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By Howard W. French
Mr. French is a professor of journalism at Columbia University and the author of the forthcoming “The Second Emancipation,” a biography of Kwame Nkrumah.
Not long after John F. Kennedy was inaugurated as president, he received his first visit from a foreign leader. He had chosen Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana’s first president. By today’s standards, in which Africa seems to sit on the far margins of world affairs, the selection is practically unimaginable.






