Black Star Square

In 1961, Ghana’s first president Kwame Nkrumah rushed to complete a monumental square celebrating independence from British rule, just in time for Queen Elizabeth II’s state visit. The timing wasn’t accidental: bombs had exploded in Accra days before her arrival, and the Queen’s trip was meant to keep Ghana in the Commonwealth. She came anyway, watching an all-day military parade at the newly finished Black Star Square while Nkrumah ordered his army’s Soviet equipment kept out of sight. A plaque commemorating Ghana’s Republic Day was unveiled by both the Queen and Nkrumah together, perhaps the most diplomatic contradiction ever cast in bronze.

The square itself was built to outlast the visit that rushed it. Its centerpiece, the Black Star Gate, carries a five-pointed star drawn from Marcus Garvey’s Black Star Line, a nod Nkrumah folded into the national flag, the national football team, and eventually the country’s own shipping company. Stands built to hold 30,000 people ring a plaza still used for independence parades every March 6, alongside a Liberation Day monument honoring Ghanaian soldiers of the Second World War. Nkrumah’s own statue nearby was blown up by a bomb days before the Queen arrived. It was patched up in time for the parade, which is more than can be said for most diplomatic arrangements of the era.