blackened by the death of Formula 2 driver Anthoine Hubert during the feature race".


title: Formula 1: Drive to Survive

text: The third season of the show, covering the 2020 Formula One World Championship, premiered on 19 March 2021 and continued some drivers' stories from the previous season, such as Daniel Ricciardo's dissatisfaction at Renault and Pierre Gasly's attempts to regain his lost seat at Red Bull. It also covered the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the season, Scuderia Ferrari's struggle to remain competitive following the power unit controversy of the previous year, and Romain Grosjean's serious crash at the Bahrain Grand Prix.


title: Formula 1: Drive to Survive

text: Season 4 which documents the 2021 Formula One World Championship premiered on Netflix on 11 March 2022. This season documents the fierce title battle of that season between seven-time champion Lewis Hamilton and Dutch driver Max Verstappen.


title: Formula 1: Drive to Survive

text: On 24 March 2018, Formula One announced that Netflix had commissioned a ten episode docu-series giving an exclusive behind the scenes look at the 2018 Formula One World Championship. On 24 July 2019, Formula One announced that a second season would premiere in 2020 covering the 2019 Formula One World Championship, involving all 10 teams.


title: Formula 1: Drive to Survive

text: The series is executively produced by James Gay-Rees and Paul Martin for the production company, Box to Box Films. Sophie Todd is the production's showrunner.


title: Formula 1: Drive to Survive

text: Gay-Rees subsequently went on to reveal to "The Fast Lane Podcast" that "Drive to Survive" had originally been conceived as a series revolving solely around Red Bull Racing before it evolved into a series about F1 in general.


title: Formula 1: Drive to Survive

text: Filming began for the 2020 season in March but was suspended until July due to the COVID-19 pandemic.


title: Formula 1: Drive to Survive

text: The trailer for the first season was released on 20 February 2019, and on 8 March 2019 the series premiered on Netflix.


title: Formula 1: Drive to Survive

text: The trailer for the second season was released on 17 February 2020, and the season premiered on Netflix on 28 February 2020.


title: Formula 1: Drive to Survive

text: The trailer for the third season was released on 19 February 2021, and the season premiered on Netflix on 19 March 2021.


title: Formula 1: Drive to Survive

text: The trailer for the fourth season was released on 28 February 2022, and the season premiered on Netflix on 11 March 2022. Between 6 March 2022 and 20 March 2022, the series was watched for 57.03 million hours according to Netflix's top 10 list.


title: Formula 1: Drive to Survive

text: The show has received recognition for the additional insight it offers fans, and is credited with attracting new audiences (particularly American) to the sport. The condensing of season-long themes into single-episode narratives has drawn praise for adapting "the natural drama of a racing season into a narrative that can encourage a fan to tune into the real thing."


title: Formula 1: Drive to Survive

text: However, "Drive to Survive" has been criticized for including fake or misplaced commentary and team radios, staging certain scenes, placing undue importance on test and practice sessions, and over-dramatizing or misrepresenting certain events and relationships within the Formula One paddock. The continued criticism from both audiences and drivers led to discussions between Netflix and team managers and between Formula One and drivers.


title: Formula 1: Drive to Survive

text: Max Verstappen notably boycotted participating in interviews during seasons 2, 3, and 4 due to him believing that the show dramatized some drivers by portraying them as villians and that the show manufactured fake rivalries. Though he will reportedly reappear in Season 5 after he talked to the people in charge of running "Drive to Survive".


title: Formula 1: Drive to Survive

text: In 2020, a version of "Drive to Survive" was released on F1 TV based around the 2019 Formula 2 Championship, called "". Subsequent second and third seasons were produced, each covering the 2020 Formula 2 Championship and the 2021 Formula 2 Championship, premiering in 2021 and 2022 respectively.


title: Allu Aravind

text: Allu Aravind (born 10 January 1949) is an Indian film producer and distributor in Telugu cinema under his banner Geetha Arts. He co-owns the Indian Super League club "Kerala Blasters FC".


title: Allu Aravind

text: A part of the Allu–Konidela family, Aravind is the son of actor Allu Ramalingaiah. His sons are Allu Venkatesh, Allu Arjun and Allu Sirish. He is the maternal uncle of Ram Charan and brother-in-law of Chiranjeevi. Some of his notable works as a producer are "Vijetha" (1985), "Master" (1997), "Ninaithen Vandhai" (Tamil) (1998), "Mangalyam Tantunanena" (Kannada) (1998), "Annayya" (2000), "Pellam Oorelithe" (2003), "Gangotri" (2003), "Johnny" (2003), "Bunny" (2005), "Jalsa" (2008), "Ghajini" (2008), "Magadheera" (2009), "Darling" (2015) (Tamil), "Sarrainodu" and "Dhruva" (both in 2016). Apart from film production Geetha Arts has been into film distribution network as well. GA2 Pictures is an indie production arm of Geetha Arts which they produce small and medium budgeted movies. He won two Nandi Awards and one Filmfare Award. He is also a founder and co-owner of aha, a Telugu-streaming over-the-top service.


title: Allu Aravind

text: Allu Aravind is born to Allu Ramalingaiah, former Telugu film actor, in Madras state of India. His son Allu Arjun is a Telugu film actor.His sister Surekha Konidala is a wife of famous Telugu film actor Chiranjeevi.


title: Allu Aravind

text: He has made many films in the last few years. "Jalsa", a Telugu film starring Pawan Kalyan grossed $10 million at the box office. Itof 2008 and the second highest grosser amongst Telugu films. Their next – "Ghajini", a Bollywood movie starring Aamir Khan grossed over $45 million at box office, making it the highest grossing Indian film. The "Magadheera", a big-budget swords and sandal epic that grossed $25 million at the box office. The movie was the highest-grossing Telugu film of 2009.


title: Allu Aravind

text: Allu Aravind is one of the minority stake holders of the football club "Kerala Blasters FC" that competes in the Indian Super League, the top tier of Indian Football. He is a key person and co-owner of aha, a Telugu-streaming over-the-top service.


title: George Segal

text: George Segal Jr. (February 13, 1934 – March 23, 2021) was an American actor. He became popular in the 1960s and 1970s for playing both dramatic and comedic roles. After first rising to prominence with roles in acclaimed films such as "Ship of Fools" (1965) and "King Rat" (1965), he co-starred in the classic drama "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" (1966).


title: George Segal

text: Through the next decade and a half, Segal consistently starred in notable films across a variety of genres including "The Quiller Memorandum" (1966), "The St. Valentine's Day Massacre" (1967), "No Way to Treat a Lady" (1968), "Where's Poppa?" (1970), "The Owl and the Pussycat" (1970), "The Hot Rock" (1972), "Blume in Love" (1973), "A Touch of Class" (1973), "California Split" (1974), "The Duchess and the Dirtwater Fox" (1976), and "Fun with Dick and Jane" (1977). He was one of the first American film actors to rise to leading man status with an unchanged Jewish surname, helping pave the way for other major actors of his generation. Later in his career, he appeared in supporting roles in films such as "Look Who's Talking" (1989), "For the Boys" (1991), "The Mirror Has Two Faces" (1996), "Flirting with Disaster" (1996), and "Love & Other Drugs" (2010).


title: George Segal

text: He was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance in "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" and won two Golden Globe Awards, including the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor in a Motion Picture Musical or Comedy for his performance in "A Touch of Class".


title: George Segal

text: On television, he was best known for his regular roles in two popular sitcoms, playing Jack Gallo on "Just Shoot Me!" (1997–2003) and Albert "Pops" Solomon on "The Goldbergs" (2013–2021).


title: George Segal

text: Segal was also an accomplished banjo player. He released three albums and performed with the instrument in several of his acting roles and on late-night television.


title: George Segal

text: George Segal Jr. was born in New York City, the youngest of four children to Fannie Blanche Segal ("née" Bodkin) and George Segal Sr., a malt and hop agent. He spent much of his childhood in Great Neck, New York. All four of Segal's grandparents were Russian-Jewish immigrants, and his maternal grandparents changed their surname from Slobodkin to Bodkin. A paternal great-grandfather ran for governor of Massachusetts as a socialist. His oldest brother, John, worked in the hops brokerage business and was an innovator in the cultivation of new hop varieties; the middle brother, Fred, was a screenwriter; and his sister Greta died of pneumonia before he was born.


title: George Segal

text: Segal's family was Jewish, but he was raised in a secular household. When asked if he had had a bar mitzvah, Segal stated:


title: George Segal

text: I'm afraid not. I went to a Passover Seder at Groucho Marx's once and he kept saying, "When do we get to the wine?" So that's my [Jewish] experience. I went to [a friend's] bar mitzvah, and that was the only time I was in Temple Beth Shalom. [Jewish life] wasn't happening that much at the time. People's car tires were slashed in front of the temple. I was once kicked down a flight of stairs by some kids from [the local parochial school].


title: George Segal

text: Segal became interested in acting at the age of nine, when he saw Alan Ladd in "This Gun for Hire". "I knew the revolver and the trench coat were an illusion and I didn't care," said Segal. "I liked the sense of adventure and control." He also started playing the banjo at a young age, later stating: "I started off with the ukulele when I was a kid in Great Neck. A friend had a red Harold Teen model; it won my heart. When I got to high school, I realized you couldn't play in a band with a ukulele, so I moved on to the four-string banjo."


title: George Segal

text: When his father died in 1947, Segal moved to New York City with his mother. He graduated from George School, a Quaker boarding school in Pennsylvania, in 1951 and attended Haverford College. He graduated from Columbia College of Columbia University in 1955 with a Bachelor of Arts in performing arts and drama. He played banjo at Haverford and also at Columbia, where he played with a dixieland jazz band that had several different names. When he booked a gig, he would bill the group as Bruno Lynch and his Imperial Jazz Band. The group, which later settled on the name Red Onion Jazz Band, played at Segal's first wedding.


title: George Segal

text: Segal served in the United States Army during the Korean War. While there, he played in a band called Corporal Bruno's Sad Sack Six.