Ghana served as a symbol of inspiration to people of African descent, that Africa was not the barbaric land that it was made out to be.
Black Americans have often perpetuated an uncomplicated view of Africa as a vestigial homeland awaiting the return of its lost souls.
In his sermon on the Exodus in 1957, Martin Luther King Jr. highlighted that the way to gain equality could be achieved, as the demonstration that Ghana had given them hope.
Du Bois and Julian Bond, went to Ghana to aid the country's development and escape the racism of the United States.
Kwame Nkrumah constantly tried to keep Ghana independent from the influences of the West and the Soviet Union, and Black expatriates, especially radicals, saw this as an opportunity to express their views and not have to deal with the criticism they faced in America.
Some like Maya Angelou became close with Ghanaian officials and even Nkrumah himself, allowing them to express influence over political situations.
Particularly in her book All God's Children Need Travelling Shoes (1986),[9] she makes reference to her time in Ghana being a dream, and romanticizing it, in comparison to being an African-American in the United States.
Tensions continued to rise, so much so that "concerns about possible CIA infiltration, a severe economic downturn, and Nkrumah's seeming support of a petty bourgeoisie led to the National Liberation Council's 1966 military coup d'etat",[8] which not only publicly opposed Nkrumah, but also weakened the African-American expatriate community.
[citation needed] As journalist Lydia Polgreen reported in 2005 in The New York Times, the fact that Ghanaian slave exports to the Americas were so important between the 16th and 19th centuries has made Ghana currently try to attract the descendants of enslaved Africans from the Americas to return to settle there and make the country their new home – although not all are of Ghanaian descent.
[11][12][13][14][15] Fourteen years later, African-American author Jacqueline Woodson wrote, again in The New York Times, about her first visit to Ghana, where she found "a massive marketing campaign called 'Year of Return'".
Activities that occur at this festival are performances and work in the areas of theatre, drama, music, and poetry, among other things.