"But the most enthusiastic visitor [to Ghana] was Richard Nixon, then the United States vice-president. From the moment he touched down in Accra, he rushed about shaking hands, hugging paramount chiefs, fondling black babies, and posing for photographs. It was not always to good effect. Surrounded by a crowd of Ghanians at an official ceremony, he slapped one man on the shoulder and asked him how it felt to be free. 'I wouldn't know, sir,' replied the man. 'I'm from Alabama.'"
—Martin Meredith, The State of Africa, 26.
Reading through Taylor Branch's Parting the Waters brought up the story of MLK Jr. visiting Ghana and meeting Nkrumah, then the first leader of a post-colonial independent African nation. It reminded me of the little anecdote from The State of Africa that was not included in Branch's book, which certainly wouldn't have been hurt by another paragraph considering the length of Branch's trilogy. Though the simplest explanation here is likely the most accurate: King likely wasn't at the event with this awkward Nixon moment, so there was no relevance to it.
Meredith's book on Africa, as an aside, is a phenomenal read about the development of Africa over the course of the last fifty years as well as the most pressing issues currently facing the continent. An excellent starting point I cannot recommend highly enough. Unfortunately, Nkrumah's Ghana followed the trend of many of these early African countries and, after a descent into authoritarianism, he was ultimately overthrown in 1966.
Two of my larger interests in Africa remain the Congo and, of course, Mandela's South Africa—this book was a great introduction to both, but just as (if not more) importantly, it provides an overlook at the continent as a whole. It might not be the most recent release, but given its broad reach over the span of the continent, it's a door-stopper but a great jumping-off point that allows me to feel more comfortable and grounded reading more 'specific' books and refining my knowledge.
It also shines light on a chunk of history and the world that, frankly, isn't touched on particularly often. Africa was touched on briefly during my AP world history class as a sophomore and returned to in one low-level elective class near the end of my time at university. The Triangular Slave Trade, of course, was mentioned more than a few times during readings over the years—but even this was always from the perspective of Americans, with only passing and arbitrary reference to Africa.
The devastating and lingering effects of colonialism make themselves apparent throughout Meredith's The State of Africa. Colonialism's toxic legacy is hard to get away from: Africa and its people have been exploited time and again and then left with little to show for it. Living conditions are awful, so is medical care, safety, food, shelter—a lot of things we take for granted and which are essential for people to begin to grow and feel comfortable. These account for many of the fundamentals of Maslow's humanistic hierarchy.
A lot of these rampant problems, of course, are also our fault as a nation: we wanted those rich African resources, and we wanted them at cut-rate prices; this meant extracting, by crook and abuse, many of those resources, even overthrowing or helping assassinate leaders we disliked and installing favorable and friendly right-wing dictators to help us for this purpose.
The end of WWII brought with it the end of the last colonial empires—Churchill kicking and screaming about Gandhi all the while (didn't you know? He despised Gandhi)—but it wasn't the beginning, nor the end, of these former colonies' exploitation, both in Africa and elsewhere (see, say, a part of what used to be known as 'French Indochina,' more commonly known to us as Vietnam).
Unfortunately, the consequences of these colonial governments also left these countries in a volatile position: in the Congo, there were less than ten people per thousand with any governing experience and, I believe, no equivalent to anyone with national instead of local government experience. This is a huge, nigh insurmountable load to be dumped with—especially when your former colonial masters in Belgium are chomping at the bit to reassert control and actively involved in subterfuge and working with the US on a plan involving a breakaway, resource-rich province of your country. That's a rough gist of what happened in the Congo.
On the flip side, we've got the case of Mandela's South Africa. He wanted to reconcile with white Afrikaners who lingered after the end of Apartheid—he didn't want them to leave, taking their experience and capital with him but struggled because Africans who supported him often did not approve of his conciliatory attitude; it didn't help that plenty of the Afrikaner lingerers were willing to begin subverting the government from within or committing terrorist actions against native Africans.
All in all, Meredith's The State of Africa is a realistic, if sometimes grim, look at the complicated modern history of the continent and its nations.
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