Ghana, 1961 — dissident coup conspiracy
Event Summary
This entry is coded 3 October 1961, inside a tense autumn crisis for Kwame Nkrumah's Ghana rather than a single dated plot. In September 1961 railway and harbour workers at Sekondi-Takoradi struck for three weeks against harsh economic conditions, a state of emergency was declared, and Nkrumah, returning from a long tour of the Soviet Union, China and Yugoslavia, cracked down. On 22 September 1961 he dismissed the British Chief of Staff of the Ghana Armed Forces, General Henry Alexander, part of an Africanisation of the officer corps that later commentators saw as removing a barrier against a coup.
In the same period Finance Minister K. A. Gbedemah, sidelined by Nkrumah, was reported by the U.
S. embassy to be weighing an attempt to depose him, and later accounts state he received assurances of U.S.
support in September 1961 before the plan was detected. The October coding therefore reflects this cluster of strike, purge and elite plotting during Nkrumah's shift toward the Soviet bloc.
Researched Details
Researched
Independent research, added record by record. Hover any label for what it means.
Sources
Editorial Note
Cross-Reference
Only one dataset carries it. One of the three reference datasets we check against carries this event; the others do not list it. That is not a contradiction — the datasets cover different periods and use different thresholds — but it means the record has had less outside corroboration.
Identifiers for finding this same event in the other datasets:
- Cline Center id
45210031961
How the match is made is described in crossref-report.md.
Outcome and Target
Coup Atlas research identifies the target as: Nkrumah survived and remained president until the February 1966 coup overthrew him.
Baseline coding: Plot discovered and disrupted before execution. Recorded leader fate: remained in office; not physically harmed. The baseline file does not name individual targets; researched names are kept in a separate layer.
Baseline Dataset Citation
Baseline Source-Document Entries
CSP
The Political History of Ghana 1950-2013: The Experience of a Non-Conformist. By Dr. Obed Yao
Boston Globe
Chicago Daily Tribune
This is the citation trail carried by the baseline dataset, grouped by outlet and rejoined from the line-wrapped original. Coup Atlas has not independently re-checked every document; read the original before citing a specific claim. URLs the import damaged beyond safe repair are shown as plain text and listed in citations-report.md. How this list is built →