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Isaac Theophilus Akunna Wallace-Johnson (1894 – 10 May 1965) was a Sierra Leonean and British West African workers' leader, journalist, activist and politician. Born into a poor krio family in Sierra Leone, he emerged as a natural leader in school. After attending United Methodist Collegiate School for two years, he dropped out and took a job as an officer in the customs department in 1913. He was dismissed for helping organize a labour strike, but later reinstated to his position a year later. After resigning from his job, he enlisted as a clerk with the Carrier Corps during World War I. After being demobilised in 1920, Wallace-Johnson moved from job to job, before settling as a clerk in the Freetown municipal government. He claimed to have exposed a corruption scandal, which resulted in the incarceration of top officials, including the mayor. After being fired from this job in 1926, he left Sierra Leone and became a sailor. He joined a national seamen union and it is believed that he also joined the Communist Party. In 1930, he helped form the first trade union in Nigeria and attended the International Trade Union Conference of Negro Workers in Hamburg, where he established a number of contacts. He published articles and edited the ''Negro Worker'', a journal devoted to uniting black workers around the world. He travelled to Moscow, where he claimed to have attended classes on Marxism-Leninism theory, union organisation and political agitation. Within a few months of returning to Nigeria in 1933, he was deported by authorities for his illicit trade union activities. He travelled to the Gold Coast, where he quickly established himself as a political activist and journalist. An agitator, he managed a fund to finance the appeal of the nine African Americans given the death penalty in the Scottsboro case and also campaigned for legislation on workers' compensation and strict safety regulations after the deadly Prestea mining disaster of June 1934. In his writings during this era, Wallace-Johnson glorified the Communist government of the Soviet Union and expressed his disdain for capitalist societies. Soon, the colonial government passed the Sedition Act, a piece of legislation prohibiting the importation of "seditious" literature, which included works from the ''Negro Worker''. In 1934, Wallace-Johnson became the subject of scathing articles in the ''Gold Coast Independent'', in which he was accused of ruining the political atmosphere in the country. After meeting Nnamdi Azikiwe in 1935, he formed the West African Youth League, an organisation dedicated to obtaining more liberties and privileges for the Gold Coast population. Wallace-Johnson and the WAYL entered the Gold Coast political scene by supporting Kojo Thompson in his successful candidacy in the Legislative Council elections of 1935. During the Second Italo-Abyssinian War, Wallace-Johnson and the WAYL vocalised their harsh sentiments toward European imperialism and helped establish the Ethiopian Defense Fund with the purpose of educating the populaces on matters of national and racial importance. In 1936, Wallace-Johnson was arrested for sedition after publishing an article in the ''African Morning Post'' condemning Christianity, European civilisation and imperialism. The colonial governor proposed that he be deported in lieu of being put on trial. After Wallace-Johnson accepted this offer, the governor went back on his word and had the political activist placed on trial in front of the Assize Court. Wallace-Johnson travelled to London to appeal his conviction and to also establish connections for the WAYL. He returned to Sierra Leone in 1938 and established a number of labour unions, a newspaper and a political movement. He significantly raised membership for the WAYL and helped pioneer issue-oriented politics in Sierra Leone. The WAYL became the first political group to make an effort toward including the general population in the electoral process. Wallace-Johnson also campaigned for improved salaries and working conditions for workers, national unity and an increased civic role for women. Through the WAYL newspaper, the ''African Standard'', he published a number of articles highly critical of top government officials. He was arrested on 1 September 1939 under the Emergency Act adopted at the start of World War II earlier that day. Wallace-Johnson was put on trial without a jury (who would have been sympathetic to his cause, as had been seen in previous cases against him) and received a 12-month prison sentence. He was held at Sherbro Island before being released in 1944. He returned to political activism, but found the WAYL in a state of disarray. He merged the league into the National Council of Sierra Leone and formed his own political parties during the 1950s, embracing Pan-Africanism and distancing himself from his earlier radicalism. He served as a delegate for Sierra Leone during independence talks in London in 1960. He died in a car crash in Ghana in May 1965. ==Early life== Wallace-Johnson was born to poor Creole parents in Wilberforce Sierra Leone, a village adjoining the capital city, Freetown. His father was a farmer, while his mother was a fishwife who sold her goods in markets in neighbouring villages. Many of his relatives held low-status jobs involving craftsmanship, carpentry and masonry. His poor upbringing and low social status influenced his understanding and empathy of the working class, as seen in his early association with communism and later, his leadership in the West African labour movement.〔.〕 Wallace-Johnson received his primary education at Centenary Tabernacle Day School before entering United Methodist Collegiate School in 1911. There, he engaged in numerous leadership activities. On one such occasion, he led his classmates in a protest against unreasonable punishment by school authorities.〔.〕 He also edited the school's newspaper, ''Wall Paper''. He dropped out two years later to support his family. He was first employed as a temporary outdoor officer at the customs department. Soon, he became a permanent employee of the department. He became involved in a labour strike for increased pay and better working conditions. It is widely believed that Wallace-Johnson led the strike, but this fact remains uncertain.〔 All employees involved in the strike were dismissed, but reinstituted to their jobs a year later after the Secretary of State for the Colonies assessed the case. During the one-year break, he held jobs as a surveyor, farmer, fisher and a clerk in a law office. He was very popular as a lay preacher amongst rural villagers. He was interested in joining the ministry, but he lacked the proper education needed to enter the occupation.〔 All during this time, he wrote articles in the ''Aurora'', a newspaper edited by H. C. Bankole-Bright. Wallace-Johnson considered Bankole-Bright to be the most influential person in his life at the time. Following a 1938 feud, Bankole-Bright would become Wallace-Johnson's political nemesis.〔.〕 A year after being reinstated to his job in the customs department, he quit and enlisted as a clerk for the Carrier Corps during World War I.〔.〕 During the war, he served with a British infantry during military campaigns in Cameroon, East Africa and the Middle East. Wallace-Johnson received exposure to the world outside his tiny village. After being demobilised in 1920, he moved from job to job, unable to find a comfortable niche to settle in. While working as a clerk in the Freetown municipal government, a corruption scandal erupted, involving the misappropriations of funds and equipment by top government officials, including the mayor.〔.〕 In his pamphlet regarding municipal governance in Freetown, ''A Cloud of Doom'', Wallace-Johnson took credit for exposing the corruption. His exact role in the affair is not known, but no Sierra Leoneans ever challenged the veracity of his claim. In the aftermath of the scandal, the British revoked Freetown's rights to complete municipal self-government, believing that Africans, no matter how educated they were, could not govern themselves.〔 After being fired from his municipal government job in 1926, Wallace-Johnson left Sierra Leone to pursue other activities. According to , biographical details regarding Wallace-Johnson's activities during this time period are hard to discern, as Wallace-Johnson contradicted himself in his autobiographical notes and his personal reminisces.〔.〕 He took a job as either a sailor on an American ocean liner sailing between the United States and Africa or as an engine hand for Elder Dempster Lines; in an interview, he stated the former, while in a lecture at the Easter School he claimed the latter.〔.〕 He normally travelled to English-speaking areas, but on occasion, he journeyed to French, Spanish and Portuguese territories on the African continent. He joined the United Kingdom National Seamen's Union and supposedly edited the ''Seafarer'', a newsletter which he and other black sailors distributed among ship crews. During his time off, he studied the working conditions for employees at ports along the western coast of Africa. It is believed that he joined the Communist Party during his time as a sailor, as the party had a history of recruiting among sailors who frequently visited seamen's clubs in port cities.〔.〕 In 1929, he began working in Sekondi as a clerk in a trading company, but only held the job for a year before travelling to Nigeria.〔.〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「I. T. A. Wallace-Johnson」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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