ABSTRACT
Isaac Theophilus Akunna Wallace-Johnson, Pan-Africanist, trade union leader, politician and journalist, was born on 6 February at Wilberforce Village, Freetown in Sierra Leone, at that time a British colony. He was born into a poor Krio family, the descendants of nineteenth-century liberated African slaves and Maroons; his father was a farmer and his mother a market trader; and he was educated locally at the Centenary Tabernacle School and the United Methodist Collegiate School in Freetown. After leaving school he was variously employed until in 1913 he joined the Sierra Leone customs department. He soon became a workers’ leader and in 1914 helped to organise a strike for better conditions and higher wages, for which he was dismissed from his post. He was later reinstated, began his career as a journalist and during the First World War worked as a clerk in the British army. He was then stationed in various parts of Africa until being demobilised in 1920. He was again employed in a variety of jobs until he became a seaman, travelled to ports throughout Africa and became a member of the British National Seamen’s Union. According to his own account it was during this period that he first came into contact with communism and the British Communist Party, and he may possibly have been a distributor of communist literature amongst seamen. In 1929 he was working as a clerk in the Gold Coast and made some journalistic contributions to the Daily Times of Lagos.
