Bankole Awoonor-Renner

Bankole Awoonor Renner
Born	6 June1898 Elmina, British Gold Coast
Died	(1970-05-27)27 May 1970
Alma mater	Oxford University (BA)

Bankole Awoonor-Renner (6 June 1898 – 27 May 1970) was a Ghanaian politician, journalist, anti-colonialist and Pan-Africanist.[1][2] In 1921 Awoonor-Renner travelled to the United States (US) to study journalism at the Carnegie Institute of Technology. Whilst studying in the US Awoonor-Renner joined The Communist Party.[2]

Early life

Bankole Awoonor-Renner was born in Elmina in the Gold Coast, a British colony in West Africa. His father Peter Awoonor-Renner was a lawyer and first leader of the Gold Coast bar.[3] Awoonor-Renner attended boarding school in Cape Coast.

Years abroad

In 1925 Awoonor-Renner travelled from the US to the Soviet Union along with nine other black men to study at the Communist University of the Toilers of the East (KUTV).[4] He is considered to be the first Black African to study in the Soviet Union. He left the Soviet Union for Great Britain in 1927 where he further his studies in journalism at the Institute of Journalists in London, becoming the first African to graduate from the Institute.

Return to the Gold Coast

On his return to the Gold Coast Awoonor-Renner became editor of the Gold Coast Leader newspaper.[5]

In 1934 Awoonor-Renner and several others, including Ellis Brown, I. T. A. Wallace-Johnson and Robert Benjamin Wuta-Ofei, founded the West African Youth League (WAYL) in the Gold Coast.[6] Awoonor-Renner was elected President of the WAYL.

He converted to Islam in 1942, he won a seat on the Accra city council as part of the Moslem Party.

In 1945 he attended the fifth Pan-African Congress, in Manchester, representing the Friends of African Freedom Society.[7]

Initially a colleague of Kwame Nkrumah, he helped Ghana's first president found the Convention People's Party (CPP) being imprisoned alongside him in 1950. Later he broke with Nkrumah and established the Moslem Association Party.[8]

Later life

Following the prohibition of political pluralism in the 1960s, Awoonor-Renner retired from politics, dying in poverty.

References

1. Sherwood, Marika (2017). "Awoonor-Renner, Bankole". Oxford African American Studies Center. doi:10.1093/acref/9780195301731.013.73486. ISBN 978-0-19-530173-1. Retrieved 4 February 2021.
2. Osei-Opare, Nana (April 2023). "Ghana and Nkrumah Revisited: Lenin, State Capitalism, and Black Marxist Orbits". Comparative Studies in Society and History. 65 (2): 412. doi:10.1017/S0010417522000548. ISSN 0010-4175.
3. Weiss, Holger (1 January 2014). Framing a Radical African Atlantic. BRILL. p. 68. ISBN 978-90-04-26168-6.
4. McClellan, Woodford (1993). "Africans and Black Americans in the Comintern Schools, 1925-1934". The International Journal of African Historical Studies. 26 (2): 371. doi:10.2307/219551.
5. Hanretta, Sean (2011). "'Kaffir' Renner's Conversion: Being Muslim in Public in Colonial Ghana". Past & Present (210): 187–220. doi:10.1093/pastj/gtq009. ISSN 0031-2746. JSTOR 23015376.
6. Asante, S. K. B. (1975). "I.t.a. Wallace Johnson and the Italo-Ethiopian Crisis". Journal of the Historical Society of Nigeria. 7 (4): 631–646. ISSN 0018-2540.
7. Adi, Hakim; Sherwood, Marika (1995). The 1945 Manchester Pan-African Congress Revisited. New Beacon Books. ISBN 978-1-873201-12-1.
8. de Boyer, Antoine (16 March 2016). "AWOONOR-RENNER Bankole, Kweku". Maitron (in French). Archived from the original on 8 February 2021. Retrieved 4 February 2021.