Ussher Fort
The Dutch fort in Ussher Town where Nkrumah served most of his sentence. See also Ussher Fort on Ghana-Net.
Ghana-Net.com · History & Empires · Greater Accra · 5–6 March 1957
Just after midnight on 6 March 1957, Kwame Nkrumah stood on a platform at the Old Polo Ground in Accra and told a crowd of tens of thousands that the battle had ended and that Ghana was free forever. Beside him stood men who had worn prison caps seven years earlier. A short walk away stood the two slave forts where they had been locked up. This is the story of that night, of the day that followed, and of the question some still argue about: where was independence actually declared?
By law, the Gold Coast became Ghana at the stroke of midnight, under the Ghana Independence Act 1957, passed by the British Parliament weeks earlier. But a law in London was not what people came to Accra for. They came to the Old Polo Ground, the colonial sports field near the sea where, on 12 June 1949, Nkrumah had founded the Convention People's Party.
As the Union Jack came down and the new red, gold and green flag with the Black Star went up, Nkrumah spoke. His words are the most quoted in Ghanaian history: at long last the battle had ended, and Ghana, "your beloved country", was free forever. He asked for a minute of silence to thank God, and then said the sentence that made the night bigger than one country: Ghana's independence was meaningless unless it was linked to the total liberation of Africa.
The flag: it had been designed by Theodosia Okoh, a teacher and artist. Seven years later it would be changed to the CPP's red, white and green, and changed back after 1966. The whole story is on Ghana's National Symbols.
The famous photographs show Nkrumah flanked by his CPP ministers: Komla Agbeli Gbedemah, who had run the party while Nkrumah was in prison, Kojo Botsio, Krobo Edusei, Archie Casely-Hayford and N. A. Welbeck. Several wore the white caps marked PG, "Prison Graduate", the badge of those jailed during Positive Action.
The absent founders: of the Big Six arrested in 1948, only Nkrumah was on that platform. J. B. Danquah, who had proposed the very name "Ghana", Edward Akufo-Addo, William Ofori-Atta, Obetsebi-Lamptey and Ako-Adjei had gone separate ways since 1949. Within a few years, Danquah and Obetsebi-Lamptey would die in detention under the government born that night.
The Old Polo Ground lies on the edge of old Accra, a short walk along High Street from Jamestown and Ussher Town. Seven years before independence night, Nkrumah had been a prisoner in both of the forts there: first about twelve days in James Fort, then about a year in Ussher Fort, before being released through the gate of James Fort in February 1951, days after winning his seat from a cell. The men in PG caps were celebrating a few hundred metres from where the colony had held them.
The Dutch fort in Ussher Town where Nkrumah served most of his sentence. See also Ussher Fort on Ghana-Net.
The English fort in Jamestown: the first cell, and the gate he walked out of in 1951.
What the state has done with the fort that held its founding father.
On 28 August 2018, at a lecture marking forty years since the death of Prime Minister Kofi Busia, the Speaker of Parliament, Professor Mike Oquaye, said Nkrumah did not declare independence at the Old Polo Ground. According to him, the midnight event was a CPP rally, and independence was declared hours later in Parliament, where the Duchess of Kent spoke with the authority of the Queen and Busia, the opposition leader, seconded the motion.
The honest answer is that both sides are partly right and partly wrong. Legally, nobody in Accra "declared" anything: independence took effect at midnight under an Act of the British Parliament. Ceremonially, the State Opening in the Assembly was the formal, constitutional event. Historically, the Old Polo Ground is where the flag went up at midnight, where the new nation heard its Prime Minister, and where the crowd was. That is why the memory belongs there, and why Oquaye's point, made at a Busia lecture by a Speaker from Busia's political tradition, was heard in Ghana as politics as much as history.
Why it matters: Ghana's history has always been fought over by the two traditions that split in 1949, Nkrumah's and Danquah–Busia's. Knowing that is part of reading any Ghanaian history, including ours.
Delegations came from across the world. The United States sent Vice-President Richard Nixon. From Black America came Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King, the UN diplomat Ralph Bunche and Congressman Adam Clayton Powell. King went home to Montgomery and preached a sermon he called "The Birth of a New Nation", linking Ghana's freedom to the civil rights struggle in the American South.
For Africa, Ghana was the first colony south of the Sahara to win independence from European rule. Within a year Nkrumah hosted independent African states in April 1958 and, in December 1958, the All-African People's Conference, where the next generation of leaders, among them Patrice Lumumba, planned their own freedom.
And the first to find out what that meant.
Why 6 March belongs to Africans abroad too.
Ghana's forgotten national fleet, founded in the independence year.
The Trinidadian strategist who came to Accra to advise Nkrumah.
Many visitors, and many websites, place the midnight speech at Black Star Square. It did not happen there. Independence Square, with its Black Star Gate and Independence Arch, was built around 1961, for Queen Elizabeth II's visit to Ghana that November. Today it hosts the 6 March parades. The night of 1957 belongs to the Old Polo Ground.
CPP founded here on 12 June 1949; independence proclaimed here at midnight, 6 March 1957. Since 1992 the site of the Kwame Nkrumah Memorial Park and mausoleum, where Nkrumah was reburied, moved from his birthplace at Nkroful.
Built after independence as a parade ground by the sea. Today's Independence Day parades are here. Practical advice: visiting Black Star Square.
The whole story fits into one morning in central Accra, on foot: start at the Memorial Park (the Old Polo Ground), cross to the Old Parliament House where the Duchess opened Parliament, then walk down High Street to Ussher Fort and James Fort. Finish at Black Star Square. Check opening times and fees first on the latest entrance fees page, and see the forts of Accra.
Honest warning: Ussher Fort and James Fort are not museums in any polished sense. Access can depend on who is at the gate, and parts are in poor condition. Go with realistic expectations and small cash.
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6 March 1957 was real, and it was enormous. A colony of about six million people became the first in black Africa to take back its sovereignty, and a man who had been a prisoner in a slave fort stood up and spoke for a continent. Nothing about the later coups, detentions and debts cancels that night. But it should be remembered whole: the Big Six who were not on the platform, the Asante and northern fears that were not answered, the legal fact that the transfer ran through London, and forts that held Nkrumah still left to crumble. Ghana at 70 deserves the true story, not the postcard.
Verified: 28 September 2026. Independence at midnight under the Ghana Independence Act 1957; the Old Polo Ground proclamation; the CPP founding there on 12 June 1949; the ministers beside Nkrumah (Gbedemah, Botsio, Edusei, Casely-Hayford, Welbeck); the Duchess of Kent's State Opening; Arden-Clarke as Governor-General; the guests named; Black Star Square's construction around 1961; and Prof. Oquaye's remarks of 28 August 2018 (GhanaWeb) follow standard sources. Nkrumah's speech is paraphrased, not quoted in full. Corrections welcome and will be published in full.