SAY IT LOUD! I AM BLACK AND PROUD!

SAY IT

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Say it loud!

How Komla Gbedemah used the music of the late James Brown to captivate Ghana during the 1969 elections.

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• • Cameron Duodu
  • guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 27 December 2006 15.30 GMT
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When the "Gold Coast" was struggling for its independence from Britain (which it achieved under the name "Ghana" in March 1957) the second most important leader in the party that was in the vanguard of the struggle, the Convention People's Party (CPP) founded by Dr Kwame Nkrumah, was Komla Gbedemah. [He later dropped the "h" to become plain Gbedema.]

After independence, Gbedemah became minister of finance and it was while he was holding that position that he visited the United States in October 1957. Travelling across the country, he pulled up at a Howard Johnson's restaurant in Dover, Delaware, and asked for an orange juice for himself and his African-American companion, [the late Bill Sutherland.] They were refused service because they were black.

Gbedemah had been editor of Nkrumah's crusading newspaper, the Accra Evening News and so knew the ropes about making political capital out of events. His companion, Bill Sutherland, had long been a campaigner in civil rights and Quaker causes in the US. So they immediately telephoned the story to a news distribution organisation and it was published across the US in the next morning's newspapers.

President Dwight Eisenhower, who was aware that America's racism was one of the weakest chinks in its armour, in its "Cold War" contest with the Soviet bloc for the world's hearts and minds, read the story and decided that he must rectify the harm done to America's image by the restaurant incident. So he invited Gbedemah to come and have breakfast in the White House. He entrusted the invitation to (then) Vice-President Richard Nixon, who had represented the United States at Ghana's independence celebrations in March 1957. Out of that meeting came President Eisenhower's decision to support Ghana in its effort to build a dam at Akosombo to provide hydroelectric power.

Gbedemah never forgot the humiliation he had suffered in America, and when, in 1969 - three years after the overthrow of Kwame Nkrumah (with whom he'd broken in 1961) - he started his own political party, the National Alliance of Liberals (NAL), he chose as its slogan:

"Say It Loud! I am black and proud!"

The slogan had been crafted out of a popular song by the late James Brown: "Say it loud, (I'm black and I'm proud)" and most people in Ghana had heard it, especially the young. So everywhere Gbedemah's party went campaigning, James Brown's words went with him: his propagandists would shout into the loudhailers: "Say it loud!" And the crowd would roar black, "I am black and proud!" Then the propaganda vans would put James Brown's record on, and everyone would have quite a jig in the hot sun.

The James Brown connection obtained for Gbedemah, the sobriquet, "Afro-Gbede", and instant recognition for his party. Indeed, if decibel levels alone could decide the outcome of an election, Gbedemah would have won the September 1969 election hands down. As it was, his party was defeated by the Progress Party, led by Dr Kofi Busia. But it did come second.

Even today, thanks to James Brown's catchy tune, many Ghanaians of a certain age still remember the slogan of "Afro-Gbede" and his party. But I doubt whether the same can be said of the party of the winner, Dr Busia!