Ghana in the Bronx

Civil Rights Inspiration, Musical innovation, and Recent Immigration

Feb 21, 2015 @ 7:00pm

Film screening of Living the Hiplife, plus music and dance performance by K5!
The Ghanaian Community in the Bronx
In New York City, Africans are about 4% of the City’s foreign-born population but in the Bronx it is as high as 10%. The Ghanaian community in the Bronx is one of the largest enclaves in the Ghanaian diaspora, about 20,000 strong, it is also one of the largest ethnic communities in the borough (“How A Tightknit Community of Ghanaians Has Spiced Up the Bronx” in Smithsonian.com, June 2014 by Sue Halpern and Bill McKib- ben). The Ghanaian community began coming to the United States in the late 1950s and early 1960s and settled here in waves, with new arrivals coming here in the 1980s and 1990s. The area around 167th Street and the Grand Concourse references Ghana as it is called Little Accra (named after the capital of Ghana), with the Adum African Market and the Agogo Movie House (Agogo is a town in the Ashanti region.
Black History Month
Black History Month has its origins in a celebration called Negro His- tory & Literature Week which was started in 1924 by the Omega Psi Phi fraternity in Chicago. February was chosen because it contained the birthdays of Abraham Lincoln (12th) and Frederick Douglass (14th). By the 1960s it had become Black History Month (many had wanted to ensure the celebration wasn’t focused on those two individuals only, but to the countless Black men and women who have contributed to U.S. society).
Ghana and Black History Month
We recognize the Ghanaian community today because of the deep connections with the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s. During that decade many young African-Americans were becoming socially and politically conscious, and this involved recognizing their African roots. This reached its peak with the influence of Ghana’s first leader after the country gained its independence, Kwame Nkrumah. He was an advocate of Pan-Africanism and worked closely with African-American leaders for the rights of Black people worldwide. Due to his ideology, Ghana became a symbol of Black consciousness in the United States. Nkrumah himself was inspired by the works of Marcus Garvey; he in turn in- spired others such as writer W.E.B. Du Bois (who was buried in Ghana) and Malcolm X.