Isaac Theophilus Akunna Wallace-Johnson (1895-1965) was a West African trade union organizer, nationalist political leader, journalist, and pan-Africanist.

Isaac Wallace-Johnson was born of Creole parents in Wilberforce, Sierra Leone. Educated mainly in mission schools, he had to abandon secondary school in order to support his family. He worked in various commercial establishments until 1913, when he became a clerk for the colonial government.

Bureaucratic Career

Wallace-Johnson's talents as an organizer and public speaker quickly propelled him to a position of leadership. At the Customs Department, he organized the first trade union in Sierra Leone, among temporary customs officers. When he called for a strike in 1914, he was fired. He entered the British army in 1915 as a clerk in the Carrier Corps. Returning to Sierra Leone in 1920, he worked for the Freetown City Council but resigned in 1926 to serve on a United States merchant ship. He published The Seafarer, an...