Ussher Fort
Where Nkrumah served most of his sentence. Our dedicated site: fortussher.ghana-net.com.
Ghana-Net.com · History & Empires · Greater Accra · 1949–1957
In January 1950 Kwame Nkrumah called the Gold Coast out on strike. Within two weeks he was in a cell, first at James Fort, then for most of a year at Ussher Fort, two old slave forts a few hundred metres apart in Jamestown. A year later he won a seat in the colony's first general election from that cell, walked out of the James Fort gate three days after the poll, and was asked to form a government. Six years after that, Ghana was independent. This is the story of the seven years between the riots of 1948 and the night of 6 March 1957, including the parts the celebrations leave out.
After the shooting and riots of February 1948, the colonial government blamed the United Gold Coast Convention and detained its leaders, the Big Six. The Watson Commission then admitted the grievances were real and recommended reform, and a committee under Justice Coussey began drafting a new constitution.
Nkrumah, the UGCC's general secretary, thought its lawyers and merchants were too slow and too cautious. On 12 June 1949, before a huge crowd at the Old Polo Ground in Accra, he launched the Convention People's Party. Its demand was three words long: self-government now.
The split that shaped Ghana: the UGCC's J. B. Danquah and Edward Akufo-Addo on one side, Nkrumah on the other: the rivalry between these two traditions runs through Ghanaian politics to this day.
The Coussey constitution offered more African representation but not self-government. When Governor Sir Charles Arden-Clarke refused to commit to a constituent assembly, Nkrumah declared Positive Action: a campaign of strikes, boycotts and non-cooperation, modelled on Gandhi's non-violent resistance in India.
The Prison Graduates: CPP members who went to jail for the cause wore caps marked PG, "Prison Graduate". Imprisonment, meant to break the party, became its badge of honour.
Nkrumah's prison year was spent in two of Accra's old slave forts, both by then colonial prisons, a few hundred metres apart in Jamestown. He was first held for about twelve days in James Fort, the seventeenth-century English fort by the lighthouse. He then served most of his sentence, about a year, in Ussher Fort, the old Dutch Fort Crèvecoeur, locked up with common criminals.
While he was inside, Komla Agbeli Gbedemah ran the party from outside, and smuggled messages carried Nkrumah's instructions out of the prison. When the time came to release him, on 12 February 1951, it was through the gate of James Fort that he walked out to the waiting crowd.
Where Nkrumah served most of his sentence. Our dedicated site: fortussher.ghana-net.com.
His first twelve days, and the gate he was released through. Our dedicated site: fortjames.ghana-net.com.
The fort that held the future president, and the ongoing neglect by the GMMB.
Both forts: the forts of Accra and the Dutch Gold Coast, which built Ussher Fort as Fort Crèvecoeur.
Under the new Coussey constitution the Gold Coast held its first general election on 8 February 1951. The CPP won 34 of the 38 directly elected seats, and most of the rural seats too. Nkrumah stood in Accra Central from prison and won 22,780 of 23,122 votes.
Arden-Clarke faced a choice: keep the winner of the election in jail, or govern with him. On 12 February 1951 he released Nkrumah, and the next day asked him to form a government, as Leader of Government Business. In March 1952 the title became Prime Minister, the first African prime minister in a British colony south of the Sahara.
The road to 1957 was not a march of a united people. In 1954 the National Liberation Movement was founded in Kumasi, backed by Asante chiefs, cocoa farmers angry at the fixed cocoa price, and politicians like Kofi Busia. It demanded a federal Ghana with strong regions. The Northern People's Party spoke for the north, which feared domination by the south.
Violence before freedom: between 1954 and 1956 Kumasi saw bombings and street fighting between CPP and NLM supporters. Britain made the 1956 election a condition of independence partly because of this conflict. The divisions did not end in 1957: they led to detentions without trial, the one-party state and, in the end, the coups.
Why he matters for Ghana 70. See also Dr Kwame Nkrumah on Ghana-Net.
Nkrumah's allies of 1948 and rivals after 1949.
The strategist behind African independence, and Nkrumah's adviser.
The Dutch slave fort where Nkrumah served his year. With James Fort.
Positive Action was a gamble that worked. Nkrumah lost his freedom for a year and won a country. The CPP turned market women, clerks, teachers and ex-servicemen into the first mass party in colonial Africa, and Britain, which had jailed him in its old slave forts, ended up handing him power. But the speed that made the CPP unstoppable also made it impatient with opponents. The Asante, the north and the old UGCC leaders had real fears, and they were not answered. The seeds of the one-party state, the detentions and the coup of 1966 were sown in the same years as independence.
Verified: 28 September 2026. The CPP's founding on 12 June 1949, Positive Action from 8 January 1950, the arrest on 22 January 1950, the three-year sentence, the 8 February 1951 election results, the release on 12 February 1951, the Motion of Destiny (10 July 1953), the 1954 and 1956 results and the independence vote of 3 August 1956 follow standard histories. His imprisonment at Ussher Fort follows the University of Passau's Fort Ussher documentation and our own research; his release through James Fort follows contemporary accounts of 12 February 1951. Corrections welcome and will be published in full.