One of the major, largely untapped sources for historical and social science research in Africa is the firsthand knowledge of Africans who were closely associated with the formation and life history of early political movements. At a conference held in February 1965 at Northwestern University, the Program of African Studies, with the assistance of the Carnegie Corporation, a number of scholars in the African field agreed in the course of a three-day meeting that it is particularly urgent to undertake a systematic canvass of these sources of information on the earliest nationalist movements in African countries. The conference stressed the importance of moving rapidly to make use of such firsthand data in helping to fill a major gap in our information about African responses to European intrusion. Not only is the material all that is available on the movements but it is rapidly disappearing (a fact underlined by the death of Dr. Danquah during the time the conference was meeting). In addition, the conference carefully examined the problems involved in such oral history retrieval.