Nkrumah splits from the lawyers and builds a party that breaks laws

Constitutions in 1942 and 1946 allowed direct elections to a legislative council in the Gold Coast, which made organised parties worth forming. The United Gold Coast Convention was founded in 1947 under J. B. Danquah, a lawyer from a small professional elite. It was moderate, it stayed inside the law, and it worked by persuading colonial officials that reform was reasonable. The British were content with it. Younger activists with no property and no patience found nothing there for them. Kwame Nkrumah came back from the United States in 1947 to work for the Convention, having spent years in pan-Africanist politics abroad, and the rioting and shortages of those months made Danquah's method look useless to him. He left in 1949 and founded the Convention People's Party. Its method, taken in part from Gandhi in India, was called positive action: strikes and boycotts, non-violent, and willing to break colonial law. The British ran out of patience and arrested Nkrumah in 1950 along with several other leaders, on the theory that jailing a man puts away his argument with him.

The National Assembly met in the Palais Legislatif on 16 August 1946 to choose a president. Garde officers sat in the galleries and in the chamber with submachine guns across their laps, the palace band played, and all five of the Garde's armoured half tracks stood across the street. Senators and deputies wrote names on paper slips. Dumarsais Estime, a lower middle class noir from the Artibonite backed by Major Magloire and financed by the distiller Alfred Vieux, led the first round with 25 votes against 8 for Bignon Pierre-Louis, 7 for Edgar Nere Numa and 6 for Colonel Calixte, the rest scattered among the many parties founded that year. After a recess the second ballot gave Estime 32, Numa 14 and Pierre-Louis 10, and he was declared elected. The half tracks led his car to the cathedral for a Te Deum past silent crowds. Lavaud then returned executive power to an elected president, seven months after taking it. Estime told him the army had been at once the head that commanded and the arm that carried out, and had kept its word.

On 29 June 1950 the United States played England at Belo Horizonte in the World Cup. England had some of the best players in the world and the American side were part timers. The only goal of the match was a diving header by Joe Gaetjens, born in Port-au-Prince, who had moved to New York in 1947 and who turned out for the Americans under a rule admitting men who had declared an intention to become citizens. It is still the most famous upset the tournament has produced. Gaetjens went home to Haiti afterwards and ran a dry cleaning business. In July 1964 the Tonton Macoutes took him away and he was never seen again. His brothers had joined an exile movement against Francois Duvalier. No charge was laid and no body was recovered. The man who scored the goal Americans still talk about was killed by the secret police of the country he was born in.

Mrs. N. farmed with her husband on about four acres near Brown's Town in Jamaica and had five children, four of them still at home. She decided the local market paid too little and began travelling to Kingston. Each journey took planning. She borrowed or saved capital, guessed at demand, bought eggs, avocados, soursop, pumpkins and fowls in her own district, loaded them on a donkey and met a truck on the road on Sunday afternoon. Her daughter walked the donkey home and took charge of the baby. The truck cost twelve shillings out and six back. The market opened at midnight and charged a gate fee and a handcart fee of one shilling sixpence each. More than a pound sterling went on transport and fees before she made a single sale, and about three pounds more had gone on the produce itself. She chose light goods with a high unit price because fares rose with bulk. Her capital was often borrowed from market butchers at a shilling per pound for three days. Losses on a few successive trips could end her business.