32 Facts About George Padmore

George Padmore, born Malcolm Ivan Meredith Nurse, was a leading Pan-Africanist, journalist, and author.

George Padmore left his native Trinidad in 1924 to study medicine in the United States, where he joined the Communist Party.

George Padmore worked for the party in Germany but left after the rise of Nazism in the 1930s.

George Padmore broke instantly with the Kremlin, but continued to support socialism.

George Padmore lived for a time in France, before settling in London.

Malcolm Ivan Meredith Nurse, better known by his pseudonym George Padmore, was born on 28 June 1903 in Arouca District, Tacarigua, Trinidad, then part of the British West Indies.

George Padmore's paternal great-grandfather was an Asante warrior who was taken prisoner and sold into slavery at Barbados, where his grandfather was born.

George Padmore's father, James Hubert Alfonso Nurse, was a local schoolmaster who had married Anna Susanna Symister of Antigua, a naturalist.

George Padmore transferred to the Pamphylian High School, graduating from there in 1918.

George Padmore left behind their daughter Blyden, who was born in 1925.

George Padmore officially joined the Communist Party in 1927 and was active in its mass organization targeted to black Americans, the American Negro Labor Congress.

George Padmore was taken to Moscow to deliver a report on the formation of the Trade Union Unity League to the Communist International later in 1929.

George Padmore was used periodically as a courier of funds from Moscow to various foreign Communist Parties.

In July 1930, George Padmore was instrumental in organizing an international conference in Hamburg, Germany.

George Padmore lived in Vienna, Austria, during this time, where he edited the monthly publication of the new group, The Negro Worker.

In 1931, George Padmore moved to Hamburg and accelerated his writing output, continuing to produce the ITUCNW magazine and writing more than 20 pamphlets in a single year.

George Padmore was deported to England by the German government, while the Comintern placed the ITUCNW and its Negro Worker on hiatus in August 1933.

Disillusioned by what he perceived as the Comintern's flagging support for the cause of the independence of colonial peoples in favour of the Soviet Union's pursuit of diplomatic alliances with the colonial powers, George Padmore abruptly severed his connection with the ITUCNW late in the summer of 1933.

George Padmore was a non-citizen and the government did not want to admit known communists.

George Padmore sought new ways to work for African independence from imperial rule.

In 1934 George Padmore moved to London, where he became the centre of a community of writers dedicated to pan-Africanism and African independence.

George Padmore was chair, the Barbadian trade unionist Chris Braithwaite was its organising secretary, and James edited its periodical, International African Opinion.

When Nkrumah arrived in London in May 1945 intending to study law, George Padmore met him at the station.

George Padmore used London as his base for more than two decades.

At George Padmore's urging, Wright travelled to the Gold Coast in 1953 to explore the buildup to independence; he wrote Black Power.

George Padmore was identified by many as the model for the character "Tom Lanwood".

George Padmore wrote dozens of articles for Nkrumah's newspaper, the Accra Evening News, and wrote a history of The Gold Coast Revolution.

George Padmore deputized for Nkrumah as best man when Sir Stafford Cripps' daughter Peggy married the anti-colonialist Joe Appiah, who was one of Nkrumah's closest allies at the time.

George Padmore accepted Nkrumah's invitation to move to Ghana, but his time there as Nkrumah's advisor on African affairs was difficult.

George Padmore was talking with friends about leaving Ghana to settle elsewhere when he returned to London for treatment of cirrhosis of the liver.

George Padmore died on 23 September 1959, aged 56, at University College Hospital in London.

George Padmore said that his liver condition had worsened in the previous nine months, before he sought treatment from a longtime physician friend.