Professor, journalist, and bestselling author Howard French discusses his new book The Second Emancipation, the second installment in his trilogy detailing Africa’s pivotal role in shaping world history.

The book title – referring to a brief period beginning in 1957 when dozens of African colonies gained their freedom – positions this liberation at the center of a “movement of global Blackness,” with one charismatic leader, Kwame Nkrumah, at its head.

Educated in the United States and later becoming an activist in London, Nkrumah formed an ideology that readied him for an extraordinary rise to power upon his return to Ghana in 1947.

French discusses Nkrumah’s ascent to become Ghana’s first independent prime minister in 1957 and explains how he wielded his influence to promote the liberation of the entire continent, pushing unity as the only path to recovery from the damages of enslavement and subjugation.

That so few people today know about Nkrumah is an omission that French says is “typical of our deliberate neglect of Africa’s enormous role in the birth of the modern world.”

French is a professor of journalism at Columbia University and a former New York Times bureau chief. He is the author of six books, including Born in Blackness.