Ghanaian Diaspora: From Bronx to Brixton

The Ghanaian diaspora is rooted in the Atlantic slave trade, when captives from Akan, Ga, Ewe, and Fante communities were shipped through Cape Coast Castle and Elmina to the Americas between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries. The Coromantee — named after the Gold Coast port of Kormantse — became feared throughout the Caribbean for their rebellious spirit; the 1760 Tacky's Rebellion in Jamaica, led by an Akan chief, involved 1,500 enslaved fighters and terrified the British colonial establishment. In South Carolina and Georgia, Akan cultural practices survived in the Gullah-Geechee communities, where linguists have traced Twi and Ga loanwords in the creole language. W.E.B. Du Bois, whose great-grandfather was likely of Gold Coast origin, made Ghana his spiritual home, accepting Nkrumah's invitation in 1961 and dying in Accra on 27 August 1963, the eve of the March on Washington. Maya Angelou lived in Ghana from 1962 to 1965, writing about her experience in "All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes" (1986). The post-independence brain drain began almost immediately: between 1957 and 1966, thousands of Ghanaian students and professionals left for Britain and the United States, many on government scholarships that were never returned. By 1969, the Busia government's Aliens Compliance Order — aimed at expelling foreigners — paradoxically accelerated Ghanaian emigration as the economy contracted. The pattern was set: economic crisis at home, opportunity abroad.