Hands Off Nkrumah

Annotation — Peace, Protest, & Anti-War Songs

Firstly, the album contained the song track "Hands Off Nkrumah" - a reference to Kwame Nkrumah, the first president and prime minister of Ghana following independence from British rule. The song warned the CIA and FBI from getting involved in Ghanian politics, making a comparison to Vietnam. "if you know about our policy, you'll know were in a jam, that's the kind of policy that got us in Vietnam". More importantly, the album contained the ant-war song "The Fires of Napalm", written by Collier. The lyrics and notations first appeared in Broadside # 91, May 1968, p.3, alongside quotes from American physicians on napalm wounds in Vietnam. This song focused on the chemical weapon Napalm B - a jellied gasoline mixture, with polystyrene, benzene, and gasoline. Declared a war-crime since 1980, the US government extensively used this weapon during the Vietnam conflict, dropping 388,000 tons on Indochina between 1963 and 1973.345 The Dow Chemical Company, the largest suppler of napalm to the US military, became a target of Vietnam protests (such as boycotts), particularly on university campuses.6Sources3Broadside, May 1968↩4Times Higher Education: Napalm an american biography by robert m neer↩5Napalm, An American Biography (book website)↩6Broadside, May 1968↩

Annotation by Justin A. Brummer

About the artist

Duo of civil-rights movement song leaders: Rev. Frederick Douglass Kirkpatrick (1933-1987), Louisiana-born folk singer and SCLC activist, and Jimmy Collier (b. 1947, Fort Smith, Arkansas), field organizer and singer for Dr. King's movement; they recorded together on 'Everybody's Got a Right to Live' (1968). [Source: Wikipedia]

Themes

Anti-War · Vietnam Analogy

In collections

Peace, Protest, & Anti-War Songs [War Years] · Vietnam as Comparison