in premedicine at COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY,FISK
UNIVERSITY, and HOWARDUNIVERSITYbefore be-
ginning law school at NEW YORK UNIVERSITY.
Padmore also published articles in The Daily
Worker,the Communist Party newspaper.
Padmore’s professional successes included two
prominent posts that gave him the opportunity to
impact international debates about labor, unions,
and worker’s rights. In 1929, serving as the director
of the Negro Bureau of the Red International of
Labour Unions, he traveled to the Soviet Union.
Two years later, in 1931, he was appointed head of
the International Trade Union Committee of Negro
Workers (ITUCNW) in Germany. After being ex-
pelled from the Soviet Union’s Comintern in 1933
because he protested the nation’s dissolution of the
ITUCNW, Padmore relocated to England. There,
he continued to work as a journalist and to publish
on colonial and African issues. He corresponded
with W. E. B. DUBOIS, who would later claim citi-
zenship in Ghana, and worked with him on the in-
ternational Pan-African conferences of the 1930s.
Padmore’s books How Britain Rules Africaand
Africa and World Peacewere published in 1936 and
1937, respectively. The 1971 edition of Pan African-
ism or Communism? The Coming Struggle for Africa
(1956) included a foreword by RICHARDWRIGHT.
Padmore’s last appointment, which began in 1957,
was as an adviser to Ghanaian president Kwame
Nkrumah, whom he had met in London through a
letter of introduction from C. L. R. James in the
early 1940s. Nkrumah held Padmore in high regard
and mourned the death of the man whom he re-
garded as a close friend and as a brother.
Padmore, who contracted dysentery in Liberia
in 1959, died in London, England, where he had
sought medical care. He is buried in Accra, Ghana,
at Christianborg Castle.
Bibliography
Hooker, James. Black Revolutionary: George Padmore’s
Path from Communism to Pan-Africanism.New York:
Praeger, 1967.
LaGuerre, John. The Social and Political Thought of the
Colonial Intelligentsia.Mona, Jamaica: Institute of
Social and Economic Research, University of the
West Indies, 1982.
Padmore, George. History of the Pan-African Congress:
Colonial and Coloured Unity, A Programme of Action.
1945, reprint, London: Hammersmith Bookshop,
1963.
———. The Gold Coast Revolution: The Struggle of an
African People from Slavery to Freedom.London: D.
Dobson, 1953.Palms
The magazine founded in 1923 by Idella Purnell, a
longtime resident of Guadalajara, Mexico. Purnell,
who attended the University of California at
Berkeley and had classes with WITTERBYNNER,re-
cruited her former teacher and friends to assist
with the publication. Bynner and Agustin Basave
were the contributing editors while Barbara Burks
and Vernon King, former Berkeley classmates, were
appointed associate editors.
Palmswas a journal that involved much inno-
vation. Limited funds prevented Purnell from pay-
ing contributors, many of whom were new and
emerging writers. The magazine, which required
Purnell to perform a number of the tasks required
to ensure publication, publicity, and circulation,
had a readership of at least 2,000.
The first issue of Palmsfeatured works by the
editors Basave and Bynner and later included con-
tributions by such well-known writers as D. H.
Lawrence and Mabel Dodge Luhan. The fall 1926
issue was devoted to African-American writers.
Purnell invited COUNTEECULLENto serve as guest
editor. The volume included prose and poetry con-
tributions from 17 well-known Harlem Renais-
sance figures, six women and 11 men. There were
multiple works by LEWISALEXANDER,W. E. B.
DUBOIS,JESSIE FAUSET,GWENDOLYN BENNETT,
and LANGSTONHUGHES. Other contributors of
single works included ARNABONTEMPS,WILLIAM
STANLEYBRAITHWAITE, Countee Cullen, WAR-
INGCUNEY,CLARISSASCOTTDELANY,GEORGIA
DOUGLAS JOHNSON,HELENE JOHNSON,ALAIN
LOCKE,RICHARDBRUCENUGENT,ALBERTRICE,
ANNESPENCER, and WALTERWHITE.
John Weatherwax, Purnell’s husband, assumed
the role of Palmspublisher in 1927. His responsibil-
ities ceased when the marriage dissolved in 1929.
Purnell’s future second husband, Remi Stone, be-
came business manager for the magazine in the fall
of 1929. Purnell ceased publication of the journal
in May 1930. Later, however, in 1932, she wasPalms 411