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George Padmore

George Padmore (28 June 1903 – 23 September 1959), born Malcolm Ivan Meredith Nurse, was a leading Pan-Africanist, journalist, and author. He left his native Trinidad in 1924 to study medicine in the United States, where he also joined the Communist Party.

George Padmore
Born
Malcolm Ivan Meredith Nurse

(1903-06-28)28 June 1903
Died23 September 1959(1959-09-23) (aged 56)
London, England
Resting placeChristiansborg Castle, Ghana
EducationSt Mary's College
Alma materFisk University
Howard University
Occupation(s)Journalist, author, pan-Africanist
Notable workHow Britain Rules Africa (1936);
Africa and World Peace (1937);
Pan-Africanism or Communism? The Coming Struggle for Africa (1956)

From there he moved to the Soviet Union, where he was active in the party, and working on African independence movements. He also worked for the party in Germany but left after the rise of Nazism in the 1930s. In 1935, the USSR made a decisive shift in foreign policy: Britain and France, colonial powers with colonies in Africa, were classified as "democratic-imperialisms"—a lower priority than the category of "fascist-imperialist" powers, in which Japan and Germany fell. This shift fell into direct contradiction with Padmore's prioritization of African independence, as Germany and Japan had no colonies in Africa. Padmore broke instantly with the Kremlin, but continued to support socialism.[1]

Padmore lived for a time in France, before settling in London. Toward the end of his life he moved to Accra, Ghana, where he helped shape the politics of Kwame Nkrumah and the Convention People's Party.[2]

Biography edit

Early years edit

Malcolm Ivan Meredith Nurse, better known by his pseudonym George Padmore, was born on 28 June 1903 in Arouca District, Tacarigua,[3][4] Trinidad, then part of the British West Indies. His paternal great-grandfather was an Asante warrior who was taken prisoner and sold into slavery at Barbados, where his grandfather was born.[5] His father, James Hubert Alfonso Nurse, was a local schoolmaster who had married Anna Susanna Symister of Antigua, a naturalist.[3]

Nurse attended Tranquillity School in Port of Spain, before going to St Mary's College for two years (1914 and 1915). He transferred to the Pamphylian High School, graduating from there in 1918. After that he worked for several years as a reporter with the Trinidad Publishing Company.[6]

In late 1924, he travelled to the United States to take up medical studies at Fisk University, a historically black college in Tennessee. He had recently married, on 10 September that year,[7] and his wife Julia Semper would later join him in America. She left behind their daughter Blyden, who was born in 1925 (and died in 2012).[8] According to Nurse's instruction, she was named in honour of the African nationalist Edward Blyden of Liberia.[9][10] Nurse subsequently registered at New York University but soon transferred to Howard University.

Communist Party edit

During his college years in the US, Nurse became involved with the Workers (Communist) Party (CPUSA). When engaged in party business, he adopted the name George Padmore (compounding the Christian name of his father-in-law, Constabulary Sergeant-Major George Semper, and the surname of the friend who had been his best man, Errol Padmore).[11]

Padmore officially joined the Communist Party in 1927 (when he was in Washington, DC) and was active in its mass organization targeted to black Americans, the American Negro Labor Congress.[12] In March 1929 he was a fraternal (non-voting) delegate to the 6th National Convention of the CPUSA, held in New York City.[13]

Padmore, an energetic worker and prolific writer, was tapped by Communist Party trade union leader William Z. Foster as a rising star. He was taken to Moscow to deliver a report on the formation of the Trade Union Unity League to the Communist International (Comintern) later in 1929.[12] Following his presentation, Padmore was asked to stay on in Moscow to head the Negro Bureau of the Red International of Labour Unions (Profintern).[12] He was elected to the Moscow City Soviet.

As head of the Profintern's Negro Bureau, Padmore helped to produce pamphlet literature and contributed articles to Moscow's English-language newspaper, the Moscow Daily News.[14] He was also used periodically as a courier of funds from Moscow to various foreign Communist Parties.[15]

As a deputy of the Moscow soviet, Padmore had served on the commission to investigate the [1930 racial] assault on [Robert] Robinson [in Stalingrad].... Even after he had renounced Communism in the mid-1930s, Padmore continued until his death in 1959 to cite the trial of Robinson's assailants as evidence that the USSR was the only country that had effectively eradicated racial discrimination. --Meredith L. Roman, "Robert Robinson (1930s)", in Beatriz Gallotti Mamigonian and Karen Racine (eds), The Human Tradition in the Black Atlantic, 1500–2000, p. 142, Rowman & Littlefield (16 November 2009), ISBN 0742567303.

In July 1930, Padmore was instrumental in organizing an international conference in Hamburg, Germany. It launched a Comintern-backed international organization of black labour organizations called the International Trade Union Committee of Negro Workers (ITUCNW).[15] Padmore lived in Vienna, Austria, during this time, where he edited the monthly publication of the new group, The Negro Worker.[15]

In 1931, Padmore moved to Hamburg and accelerated his writing output, continuing to produce the ITUCNW magazine and writing more than 20 pamphlets in a single year.[15] This German interlude came to an abrupt close by the middle of 1933, however, as the offices of the Negro Worker were ransacked by ultra-nationalist gangs following the Nazi seizure of power.[16] Padmore was deported to England by the German government, while the Comintern placed the ITUCNW and its Negro Worker on hiatus in August 1933.[16]

Disillusioned by what he perceived as the Comintern's flagging support for the cause of the independence of colonial peoples in favour of the Soviet Union's pursuit of diplomatic alliances with the colonial powers, Padmore abruptly severed his connection with the ITUCNW late in the summer of 1933.[16][17] The Comintern's disciplinary body, the International Control Commission (ICC), asked him to explain his unauthorized action. When he refused to do so, the ICC expelled him from the Communist movement on 23 February 1934.[16] A phase of Padmore's political journey was at an end.

As a result of his membership in the Communist Party and working for it in the Soviet Union and Germany, Padmore was barred from re-entry into the United States. He was a non-citizen[13] and the government did not want to admit known communists.[18]

Pan-Africanist edit

Although alienated from Stalinism, Padmore remained a socialist. He sought new ways to work for African independence from imperial rule. Relocating to France, where Garan Kouyaté was an ally from his Comintern days, Padmore began to write a book: How Britain Rules Africa. With the help of former American heiress Nancy Cunard, he found a London agent and, eventually, a publisher (Wishart). It published the book in 1936, the year the publisher became Lawrence and Wishart, known to be sympathetic to communists. Publication of books by black men at that time was rare in the United Kingdom. A Swiss publisher distributed a German translation in Germany.[19]

In 1934 Padmore moved to London, where he became the centre of a community of writers dedicated to pan-Africanism and African independence. His boyhood friend C. L. R. James, also from Trinidad, was already there, writing and publishing. James had started International African Friends of Ethiopia in response to Italy's invasion of Ethiopia. That organization developed into the International African Service Bureau (IASB), which became a centre for African and Caribbean intellectuals' anti-colonial activity. Padmore was chair, the Barbadian trade unionist Chris Braithwaite was its organising secretary, and James edited its periodical, International African Opinion. Ras Makonnen from British Guiana handled the business end.[20] Other key members included Jomo Kenyatta from Kenya and Amy Ashwood Garvey.

As Carol Polsgrove has shown in Ending British Rule in Africa: Writers in a Common Cause, Padmore and his allies in the 1930s and 1940s—among them C. L. R. James, Kenya's Jomo Kenyatta, the Gold Coast's Kwame Nkrumah and South Africa's Peter Abrahams—saw publishing as a strategy for political change. They published small periodicals, which were sometimes seized by authorities when they reached the colonies. They published articles in other people's periodicals, for instance, the Independent Labour Party's New Leader. They published pamphlets. They wrote letters to the editor; and, thanks to the support of publisher Fredric Warburg (of Secker & Warburg), they published books. Warburg brought out Padmore's Africa and World Peace (1937), as well as books by both Kenyatta and James.[21] In a foreword to Africa and World Peace, Labour politician Sir Stafford Cripps wrote: "George Padmore has performed another great service of enlightenment in this book. The facts he discloses so ruthlessly are undoubtedly unpleasant facts, the story which he tells of the colonization of Africa is sordid in the extreme, but both the facts and the story are true. We have, so many of us, been brought up in the atmosphere of 'the white man's burden', and have had our minds clouded and confused by the continued propaganda for imperialism that we may be almost shocked by this bare and courageous exposure of the great myth of the civilizing mission of western democracies in Africa."[22] The Biographical Note on the cover describes Padmore as European correspondent for the Pittsburgh Courier, Gold Coast Spectator, African Morning Post, Panama Tribune, Belize Independent and The Bantu World.

In 1941, Padmore argued that the British Empire should be transformed into "federated commonwealths based upon Socialist principles."[23]

Before World War II, James left for the United States, where he met Kwame Nkrumah, a student from the Gold Coast who studied at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania. James gave Nkrumah a letter of introduction to Padmore.[24] When Nkrumah arrived in London in May 1945 intending to study law, Padmore met him at the station. It was the start of a long alliance. Padmore was then organizing the 1945 Manchester Pan-African Congress (designated the Fifth Pan-African Congress), attended not only by the inner circle of the IASB but also by W. E. B. Du Bois, the American organizer of earlier Pan-African conferences. The Manchester conference helped set the agenda for decolonisation in the post-war period.[25]

Padmore used London as his base for more than two decades. He and Dorothy Pizer, a white English writer and his domestic partner and co-worker, shared a flat that became a center for African nationalists. Padmore maintained connections across the world, sending articles to international newspapers and keeping up a correspondence with American writers and activists W. E. B. Du Bois and Richard Wright. The latter was then living in Paris. At Padmore's urging, Wright travelled to the Gold Coast in 1953 to explore the buildup to independence; he wrote Black Power (1954). Before Wright left the Gold Coast, he gave a confidential report on Nkrumah to the American consul; later he reported on Padmore to the American Embassy in Paris. According to the embassy's account, Wright said that Nkrumah was relying heavily on Padmore as he made plans for independence.[26]

When Wright published Black Power in 1954, Padmore was finishing a book that he hoped would be both a history and blueprint for African independence: Pan-Africanism or Communism? It was his attempt to counter Cold War suspicions in Western nations that the African independence movements were fundamentally communist-inspired.[27]

As independence neared for the Gold Coast, the London community had splintered. In 1956 James had returned from the United States, but Padmore and Pizer referred to him with condescension in letters to Wright.[28] Meanwhile, former Padmore ally Peter Abrahams published a roman à clef entitled A Wreath for Udomo (1956), which contained unflattering portrayals of the members of this London political community. George Padmore was identified by many as the model for the character "Tom Lanwood".[29]

But Padmore's alliance with Nkrumah held firm. From the time of Nkrumah's return to the Gold Coast in 1947 to lead its independence movement, Padmore advised him in long detailed letters. He also wrote dozens of articles for Nkrumah's newspaper, the Accra Evening News, and wrote a history of The Gold Coast Revolution (1953). With Dorothy Pizer (who was a writer and secretary), Padmore encouraged the leader to write his autobiography. Nkrumah published his autobiography in 1957, the year the Gold Coast became independent Ghana.[30] Padmore deputized for Nkrumah as best man when Sir Stafford Cripps' daughter Peggy married the anti-colonialist Joe Appiah, who was one of Nkrumah's closest allies at the time.[31]

Padmore accepted Nkrumah's invitation to move to Ghana, but his time there as Nkrumah's advisor on African affairs was difficult. He was talking with friends about leaving Ghana to settle elsewhere when he returned to London for treatment of cirrhosis of the liver.

Padmore died on 23 September 1959, aged 56, at University College Hospital in London.[32] A few days later, responding to rumours that the activist had been poisoned, his companion Pizer typed out a detailed statement about his death. She said that his liver condition had worsened in the previous nine months, before he sought treatment from a longtime physician friend. Due to his failing liver, he suffered haemorrhages that resulted in his death.[33]

Legacy edit

  • After Padmore's death, Nkrumah paid tribute to him in a radio broadcast: "One day, the whole of Africa will surely be free and united and when the final tale is told, the significance of George Padmore's work will be revealed." In the Pittsburgh Courier, George Schuyler said Padmore's writings had been "an inspiration to the men who dreamed of a free Africa".[34] Padmore's physician friend, Cecil Belfield Clarke, wrote the obituary that ran in The Times, describing Padmore as a writer who wrote books and studied them. Jamaican pan-Africanist and diplomat Dudley Thompson wrote of Padmore in a letter to The Guardian: "He was truly international and the entire colonial world has suffered a loss."[35]
  • After a funeral service at a London crematorium, Padmore's ashes were buried at Christiansborg Castle in Ghana on 4 October 1959.[36][37] The ceremony was broadcast in the US by NBC television.[33] As C. L. R. James wrote,

...eight countries sent delegations to his funeral in London. But it was in Ghana that his ashes were interred and everyone says that in this country, famous for its political demonstrations, never had there been such a turnout as that caused by the death of Padmore. Peasants from far-flung regions who, one might think, had never even heard his name, managed to find their way to Accra to pay a final tribute to the West Indian who spent his life in their service.[36]

Staying on in Accra, Dorothy Pizer wrote a preface for a French edition of Padmore's Pan-Africanism or Communism. She began research for a biography of Padmore. However, as she told Nancy Cunard, she was frustrated by his habit of having destroyed his personal papers and not having talked about his past.

  • The George Padmore Research Library, in the neighbourhood of Ridge, Accra, Ghana, is named after him. Kwame Nkrumah spoke at the opening of the building dedicated to Padmore as a memorial library on 30 June 1961.[38] Nkrumah ranked Padmore as "one of the greatest architects of the African liberation movement ... dedicated to African union and liberty."[39]
  • James, relocated to Port of Spain, Trinidad, wrote a series of articles on Padmore for The Nation. James also began collecting material for a biography but eventually produced only a slim manuscript, "Notes on the Life of George Padmore."[40] For years James tried to publish his book Nkrumah and the Ghana Revolution; the book was published in 1977 (London: Allison and Busby). In it, James omitted any reference to Padmore's own 1953 book on the Gold Coast revolution; his correspondence has numerous references to his idea that Padmore did not understand the revolution.[41]
  • Ras Makonnen, who understood so well the importance of books about the African nationalist movement, published his own intimate account of the London-based community around Padmore, Pan-Africanism from Within (1973). James R. Hooker wrote a biography of Padmore, Black Revolutionary (1967). Padmore is the central figure featured in Carol Polsgrove's Ending British Rule in Africa: Writers in a Common Cause, published in 2009.
  • In 1991, John La Rose founded the George Padmore Institute (GPI), based in North London, with the aim of "continuing the traditions which shaped his life: independent, radical vision and outlook connecting the Caribbean, Africa, Europe, North America and Asia."[42] Educational and cultural activities, including talks and readings, take place at the GPI, which occasionally publishes relevant materials. It is an archive, educational resource and research centre housing materials relating to the black community of Caribbean, African and Asian descent in Britain and continental Europe. La Rose also founded the George Padmore Supplementary School in 1969.[43]
  • On 28 June 2011 – 98 years to the day since Padmore was born – the Nubian Jak Community Trust unveiled a blue plaque at Padmore's former address, 22 Cranleigh Street in the London Borough of Camden,[44] in a ceremony addressed by the High Commissioner of Trinidad & Tobago, the High Commissioner of Ghana, the Mayor of Camden, Selma James, Nina Baden-Semper (related to Padmore's in-laws), and others.[45][46][47][48] According to Cameron Duodu: "Many of the statements and pamphlets, as well as the correspondence with which leaders of the British colonies in Africa combated the policies of the Colonial Office in London, were drafted at the dining table of 22 Cranleigh Street. It was also the venue at which George Padmore organised the 5th Pan-African Conference in Manchester in 1945."[49]
  • George Padmore Road and George Padmore Lane, in Hurlingham, Nairobi, Kenya,[50] are named after him.

Works edit

  • The Life and Struggles of Negro Toilers (London: Red International of Labour Unions Magazine for the International Trade Union Committee of Negro Workers, 1931)
  • Haiti, an American Slave Colony (Centrizdat, 1931)
  • The Negro Workers and the Imperialist War Intervention in the USSR (1931)
  • How Britain Rules Africa (London: Wishart Books, 1936)
  • Africa and World Peace (Foreword by Sir Stafford Cripps; London: Martin Secker and Warburg Ltd, 1937)
  • Hands Off the Protectorates (London: International African Service Bureau, 1938)
  • The White Man's Duty: An Analysis of the Colonial Question in the Light of the Atlantic Charter (with Nancy Cunard) (London: W. H. Allen & Co., 1942)
  • The Voice of Coloured Labour (Speeches and Reports of Colonial Delegates to the World Trade Union Conference, 1945) (editor) (Manchester: Panaf Service, 1945)
  • How Russia Transformed Her Colonial Empire: A Challenge to the Imperialist Powers (in collaboration with Dorothy Pizer) (London: Dennis Dobson, 1946)
  • "History of the Pan-African Congress (Colonial and Coloured Unity: A Programme of Action)" (editor) (1947). Reprinted in Hakim Adi and Marika Sherwood, The 1945 Manchester Pan-African Congress Revisited (London: New Beacon Books, 1995)
  • Africa: Britain's Third Empire (London: Dennis Dobson, 1949)
  • The Gold Coast Revolution: The Struggle of an African People from Slavery to Freedom (London: Dennis Dobson, 1953)
  • Pan-Africanism or Communism? The Coming Struggle for Africa (Foreword by Richard Wright. London: Dennis Dobson, 1956)

Citations edit

  1. ^ C. L. R. James, The Black Jacobins: Toussaint Louverture and the San Domingo Revolution (1963).
  2. ^ Jeffrey Ahlman (2017). Living with Nkrumahism: Nation, State, and Pan-Africanism in Ghana. Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press. p. 14. ISBN 978-0821422939.
  3. ^ a b James R. Hooker, Black Revolutionary: George Padmore's Path from Communism to Pan-Africanism (1967), p. 2.
  4. ^ "George Padmore commemorative plaque", George Padmore Institute, 27 June 2011.
  5. ^ Kevin Kelly Gaines, American Africans in Ghana: Black Expatriates and the Civil Rights Era, UNC Press Books, 2006; p. 27.
  6. ^ Hooker, Black Revolutionary (1967), p. 3.
  7. ^ Bill Schwarz, "Chapter Six: George Padmore", in West Indian Intellectuals in Britain, Manchester University Press, 2003, ISBN 978-0719064746.
  8. ^ Edwin S Wilson, "Blyden-Cowart: George Padmore’s daughter dies, February 3, 2012", Pambazuka News, 9 February 2012.
  9. ^ Hooker, Black Revolutionary (1967), pp. 4–5.
  10. ^ Cameron Duodu, "Edward Wilmot Blyden, Grandfather of African Emancipation", Cameron Duodu Blogspot, 8 July 2011.
  11. ^ Hooker, Black Revolutionary (1967), p. 6.
  12. ^ a b c Mark Solomon, The Cry was Unity: Communists and African-Americans, 1917–1936, Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1998; p. 60.
  13. ^ a b Russian State Archive for Socio-Political History (RGASPI), Moscow, fond 515, opis 1, delo 1600, list 33. Available on microfilm as "Files of the Communist Party of the USA in the Comintern Archives," IDC Publishers, reel 122.
  14. ^ Solomon, The Cry Was Unity, pp. 177–78.
  15. ^ a b c d Solomon, The Cry Was Unity, p. 178.
  16. ^ a b c d Solomon, The Cry Was Unity, p. 179.
  17. ^ George Padmore, "An Open Letter to Earl Browder", The Crisis, October 1935, p. 302.
  18. ^ Solomon, The Cry Was Unity, p. 177.
  19. ^ Carol Polsgrove, Ending British Rule in Africa: Writers in a Common Cause (2009), pp. 1–15.
  20. ^ Polsgrove, Ending British Rule, pp. 25, 29–37.
  21. ^ Polsgrove, Ending British Rule, pp. 23–42.
  22. ^ Sir Stafford Cripps KC, MP, "Foreword", Africa and World Peace (1937), p. ix.
  23. ^ Polsgrove, Carol (2012). Ending British Rule in Africa: Writers in a Common Cause. Manchester University Press. p. 58. ISBN 978-0-7190-8901-5.
  24. ^ Ken Lawrence, "Padmore and CLR James". 2008-05-09 at the Wayback Machine
  25. ^ Polsgrove, Ending British Rule, pp. 45, 70, 75.
  26. ^ Polsgrove, Ending British Rule, pp. 125–27.
  27. ^ Polsgrove, Ending British Rule, p. 145.
  28. ^ Polsgrove, Ending British Rule, p. 130.
  29. ^ Polsgrove, Ending British Rule, pp. 132–36.
  30. ^ Polsgrove, Ending British Rule, pp. 151–54.
  31. ^ Cameron Duodu, "Peggy Appiah" (obituary), The Guardian, 6 March 2006.
  32. ^ "George Padmore", Making Britain, The Open University.
  33. ^ a b Polsgrove, Ending British Rule, pp. 162–63.
  34. ^ George S. Schuyler, "Views and Reviews", The Pittsburgh Courier, 31 October 1959, p. 12.
  35. ^ Dudley J. Thompson, "Mr. George Padmore", The Guardian, 9 October 1959, p. 2.
  36. ^ a b Christophe Wondji, "A Tribute to George Padmore, A Great Pan-Africanist", New Afrikan 77, 26 January 2014.
  37. ^ "George Padmore" 14 December 2010 at the Wayback Machine, Caribbean Community (Caricom) Secretariat.
  38. ^ "George Padmore Library".
  39. ^ Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Emmanuel Akyeampong, Steven J. Niven (eds), "George Padmore", in Dictionary of African Biography, Vols 1–6, OUP USA, 2012, p. 75.
  40. ^ Polsgrove, Ending British Rule, pp. 163–65.
  41. ^ Polsgrove, Ending British Rule, pp. 155–56.
  42. ^ "Who was George Padmore?". George Padmore Institute. Retrieved 7 October 2020.
  43. ^ John La Rose, "Life experience with Britain" 20 February 2005 at the Wayback Machine, Chronicle World - Changing Black Britain.
  44. ^ Dan Carrier (28 October 2021). "The flat that changed history". Camden New Journal.
  45. ^ "Anti-colonial campaigner commemorated with plaque", BBC News London, 28 June 2011.
  46. ^ "BBC London News - George Padmore Plaque unveiling". 29 June 2011. Retrieved 10 November 2021 – via YouTube.
  47. ^ John Gulliver, "Toast to slayer of empires" 1 November 2011 at the Wayback Machine, Camden New Journal, 30 June 2011.
  48. ^ Josie Hinton (30 June 2011). "Blue Plaque pays tribute to Pan-Africanist George Padmore". Camden Review.
  49. ^ Cameron Duodu, "George Padmore commemorated with plaque in London", Pambazuka News, 30 June 2011.
  50. ^ OpenStreetMap.

Further reading edit

External links edit

  • George Padmore Internet Archive, Marxists Internet Archive, www.marxists.org./ —Selected writings by Padmore.
  • The George Padmore Institute, London. www.georgepadmoreinstitute.org/
  • George Padmore collection from Princeton University Library. Special Collections

george, padmore, liberian, ambassador, george, padmore, 1915, 2005, george, arthur, padmore, june, 1903, september, 1959, born, malcolm, ivan, meredith, nurse, leading, africanist, journalist, author, left, native, trinidad, 1924, study, medicine, united, stat. For the Liberian ambassador George A Padmore 1915 2005 see George Arthur Padmore George Padmore 28 June 1903 23 September 1959 born Malcolm Ivan Meredith Nurse was a leading Pan Africanist journalist and author He left his native Trinidad in 1924 to study medicine in the United States where he also joined the Communist Party George PadmoreBornMalcolm Ivan Meredith Nurse 1903 06 28 28 June 1903Arouca Trinidad and TobagoDied23 September 1959 1959 09 23 aged 56 London EnglandResting placeChristiansborg Castle GhanaEducationSt Mary s CollegeAlma materFisk University Howard UniversityOccupation s Journalist author pan AfricanistNotable workHow Britain Rules Africa 1936 Africa and World Peace 1937 Pan Africanism or Communism The Coming Struggle for Africa 1956 From there he moved to the Soviet Union where he was active in the party and working on African independence movements He also worked for the party in Germany but left after the rise of Nazism in the 1930s In 1935 the USSR made a decisive shift in foreign policy Britain and France colonial powers with colonies in Africa were classified as democratic imperialisms a lower priority than the category of fascist imperialist powers in which Japan and Germany fell This shift fell into direct contradiction with Padmore s prioritization of African independence as Germany and Japan had no colonies in Africa Padmore broke instantly with the Kremlin but continued to support socialism 1 Padmore lived for a time in France before settling in London Toward the end of his life he moved to Accra Ghana where he helped shape the politics of Kwame Nkrumah and the Convention People s Party 2 Contents 1 Biography 1 1 Early years 1 2 Communist Party 1 3 Pan Africanist 1 4 Legacy 2 Works 3 Citations 4 Further reading 5 External linksBiography editEarly years edit Malcolm Ivan Meredith Nurse better known by his pseudonym George Padmore was born on 28 June 1903 in Arouca District Tacarigua 3 4 Trinidad then part of the British West Indies His paternal great grandfather was an Asante warrior who was taken prisoner and sold into slavery at Barbados where his grandfather was born 5 His father James Hubert Alfonso Nurse was a local schoolmaster who had married Anna Susanna Symister of Antigua a naturalist 3 Nurse attended Tranquillity School in Port of Spain before going to St Mary s College for two years 1914 and 1915 He transferred to the Pamphylian High School graduating from there in 1918 After that he worked for several years as a reporter with the Trinidad Publishing Company 6 In late 1924 he travelled to the United States to take up medical studies at Fisk University a historically black college in Tennessee He had recently married on 10 September that year 7 and his wife Julia Semper would later join him in America She left behind their daughter Blyden who was born in 1925 and died in 2012 8 According to Nurse s instruction she was named in honour of the African nationalist Edward Blyden of Liberia 9 10 Nurse subsequently registered at New York University but soon transferred to Howard University Communist Party edit During his college years in the US Nurse became involved with the Workers Communist Party CPUSA When engaged in party business he adopted the name George Padmore compounding the Christian name of his father in law Constabulary Sergeant Major George Semper and the surname of the friend who had been his best man Errol Padmore 11 Padmore officially joined the Communist Party in 1927 when he was in Washington DC and was active in its mass organization targeted to black Americans the American Negro Labor Congress 12 In March 1929 he was a fraternal non voting delegate to the 6th National Convention of the CPUSA held in New York City 13 Padmore an energetic worker and prolific writer was tapped by Communist Party trade union leader William Z Foster as a rising star He was taken to Moscow to deliver a report on the formation of the Trade Union Unity League to the Communist International Comintern later in 1929 12 Following his presentation Padmore was asked to stay on in Moscow to head the Negro Bureau of the Red International of Labour Unions Profintern 12 He was elected to the Moscow City Soviet As head of the Profintern s Negro Bureau Padmore helped to produce pamphlet literature and contributed articles to Moscow s English language newspaper the Moscow Daily News 14 He was also used periodically as a courier of funds from Moscow to various foreign Communist Parties 15 As a deputy of the Moscow soviet Padmore had served on the commission to investigate the 1930 racial assault on Robert Robinson in Stalingrad Even after he had renounced Communism in the mid 1930s Padmore continued until his death in 1959 to cite the trial of Robinson s assailants as evidence that the USSR was the only country that had effectively eradicated racial discrimination Meredith L Roman Robert Robinson 1930s in Beatriz Gallotti Mamigonian and Karen Racine eds The Human Tradition in the Black Atlantic 1500 2000 p 142 Rowman amp Littlefield 16 November 2009 ISBN 0742567303 In July 1930 Padmore was instrumental in organizing an international conference in Hamburg Germany It launched a Comintern backed international organization of black labour organizations called the International Trade Union Committee of Negro Workers ITUCNW 15 Padmore lived in Vienna Austria during this time where he edited the monthly publication of the new group The Negro Worker 15 In 1931 Padmore moved to Hamburg and accelerated his writing output continuing to produce the ITUCNW magazine and writing more than 20 pamphlets in a single year 15 This German interlude came to an abrupt close by the middle of 1933 however as the offices of the Negro Worker were ransacked by ultra nationalist gangs following the Nazi seizure of power 16 Padmore was deported to England by the German government while the Comintern placed the ITUCNW and its Negro Worker on hiatus in August 1933 16 Disillusioned by what he perceived as the Comintern s flagging support for the cause of the independence of colonial peoples in favour of the Soviet Union s pursuit of diplomatic alliances with the colonial powers Padmore abruptly severed his connection with the ITUCNW late in the summer of 1933 16 17 The Comintern s disciplinary body the International Control Commission ICC asked him to explain his unauthorized action When he refused to do so the ICC expelled him from the Communist movement on 23 February 1934 16 A phase of Padmore s political journey was at an end As a result of his membership in the Communist Party and working for it in the Soviet Union and Germany Padmore was barred from re entry into the United States He was a non citizen 13 and the government did not want to admit known communists 18 Pan Africanist edit Although alienated from Stalinism Padmore remained a socialist He sought new ways to work for African independence from imperial rule Relocating to France where Garan Kouyate was an ally from his Comintern days Padmore began to write a book How Britain Rules Africa With the help of former American heiress Nancy Cunard he found a London agent and eventually a publisher Wishart It published the book in 1936 the year the publisher became Lawrence and Wishart known to be sympathetic to communists Publication of books by black men at that time was rare in the United Kingdom A Swiss publisher distributed a German translation in Germany 19 In 1934 Padmore moved to London where he became the centre of a community of writers dedicated to pan Africanism and African independence His boyhood friend C L R James also from Trinidad was already there writing and publishing James had started International African Friends of Ethiopia in response to Italy s invasion of Ethiopia That organization developed into the International African Service Bureau IASB which became a centre for African and Caribbean intellectuals anti colonial activity Padmore was chair the Barbadian trade unionist Chris Braithwaite was its organising secretary and James edited its periodical International African Opinion Ras Makonnen from British Guiana handled the business end 20 Other key members included Jomo Kenyatta from Kenya and Amy Ashwood Garvey As Carol Polsgrove has shown in Ending British Rule in Africa Writers in a Common Cause Padmore and his allies in the 1930s and 1940s among them C L R James Kenya s Jomo Kenyatta the Gold Coast s Kwame Nkrumah and South Africa s Peter Abrahams saw publishing as a strategy for political change They published small periodicals which were sometimes seized by authorities when they reached the colonies They published articles in other people s periodicals for instance the Independent Labour Party s New Leader They published pamphlets They wrote letters to the editor and thanks to the support of publisher Fredric Warburg of Secker amp Warburg they published books Warburg brought out Padmore s Africa and World Peace 1937 as well as books by both Kenyatta and James 21 In a foreword to Africa and World Peace Labour politician Sir Stafford Cripps wrote George Padmore has performed another great service of enlightenment in this book The facts he discloses so ruthlessly are undoubtedly unpleasant facts the story which he tells of the colonization of Africa is sordid in the extreme but both the facts and the story are true We have so many of us been brought up in the atmosphere of the white man s burden and have had our minds clouded and confused by the continued propaganda for imperialism that we may be almost shocked by this bare and courageous exposure of the great myth of the civilizing mission of western democracies in Africa 22 The Biographical Note on the cover describes Padmore as European correspondent for the Pittsburgh Courier Gold Coast Spectator African Morning Post Panama Tribune Belize Independent and The Bantu World In 1941 Padmore argued that the British Empire should be transformed into federated commonwealths based upon Socialist principles 23 Before World War II James left for the United States where he met Kwame Nkrumah a student from the Gold Coast who studied at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania James gave Nkrumah a letter of introduction to Padmore 24 When Nkrumah arrived in London in May 1945 intending to study law Padmore met him at the station It was the start of a long alliance Padmore was then organizing the 1945 Manchester Pan African Congress designated the Fifth Pan African Congress attended not only by the inner circle of the IASB but also by W E B Du Bois the American organizer of earlier Pan African conferences The Manchester conference helped set the agenda for decolonisation in the post war period 25 Padmore used London as his base for more than two decades He and Dorothy Pizer a white English writer and his domestic partner and co worker shared a flat that became a center for African nationalists Padmore maintained connections across the world sending articles to international newspapers and keeping up a correspondence with American writers and activists W E B Du Bois and Richard Wright The latter was then living in Paris At Padmore s urging Wright travelled to the Gold Coast in 1953 to explore the buildup to independence he wrote Black Power 1954 Before Wright left the Gold Coast he gave a confidential report on Nkrumah to the American consul later he reported on Padmore to the American Embassy in Paris According to the embassy s account Wright said that Nkrumah was relying heavily on Padmore as he made plans for independence 26 When Wright published Black Power in 1954 Padmore was finishing a book that he hoped would be both a history and blueprint for African independence Pan Africanism or Communism It was his attempt to counter Cold War suspicions in Western nations that the African independence movements were fundamentally communist inspired 27 As independence neared for the Gold Coast the London community had splintered In 1956 James had returned from the United States but Padmore and Pizer referred to him with condescension in letters to Wright 28 Meanwhile former Padmore ally Peter Abrahams published a roman a clef entitled A Wreath for Udomo 1956 which contained unflattering portrayals of the members of this London political community George Padmore was identified by many as the model for the character Tom Lanwood 29 But Padmore s alliance with Nkrumah held firm From the time of Nkrumah s return to the Gold Coast in 1947 to lead its independence movement Padmore advised him in long detailed letters He also wrote dozens of articles for Nkrumah s newspaper the Accra Evening News and wrote a history of The Gold Coast Revolution 1953 With Dorothy Pizer who was a writer and secretary Padmore encouraged the leader to write his autobiography Nkrumah published his autobiography in 1957 the year the Gold Coast became independent Ghana 30 Padmore deputized for Nkrumah as best man when Sir Stafford Cripps daughter Peggy married the anti colonialist Joe Appiah who was one of Nkrumah s closest allies at the time 31 Padmore accepted Nkrumah s invitation to move to Ghana but his time there as Nkrumah s advisor on African affairs was difficult He was talking with friends about leaving Ghana to settle elsewhere when he returned to London for treatment of cirrhosis of the liver Padmore died on 23 September 1959 aged 56 at University College Hospital in London 32 A few days later responding to rumours that the activist had been poisoned his companion Pizer typed out a detailed statement about his death She said that his liver condition had worsened in the previous nine months before he sought treatment from a longtime physician friend Due to his failing liver he suffered haemorrhages that resulted in his death 33 Legacy edit After Padmore s death Nkrumah paid tribute to him in a radio broadcast One day the whole of Africa will surely be free and united and when the final tale is told the significance of George Padmore s work will be revealed In the Pittsburgh Courier George Schuyler said Padmore s writings had been an inspiration to the men who dreamed of a free Africa 34 Padmore s physician friend Cecil Belfield Clarke wrote the obituary that ran in The Times describing Padmore as a writer who wrote books and studied them Jamaican pan Africanist and diplomat Dudley Thompson wrote of Padmore in a letter to The Guardian He was truly international and the entire colonial world has suffered a loss 35 After a funeral service at a London crematorium Padmore s ashes were buried at Christiansborg Castle in Ghana on 4 October 1959 36 37 The ceremony was broadcast in the US by NBC television 33 As C L R James wrote eight countries sent delegations to his funeral in London But it was in Ghana that his ashes were interred and everyone says that in this country famous for its political demonstrations never had there been such a turnout as that caused by the death of Padmore Peasants from far flung regions who one might think had never even heard his name managed to find their way to Accra to pay a final tribute to the West Indian who spent his life in their service 36 Staying on in Accra Dorothy Pizer wrote a preface for a French edition of Padmore s Pan Africanism or Communism She began research for a biography of Padmore However as she told Nancy Cunard she was frustrated by his habit of having destroyed his personal papers and not having talked about his past The George Padmore Research Library in the neighbourhood of Ridge Accra Ghana is named after him Kwame Nkrumah spoke at the opening of the building dedicated to Padmore as a memorial library on 30 June 1961 38 Nkrumah ranked Padmore as one of the greatest architects of the African liberation movement dedicated to African union and liberty 39 James relocated to Port of Spain Trinidad wrote a series of articles on Padmore for The Nation James also began collecting material for a biography but eventually produced only a slim manuscript Notes on the Life of George Padmore 40 For years James tried to publish his book Nkrumah and the Ghana Revolution the book was published in 1977 London Allison and Busby In it James omitted any reference to Padmore s own 1953 book on the Gold Coast revolution his correspondence has numerous references to his idea that Padmore did not understand the revolution 41 Ras Makonnen who understood so well the importance of books about the African nationalist movement published his own intimate account of the London based community around Padmore Pan Africanism from Within 1973 James R Hooker wrote a biography of Padmore Black Revolutionary 1967 Padmore is the central figure featured in Carol Polsgrove s Ending British Rule in Africa Writers in a Common Cause published in 2009 In 1991 John La Rose founded the George Padmore Institute GPI based in North London with the aim of continuing the traditions which shaped his life independent radical vision and outlook connecting the Caribbean Africa Europe North America and Asia 42 Educational and cultural activities including talks and readings take place at the GPI which occasionally publishes relevant materials It is an archive educational resource and research centre housing materials relating to the black community of Caribbean African and Asian descent in Britain and continental Europe La Rose also founded the George Padmore Supplementary School in 1969 43 On 28 June 2011 98 years to the day since Padmore was born the Nubian Jak Community Trust unveiled a blue plaque at Padmore s former address 22 Cranleigh Street in the London Borough of Camden 44 in a ceremony addressed by the High Commissioner of Trinidad amp Tobago the High Commissioner of Ghana the Mayor of Camden Selma James Nina Baden Semper related to Padmore s in laws and others 45 46 47 48 According to Cameron Duodu Many of the statements and pamphlets as well as the correspondence with which leaders of the British colonies in Africa combated the policies of the Colonial Office in London were drafted at the dining table of 22 Cranleigh Street It was also the venue at which George Padmore organised the 5th Pan African Conference in Manchester in 1945 49 George Padmore Road and George Padmore Lane in Hurlingham Nairobi Kenya 50 are named after him Works editThe Life and Struggles of Negro Toilers London Red International of Labour Unions Magazine for the International Trade Union Committee of Negro Workers 1931 Haiti an American Slave Colony Centrizdat 1931 The Negro Workers and the Imperialist War Intervention in the USSR 1931 How Britain Rules Africa London Wishart Books 1936 Africa and World Peace Foreword by Sir Stafford Cripps London Martin Secker and Warburg Ltd 1937 Hands Off the Protectorates London International African Service Bureau 1938 The White Man s Duty An Analysis of the Colonial Question in the Light of the Atlantic Charter with Nancy Cunard London W H Allen amp Co 1942 The Voice of Coloured Labour Speeches and Reports of Colonial Delegates to the World Trade Union Conference 1945 editor Manchester Panaf Service 1945 How Russia Transformed Her Colonial Empire A Challenge to the Imperialist Powers in collaboration with Dorothy Pizer London Dennis Dobson 1946 History of the Pan African Congress Colonial and Coloured Unity A Programme of Action editor 1947 Reprinted in Hakim Adi and Marika Sherwood The 1945 Manchester Pan African Congress Revisited London New Beacon Books 1995 Africa Britain s Third Empire London Dennis Dobson 1949 The Gold Coast Revolution The Struggle of an African People from Slavery to Freedom London Dennis Dobson 1953 Pan Africanism or Communism The Coming Struggle for Africa Foreword by Richard Wright London Dennis Dobson 1956 Citations edit C L R James The Black Jacobins Toussaint Louverture and the San Domingo Revolution 1963 Jeffrey Ahlman 2017 Living with Nkrumahism Nation State and Pan Africanism in Ghana Athens Ohio Ohio University Press p 14 ISBN 978 0821422939 a b James R Hooker Black Revolutionary George Padmore s Path from Communism to Pan Africanism 1967 p 2 George Padmore commemorative plaque George Padmore Institute 27 June 2011 Kevin Kelly Gaines American Africans in Ghana Black Expatriates and the Civil Rights Era UNC Press Books 2006 p 27 Hooker Black Revolutionary 1967 p 3 Bill Schwarz Chapter Six George Padmore in West Indian Intellectuals in Britain Manchester University Press 2003 ISBN 978 0719064746 Edwin S Wilson Blyden Cowart George Padmore s daughter dies February 3 2012 Pambazuka News 9 February 2012 Hooker Black Revolutionary 1967 pp 4 5 Cameron Duodu Edward Wilmot Blyden Grandfather of African Emancipation Cameron Duodu Blogspot 8 July 2011 Hooker Black Revolutionary 1967 p 6 a b c Mark Solomon The Cry was Unity Communists and African Americans 1917 1936 Jackson University Press of Mississippi 1998 p 60 a b Russian State Archive for Socio Political History RGASPI Moscow fond 515 opis 1 delo 1600 list 33 Available on microfilm as Files of the Communist Party of the USA in the Comintern Archives IDC Publishers reel 122 Solomon The Cry Was Unity pp 177 78 a b c d Solomon The Cry Was Unity p 178 a b c d Solomon The Cry Was Unity p 179 George Padmore An Open Letter to Earl Browder The Crisis October 1935 p 302 Solomon The Cry Was Unity p 177 Carol Polsgrove Ending British Rule in Africa Writers in a Common Cause 2009 pp 1 15 Polsgrove Ending British Rule pp 25 29 37 Polsgrove Ending British Rule pp 23 42 Sir Stafford Cripps KC MP Foreword Africa and World Peace 1937 p ix Polsgrove Carol 2012 Ending British Rule in Africa Writers in a Common Cause Manchester University Press p 58 ISBN 978 0 7190 8901 5 Ken Lawrence Padmore and CLR James Archived 2008 05 09 at the Wayback Machine Polsgrove Ending British Rule pp 45 70 75 Polsgrove Ending British Rule pp 125 27 Polsgrove Ending British Rule p 145 Polsgrove Ending British Rule p 130 Polsgrove Ending British Rule pp 132 36 Polsgrove Ending British Rule pp 151 54 Cameron Duodu Peggy Appiah obituary The Guardian 6 March 2006 George Padmore Making Britain The Open University a b Polsgrove Ending British Rule pp 162 63 George S Schuyler Views and Reviews The Pittsburgh Courier 31 October 1959 p 12 Dudley J Thompson Mr George Padmore The Guardian 9 October 1959 p 2 a b Christophe Wondji A Tribute to George Padmore A Great Pan Africanist New Afrikan 77 26 January 2014 George Padmore Archived 14 December 2010 at the Wayback Machine Caribbean Community Caricom Secretariat George Padmore Library Henry Louis Gates Jr Emmanuel Akyeampong Steven J Niven eds George Padmore in Dictionary of African Biography Vols 1 6 OUP USA 2012 p 75 Polsgrove Ending British Rule pp 163 65 Polsgrove Ending British Rule pp 155 56 Who was George Padmore George Padmore Institute Retrieved 7 October 2020 John La Rose Life experience with Britain Archived 20 February 2005 at the Wayback Machine Chronicle World Changing Black Britain Dan Carrier 28 October 2021 The flat that changed history Camden New Journal Anti colonial campaigner commemorated with plaque BBC News London 28 June 2011 BBC London News George Padmore Plaque unveiling 29 June 2011 Retrieved 10 November 2021 via YouTube John Gulliver Toast to slayer of empires Archived 1 November 2011 at the Wayback Machine Camden New Journal 30 June 2011 Josie Hinton 30 June 2011 Blue Plaque pays tribute to Pan Africanist George Padmore Camden Review Cameron Duodu George Padmore commemorated with plaque in London Pambazuka News 30 June 2011 OpenStreetMap Further reading editBaptiste Fitzroy and Rupert Lewis eds George Padmore Pan African Revolutionary Kingston Ian Randle Publishers 2009 ISBN 978 9766373504 Essays on Padmore Duodu Cameron George Padmore Father Of The African Revolution Modern Ghana 26 August 2017 Edwards Brent Hayes The Practice of Diaspora Literature Translation and the Rise of Black Internationalism Cambridge MA and London Harvard University Press 2003 ISBN 978 0674011038 Hogsbjerg Christian A forgotten fighter International Socialism no 124 2009 Hooker James Ralph Black Revolutionary George Padmore s Path from Communism to Pan Africanism London Pall Mall Press 1967 New York Frederick A Praeger 1967 James Leslie George Padmore and Decolonization from Below Pan Africanism the Cold War and the End of Empire Palgrave Macmillan 2014 ISBN 9781137352019 Makonnen Ras Pan Africanism from Within Kenneth King ed Nairobi London New York Oxford University Press 1973 Polsgrove Carol Ending British Rule in Africa Writers in a Common Cause Manchester Manchester University Press 2009 ISBN 978 0719077678 Reprint 2012 ISBN 978 0719089015 Solomon Mark The Cry was Unity Communists and African Americans 1917 1936 Jackson University Press of Mississippi 1998 ISBN 978 1578060955 Weiss Holger The Road to Hamburg and Beyond African American Agency and the Making of a Radical African Atlantic 1922 1930 Part One permanent dead link Part Two permanent dead link Part Three permanent dead link Comintern Working Papers Abo Akademi University 2007 Weiss Holger The Hamburg Committee Moscow and the Making of a Radical African Atlantic 1930 1933 Part One The RILU and the ITUCNW permanent dead link Part Two The ISH the IRH and the ITUCNW permanent dead link Part Three The LAI and the ITUCNW permanent dead link Comintern Working Papers Abo Akademi University 2010 External links editGeorge Padmore Internet Archive Marxists Internet Archive www marxists org Selected writings by Padmore The George Padmore Institute London www georgepadmoreinstitute org George Padmore collection from Princeton University Library Special Collections Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title George Padmore amp oldid 1185213970, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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