George Padmore
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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George Padmore (1902–September 23, 1959), born Malcolm Ivan Meredith Nurse, was a Trinidadian who became a leading Pan-Africanist.
He was born in Arouca, Trinidad. He worked as a journalist in the West Indies; then, in 1924, travelled to Fisk University in Tennessee where he studied medicine. He later registered at New York University but soon transferred to Howard University. It was during this time that he became active in the Workers (Communist) Party and changed his name to George Padmore.
Padmore was an important black student leader, and this led to his involvement in Comintern, the international communist movement. In late 1929 he left the United States and moved to the USSR where he headed the Negro Bureau of the Communist International of Labour Unions (see Profintern) and was Secretary of the International Trade Union Committee of Negro Workers.
In 1934 Padmore resigned his positions and moved to London. In London he collaborated with C.L.R. James and other Caribbean and African intellectuals. In response to the Italian invasion of Ethiopia James and Padmore organised the International African Services Bureau, of which he was chairman and James editor. In his capacity as leader of the IASB Padmore helped organise the 1945 Manchester Conference which was attended by Kwame Nkrumah, Jomo Kenyatta, W.E.B. DuBois, Jaja Wachuku. This conference helped set the agenda for decolonisation in the post-war period.
When Ghana became independent in 1957 Padmore moved there and served as an advisor to Nkrumah. Padmore died in London on September 23, 1959, where he had gone to receive medical treatment.
Works
The Life and Struggles of Negro Toilers (1931)
How Britain Rules Africa (1936)
Africa and World Peace (1937)
The White Man's Duty: An analysis of the colonial question in the light of the Atlantic Charter (with Nancy Cunard) (1942)
The Voice of Coloured Labour (Speeches and reports of Colonial delegates to the World Trade Union Conference, 1945) (editor) (1945)
How Russia Transformed her Colonial Empire: a challenge to the imperialist powers (with Dorothy Pizer) (1946)
"History of the Pan-African Congress (Colonial and coloured unity: a programme of action)" (editor) (1947) reprinted in The 1945 Manchester Pan-African Congress revisited by Hakim Adi and Marika Sherwood (1995)
Africa: Britain's Third Empire(1949)
The Gold Coast Revolution: the struggle of an African people from slavery to freedom (1953)
Pan-Africanism or Communism? The Coming Struggle for Africa (1956)
