A KIND OF HOMECOMING

Born in British Guiana, educated in the United States, a teacher in England and author of To Sir, With Love (1960), Braithwaite, fresh from Europe, travels further to learn about his African heritage. His black skin was no open passport although it did help to put at ease many of the people he met; he was able to view the new freedom from the French in Guinea, the impending independence in Sierra Leone, the workings of Liberia under President Tubman, and the results of five years of self rule in Ghana. As an inquiring newcomer he made trips to the interior as well as the cities, saw native life and modern progress, talked to whites and blacks of all levels, and had mixed feelings about all he learned in the spring of 1961. So much of what he saw and heard was familiar and just as much was strange, and it was Ghana that made him feel most at home. Here is a first hand account that looks below the surface and that is an able and impressive personal report.