The lunch talk with Howard French felt more like a personal conversation. He was not speaking to the audience but instead, he was speaking with us.
Many questions about Dr French’s book, “The Second Emancipation”, were asked. His journey with the book started when his publisher wanted him to write about Kwame Nkrumah, the former president of Ghana. The publisher was very persistent. This led Dr French to begin doing research, and he ultimately began writing the book with Nkrumah at its core.
When writing about political figures like Nkrumah, an audience member thought it was necessary to include tensions that arose during his time. Ghana also gained independence during his ruling Dr French then brought up a great point. He has done lots of research and knows how to separate political ruling from the figure as a whole. He then began to say “Colonialism is a school in authoritarianism.” I will leave that to the readers to unpack. I think this means Colonialism brought this top-down-control style governance, and thus paved a way for authoritarian governance to rule; the British also played a big part in trying to distract Nkrumah from uniting the nation. They were focused on dividing the nation.
He also talked about political turmoil within different nations. Political leaders talked about Africa in a progressive way; maybe this was used as a way to draw the attention of African Americans. JFK specifically spoke about Africa in his campaign speech. He even invited Nkrumah to the white house, making him the first foreign visitor to the Kennedy white house.
The last few questions were more about his life. “How has writing the second emancipation changed you”, an audience member asked. French began by saying, “To measure effort or results you have to measure them against the starting point. How much have I learned since the starting point? By virtue of understanding change, I discovered enormous gaps in my writing and I was able to write more.” This was beautifully said. Very humbly he talks about how he is still learning every day, and topics are still new to him. He came from a family of eight siblings and he is number four. He was very fortunate to be born around books. His interest in becoming a writer started in college. As a Political Science and English major, he wrote some short stories in college.
He closed on a great note. He said Africans are a major part of society, especially as consumers. In a capitalist America, consumption is very important. We can not turn a blind eye to Africans, because we are a major part of society.
-Ahmed Omo, ’28