Theodosia Okoh’s Stolen Symbol

Outside the walls of Achimota where young Okoh spent her time playing football, discovering hockey, and earning her fine art certificate, the Gold Coast—as Ghana was known then—and its citizens were neck-deep in negotiations for independence from the British. Among the early nationalist movements, the United Gold Coast Convention (UGCC), was set up in 1947 by ‘The Big Six’—Kwame Nkrumah, Ebenezer Ako-Adjei, Edward Akufo-Addo, Joseph Boakye Danquah, Emmanuel Obetsebi-Lamptey and William Ofori Atta—to swiftly act on the heat of patriotism and nationalism that Ghanaians were yearning for. Disagreements between the conservative and progressive fractions of the UGCC, however, led to Nkrumah’s departure on June 11 1949. Nkrumah’s short-lived tenure at UGCC led him to create Convention People’s Party (CPP) the next day. The CPP’s push for independence was infectious nationwide.

Sometime between the late 40s and the early 50s, Okoh graduated from Achimota. With the growing success of the school’s previous alumni, she inescapably joined the rat race for the most influential alumnus. As an artist, she took her craft seriously. One could imagine she was always well-equipped. She would take on the streets of Accra in search of inspiration, ready to scrawl the rustic versions of flowers and rural-urban landscapes she so often painted. A fateful stroll outside or a trip to the market might have been responsible for the discovery of the newspaper call to action that challenged her to take a huge bet on herself. ‘Call for new national flag designs!’ The large print might have read below the Ovaltine advert in the Daily Graphic. Prominent for any conscious reader to catch, yet discreet enough not to overshadow the CPP daily newsletter.

The few moments of Okoh’s life painted above are strung together from the bits and pieces of documentation online. Outside the basics of Okoh’s birth, brief educational history, and contributions to Ghana’s independence, and sporting achievemnts, the soul of her story is left out of the archives and remains in the hearts of those close to her alone. In a conversation I had with historian and author of The Disappearing of Hannah Kudjoe: Nationalism, Feminism, and the Tyrannies of History, Professor Jean Allman, on the marginalization and absence of women’s stories in the archives, she explained to me that, ‘[O]n one hand there’s a specific story about how women’s stories get erased, and that’s kind of a common universal thing, but there’s something particular about a context in which there’s political instability or disruptions that create these long silences.’

Historians are aware that West African countries’ shared neglect in collecting or preserving documents can be attributed to obscure or unsystematic political administrations and a lack of commitment to funding and maintaining archival repositories. However, it is one thing to have unmaintained archives that create gaps in historical threads and another to consciously (and subconsciously) keep certain stories away from the archives based on prejudice. Although political foundations could have been cracking under pressure in 1950 Ghana, it is difficult to attribute the absence of Okoh and her story in records to political volatility alone.

Abdul Kuba, a PhD candidate at the University of Mississippi’s Department of History well versed in the legacy of Theodosia Okoh and in Ghanaian archives attributes the archival silence of women’s stories in the colonial and postcolonial era to the nature of colonial gender relationships. When British colonialists were in Ghana and other countries in West Africa, they dealt with men directly, in terms of governance, education, and socio-economic activities, leaving women and women’s issues on the sidelines. ‘When it comes to the archives…women’s roles were more seen as supplementary roles to men. You don’t hear the voices of women because men are at the front and the women are backing them,’ Kuba said.

The practice and attitude towards collation and preservation of women’s stories in the archives particularly emerges from religious, cultural, and socio-political factors. From a cultural standpoint, West African society has harboured a belief that women belong in the shadows of male excellence and this belief was politically and economically reinforced by Westerners through colonialism.

In addition to earlier stated viewpoints, Professor Allman proffered another possible explanation for the disappearance and/or burial of African women’s stories in the archives. According to Professor Allman, ‘there’s an archival diaspora that exists,’ in which parts of Ghana’s history were taken by Ghanaians who emigrated for several reasons over the decades. ‘If you go to the Schomburg library in New York, you’ll find in the papers of somebody like St. Clair Drake and Julian Mayfield, you’ll find parts of Ghana’s history there from people’s own experiences who were living in Ghana at the time,’ Professor Allman said. Additionally, Kuba explained that the use of pseudonyms by African women in colonial and post-colonial times also plays a role in the archival invisibility of African women, despite their obvious contributions to socio-political issues. He noted that, ‘You may have women being prominent entrepreneurs, but you don’t hear them, you hear them hiding or using some kind of pseudonym because they don’t want to be known.’ According to Kuba, this is ‘because of the political and cultural dynamics of the period. A period where people felt the ideal woman should be in the home.’