CLARENCE G. CONTEE then about plans for a revival of the project as one phase of Nkrumah's efforts to assume the leadership of continental and ideological Pan-Africanism.47 Later in the same year, Du Bois was unable to fulfill an invitation from Nkrumah to attend the "All-African Peoples' Conference, " held in Accra in December. He was ill in Moscow, but his wife read his words for him at the first Pan-African meeting held on African soil.48 Du Bois first went to Ghana in 1960. He was one of the 500 distinguished guests invited to witness the inauguration of the Republic of Ghana in June of that year. Nkrumah has written of Du Bois' visit as an example of the personification of the outlook for a United States of Africa, and on that occasion, Du Bois was deservedly honored as the "father of Pan-Africanism." The topic of an encyclo-pedia Africana might again have been mentioned. It is known that Du Bois used the opportunity while in Ghana to warn Africans against Anglo-American capital-ism and to praise the Soviet system .49 The following year Du Bois officially and openly joined the Communist Party of the United States of America. By the time the announcement was made public, he had emigrated to Ghana and had gone, according to the New York Times of November 23, 1961, "as head of New Negro Encyclopedia. "50 The in-vitation had been extended by President Nkrumah, who provided Du Bois with a home and an attached office. The government also supplied a secretary and at least five research assistants, and Nkrumah visited him about once a month.51 The Ghana Academy of Sciences, located in Accra, was the official sponsoring agency for the Encyclopaedia Africana, as it was termed, and funds were fun-neled through it. 52 Du Bois very soon thereafter became the director of the secretariat for an encyclopedia Africana as a part of the work of the academy .53 Beginning in June, 1962, he issued information reports on the progress of the project. The aim of the secretariat was the actual production of an encyclopedia. The object of the Secretariat is to plan, guide, and coordinate the work of assembling, organizing, and publishing materials for an Encyclopedia Africana that is authentically African in its point 47. New York Times, July 28, 29, 30, 1958; Du Bois, Autobiography, 401. 48. Du Bois, Autobiography, 401. The speech dealt with "African socialism" and was published in the autobiography on pages 402 to 404. 49. Kwame Nkrumah, I Speak of Freedom (New York, 1961), 232; Harold R. Isaacs, The New World of Negro Americans (New York, 1963), 224-225. 50. New York Times, November 23, 1961, 5. 51. Robert D. Loken, a neighbor of Du Bois' during these years, to the author, May 5, 1969; Leslie Alexander Lacy, Cheer the Lonesome Traveler (New York, 1970), 126-127, 139-141. 52. Information Report (Secretariat for an Encyclopedia Africana), I (June, 1962). 53. Du Bois used the American spelling, "encyclopedia;" just before his death, the English spelling, "encyclopaedia," came into use in the information re-ports; see Information Report (Secretariat for an Encyclopedia Africana), 5 (June, 1963). 88

If You Enjoyed This, Take 5 Seconds To Share It

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
•