Awards

• Short-listed for Plutarch Award 2026

Overview

The Second Emancipation, a work of Odyssean dimension, recasts the liberation of post–World War II colonial Africa and the American civil rights struggle through the lens of Ghana's revolutionary visionary Kwame Nkrumah (1909–1972), who emerges as the most significant African leader of the twentieth century. Determined that readers fully understand Nkrumah's legacy, bestselling author of Born in Blackness Howard W. French newly dramatizes the Nkrumah story-his humble beginnings, his momentous experience in Harlem, his American education, and his return to Ghana in the final years of British subjugation. The language soars as French evokes an entire continent in the throes of liberation and a roiling United States in the Cold War era. In its dramatic depiction of a continent that once exuded the promise of a newly won freedom, The Second Emancipation is a generational work that positions not only Africa but also the American civil rights movement at the forefront of modern-day history.

Full Product Details

9781324092452

Table of Contents

Reviews

""In this truly monumental biography of the rise and fall of Ghana’s Kwame Nkrumah, global observer Howard W. French documents the Cold War hubris that foredoomed Africa’s aspirations in a Greek tragedy of racist pathologies affronted by emancipated leadership. French’s The Second Emancipation stands the second half of the last century on its geopolitical head."" -- David Levering Lewis, two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize ""French, a professor of journalism at Columbia and a former foreign correspondent for The New York Times, covers a lot of ground in a book that merges biography with panorama. His previous book, “Born in Blackness,” showed how the making of the modern world wasn’t just a story about Europe; it was also about Africa. “The Second Emancipation” is a sequel, bringing that approach into the postwar era... “The Second Emancipation” ably treads the line on Nkrumah’s complicated legacy. French keeps reminding the reader of the larger context, pointing out how European colonies were laboratories not for good governance but for authoritarianism."" -- Jennifer Szalai - The New York Times

""The Second Emancipation is an epic history of the struggle to free Africa from the grip of colonial rule and Black America from the grip of Jim Crow, deftly told through the life and times of Kwame Nkrumah. In prose both lyrical and personal, Howard W. French reveals how civil rights and decolonization were bound together by Garvey’s ghost, Du Boisian internationalism, a long dream of Black power, and a vision of pan-Africanism based less on returning home than on rejecting the world order and the color line that belts it. A tour de force."" -- Robin D. G. Kelley, author of Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination ""Kwame Nkrumah founded a country and became the leading African statesman of the twentieth century. Howard W. French tells Nkrumah’s story wonderfully well, in all its greatness and complexity."" -- Odd Arne Westad, Yale University, and author of The Cold War: A World History ""In this truly monumental biography of the rise and fall of Ghana’s Kwame Nkrumah, global observer Howard W. French documents the Cold War hubris that foredoomed Africa’s aspirations in a Greek tragedy of racist pathologies affronted by emancipated leadership. French’s The Second Emancipation stands the second half of the last century on its geopolitical head."" -- David Levering Lewis, two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize ""Howard W. French’s The Second Emancipation rightly places Kwame Nkrumah and African decolonization at the center of twentieth-century history. It would be as impossible to overstate the importance of Nkrumah as it would be to overstate the brilliance of this study. For too many, Africa as a whole remains an enigma. French’s masterwork clarifies the continent, both its history and the backstory to its current conflicts, with remarkable precision. French’s book is particularly good at illuminating the ways in which the civil rights movement in the United States and the African freedom movements influenced and inspired each other. An indispensable work."" -- Greg Grandin, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for The End of the Myth ""The Second Emancipation is a brilliant examination of the end of formal European colonialism in Africa. Told through the life of the great architect of Ghanaian independence, Kwame Nkrumah, Howard W. French illuminates a period of time when people believed that standards of justice and equality could prevail for African people on the continent and in the diaspora, especially in the United States during the civil rights movement, despite the centuries-old ascendance of the ideology of global white supremacy. It is a timely story for our own currently difficult racial moment."" -- Annette Gordon-Reed, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for The Hemingses of Monticello ""The Second Emancipation is an original, provocative, and important work of history, one that places Kwame Nkrumah among the most influential and fascinating global figures of the twentieth century. With meticulous research and crisp writing, Howard W. French helps us see and understand the modern world anew. An extraordinary achievement."" -- Jonathan Eig, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for King: A Life

Author Information

Howard W. French is a professor of journalism at Columbia University and a former New York Times bureau chief for Central America and the Caribbean, West and Central Africa, Japan and the Koreas, and China, based in Shanghai. The author of six books, including Born in Blackness, French lives in New York City.

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