BLACK SOCIAL HISTORY : AFRO-GHANAIAN " JERRY J. RAWLINGS " HE LED A COUP TO OVER THROW THE MILITARY GOVERNMENT AND BECAME CHAIRMAN OF THE ARMED FORCES REVOLUTIONARY COUNCIL : GOES INTO THE " HALL OF BLACK GENIUS "

                             BLACK                     SOCIAL                HISTORY                                                                                                                                                                                                                             Jerry J. Rawlings was born on June 22, 1947, in Accra, Ghana. In 1979, he led coups to overthrow the military government. He became chairman of the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council that year, and executed heads of state to eradicate corruption. After 112 days of rule, Rawlings handed power to Limann. Rawlings became Ghanaian president in 1982, and was twice re-elected. He has since been an envoy to Somalia.
Jerry John Rawlings  born 22 June 1947  is a former air force officer and the current African Union envoy to Somalia. Rawlings initially came to power in Ghana following a coup d'état in 1979 and, after initially handing power over to a civilian government, took back control of the country on 31 December 1981, as the Chairman of the Provisional National Defence Council. He remained in power in this way until 1992, when he resigned from the Armed Forces, founded the National Democratic Congress and became the first president of the Fourth Republic. He was re-elected in 1996 for a further four years.

Rawlings initiated his debut coup d'état on 15 May 1979, leading a group of military personnel in a coup attempt on General Fred Akuffo which resulted in him arrested, imprisoned and facing a death sentence. On June 4, soldiers sympathetic to his motivations broke him out of jail, and he led a revolt of both the military and civilians which overthrew General Akuffo and the Supreme Military Council, effectively leaving him in charge. Rawlings and the soldiers around him formed the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC) and conducted what it termed "a housecleaning exercise", whose aim was to purge Ghanaian society of all the corruption and social injustices that they perceived to be at the root of their coup d'état.

The AFRC organized an election and it was won by Hilla Limann of the People's National Party (PNP). On 31 December 1981 Rawlings and the AFRC overthrew Limann, citing economic mismanagement. Rawlings then installed the Provisional National Defence Council (PNDC) with himself as the Chairman.

In 1992, Rawlings retired from the military and set up the National Democratic Congress (NDC), legalized political parties and organized Presidential and Parliamentary elections, in response to demands for a more democratic process concerning the governing of the country. Rawlings and his party won with 58.3 percent of the vote, with outside observers declaring the voting to be "free and fair". In 1996, Rawlings went on to win a second term as President.

After two terms in office, barred by his constitution from standing in any election, Rawlings endorsed his vice-president John Atta Mills as presidential candidate in 2000.