Literature Review
Introduction
Nkrumah's Speeches
Nkrumah's
Written Works
-Overview
--Early Works
--Mission Statements
--OAU Addresses
--Key Books
--Role of Intellectuals
--African Values
--Milne Compilation
-Theoretical works
-Autobiographies
Testimony of Key
African Revolutionaries
Primary Sources
Secondary Sources
Tertiary Sources
Nkrumah's Written Works

Early Works
 

The following excerpted ideological statement appeared in the African Interpreter, the organ of the African Students Association in the USA and Canada, an organization in which Nkrumah served as the president during 1943.
The future of our country, like the future of most countries throughout the world, lies at stake today.  Only action will remove the threat to oppressor and oppressed alike.  The cause of Africans everywhere is one with the cause of all peoples of African descent throughout the world.

Barely twenty-five years ago the statesmen of the world thought that the catastrophe of 1914-18 would never happen again.  But today the Muse of History is singing another song.  War has drowned the world again in another blood-bath, in misery, ruin and devastation, on a scale undreamed of in the course of human history.  And the paradox of it all is that those who are suppose to be the torchbearers of modern civilization are responsible for this tragedy.

In the circumstances which have plunged the world in another holacaust, [sic] it behooves Africans and people of African heritage to recognize and assume the responsibility which is theirs in these monstrous times.  Unity, Freedom, Independence, Democracy—these should be our watchwords, our ideals, and not the barbaric totalitarianism of the Fascists or the perverted colonial "democracy" of the imperialists.

The time has passed for speculation and conjecture.  These are times which speak only in terms of deeds and action.  We must rise and join hands together, for in unity alone can we find our strength and future.  This is the time to remember Mother Africa and build for her a glorious and independent futuer. [sic]
Let us therefore arm ourselves with the sword of knowledge—concrete knowledge—and return to our specific places in Africa, to organize and build great works, great projects, and a great nation. 
(The African Interpreter:  Organ of the African students Association of the United States and Canada vol. 1 no. 4.  Summer 1943. p. 5) 
The themes of unity and responsibility remained constant in Nkrumah's approach to organized agency.  We can see even at this early stage his astute awareness of the need for a Pan-African scope to the solution of the problems facing African people.  Where themes mentioned appear consistently in the other organizations Nkrumah worked with then he can at least be seen as a courier if not the initiator of such ideas.