Alfred A. Thorne

Photograph of A. A. Thorne

Alfred Athiel Thorne, LLD, MA, aka A.A. Thorne (August 14, 1871 – April 23, 1956), was a popular elected statesman, incisive author, pioneer for educational access, and human rights advocate in British Guiana. In 1894, Dr. Thorne founded and oversaw the world's first co-educational private secondary school of its kind, providing quality educational access to talented students regardless of their gender, ethnicity, color, or socio-economic status. Called a "Hero of the People", Thorne subsequently served as a popularly-elected official for more than 50 years, working to unify the collective voices of working-class white British colonists, Indo-Guyanese, Afro-Guyanese, Chinese, Portuguese, and Aboriginal Amerindians communities across British Guyana. He served numerous roles at both the country-wide and city levels, including as Mayor of British Guiana's capital city, Georgetown. Thorne served many decades as an educator, writer and elected official in British Guiana, creating positive and lasting impact for generations by advocating for the core principles of educational access, workplace safety, freedom, and self-determination.^[1]

Thorne also founded and presided over the first human rights and labor rights institutions of its kind in the Western Hemisphere, establishing pragmatic workplace safety and pay equity standards for workers by bringing together extremely diverse groups to align in support of their shared interest. Thorne's worker alliance created unprecedented representation for the benefit of workers and students from working-class and middle-class families across extremely diverse groups including first-generation descendants of formerly enslaved Africans, formerly indentured servants from India, China and Portugal, as well as working-class white English colonists. The resulting alliance became powerful enough to establish and enforce new standards and principles for pay equity and workplace safety. Thorne's labor initiatives directly improved the lives of working-class families across Guyana, initiating new standards for improved working conditions for factory and field jobs across the British colonial empire, earning A.A. Thorne the moniker "Hero of the People".

Born in Barbados, Thorne was highly educated as a British Classical Scholar, having earned both his Bachelor's degree and Master's degree from the prestigious Durham University in England. He was the first person of African descent to earn both bachelor's and advanced graduate degrees conferred by a British University. Notably, he graduated with honors.

Powerful advocate for educational access[]

After graduating with honors from University of Durham in England, A.A. Thorne moved to British Guiana, where in 1894 he founded the country's first coeducational private secondary school that provided equal access to qualified students regardless of gender, color, ethnicity or socio-economic status. It was called because it was the first opportunity for students from middle-class and working-class families in the British colony to gain access to the same level of education that had previously been reserved only for descendants of the former plantocracy (former slave-owning families). Thorne's Middle School provided such high standards of education that its student performance on national tests exceeded the levels achieved by the prestigious and most expensive private British schools that were exclusively accessible only to admit students from aristocratic and planter families, including the most elite schools in the colony: (the prestigious boys school) and Bishops' High School (the prestigious girls school).^[1][2]

A.A. Thorne oversaw the development of this first-in-class co-educational secondary school as its Headmaster for many years, recruiting some of the best teachers from across the country. The exceptional performance of his school's graduating students marked the educational experiment as a monumental success. Thorne established a needs-based financial aid system which he personally financed, breaking many barriers by enrolling both boys and girls from underprivileged working-class and moderate-income families access to reduced tuition or tuition-free education that was comparable in quality to the educational level previously available only at the most expensive elite private educational institution, Queens College -- creating broad educational access to talented girls and minorities long before gender rights and civil rights were protected by anti-discrimination laws and equal opportunity laws of the land.^[3] The private school became known for the high-quality education it provided. It was on par with Queen's College and Bishops' High School.^[1][2] Eventually, Thorne's school began attracting student applications from high-income families, causing the prestigious Queen's College to recognize the Middle School as credible competition for the most talented students. Ultimately, recognizing the Middle School's exceptionalism, the trustees of Queen's College and Bishop's High School agreed to merge Middle School together with these two respective institutions, in exchange for their commitment to revise their admissions policies by assuring that applicants from those groups who previously had been excluded from their admissions policies would now have access to these elite schools. The result: Several generations of students in Guyana from working-class families and minority backgrounds subsequently have attended, and excelled, as students at Queen's College -- many becoming Rhodes Scholars and Fulbright Scholars over the past several decades.

50-year career as a principled political leader[]

A.A. Thorne served a prominent role in public service for decades, holding numerous elected offices at the municipal and national level continuously for more than 50 years (from 1902 to 1952). Nationally, he was elected to the nation's Combined Court in 1906 and re-elected to the Court again in 1916. He was elected as the Financial Representative for the North West District and New Amsterdam (1906-1911 and 1916-1921). He also was elected and re-elected repeatedly to the Georgetown City Council for 47 years, starting in 1902; and served as Deputy Mayor in 1921, 1922 and 1925.^[1]

Whether serving in the Legislative or Executive Branches of government, Thorne became widely recognized and celebrated for "throwing open certain avenues of employment to Guianese".^[3]

• Georgetown City Council, 1902-1949
• British Guiana National Court of Policy, 1906-1911, 1916-1921
• Georgetown Deputy Mayor, 1921, 1922, 1925
• The Education Commission, 1924-1925
• The Cost of Living Survey Committee, 1942
• The Franchise Commission, 1942-1944
• The Education Development Committee, 1943-1945
• British Guiana National Trade Council - Executive Officer, 1945
• The Georgetown Fire Advisory Committee, 1945
• The Georgetown Pure Water Supply Board, 1945-1946
• British Guiana Labour Union
• British Guiana Workers League, 1931-1952

Pioneering advocate for human rights and workplace safety[]

Thorne led the British Guiana Labour Union, the country's first worker's union, and also subsequently founded and led the country's second trade union, the , in 1931.[17] He served as the League's leader for 22 years.^[1] The League sought to protect basic human rights and improve the working conditions of Guyanese people of all ethnic backgrounds, many of whom had originally been brought to the British colony under a system of forced labor (slavery) or indentured servitude, or who were Amerindian natives of the land now occupied and taken over under the forces of European imperialism. He was also popular among the working class British community members for his advocacy on behalf of those who labored in factories long before the workplace safety standards and labor laws of today were enacted.

Thorne also served as president of the British Guiana Trades Union Council.^[4] The union represented the human rights interests of a wide variety of workers across vastly different trades, including manual laborers on sugar plantations, municipal workers in Georgetown, and ward-maids at the Georgetown Public Hospital.^[5] Thorne's work for workplace safety guidelines and labor rights laid the foundation for the formation of the Manpower Citizens' Association, which he also co-led.

Thorne was elected to the City Council of the British colony's capital city Georgetown in 1902.^[2][6] As a member of City Council, he was active in reform efforts of the colony. Two years after joining the council, in 1904, he published an article in a Boston, MA newspaper about the dominance of the sugar plantation owners and the sugar industry over all other economic sectors of the country.^[2] In their ill-fated attempt to retaliate while Thorne was traveling out of the country, the embarrassed planters arranged for an article of their own to be published in The Argosy, the local newspaper of Georgetown. The planters' article in Argosy served only to strengthen Thorne's vast popularity in his home country, as the masses admired Thorne's courage to speak the truth and stand up against corruption and intimidation by former slave holders. Each of the Argosy article's false claims was disproven in a court of law, as Thorne boldly won a landmark trial case against the planter-controlled Argosy which published the false article, and Thorne was awarded 500 British pounds by the court for his successful claim of libel. The now famous court case is documented as one of the most pivotal trials over the past 300 years that helped to shape modern rule of law in the Americas, and the entire landmark trial's transcript is published in Making of Modern Law: Trials, 1600-1926.^[7][8]

Moral leader and trailblazer[]

Thorne first visited the United States in 1904 at the special invitation of the New York City Mayor. During this U.S. visit, Thorne traveled across the country, gaining instant popularity in many states and impressing American politicians and scholars as an exceptional orator and diplomat. Thorne received numerous speaking invitations, and delivered a keynote address to the President and Alumni of Wilberforce University, where the Senate conferred upon Thorne the degree of Doctor of Laws (LLD), a distinctive honor which they had only conferred previously on two other men: US President William McKinley, and Frederick Douglass.

A.A. Thorne recognized that the 1919 Colonisation Scheme created friction and negative racial feelings in the colony of British Guiana. He was instrumental in advocating for fair wages for all citizens, and led the way for passage of increased wages for East Indians and Chinese workers (whose parents had been brought to the country under indenture), and for African workers (whose parents had been kidnapped from the African continent and trafficked to the country as slaves).^[9]

A.A. Thorne helped to make the country's agricultural industry more internationally competitive by demonstrating how colonial control over rice production, a staple sustenance crop in the colony at the time, had led to unwise and uncompetitive pricing practices, resulting in rice being priced higher in British Guiana than neighboring countries and islands. One of Thorne's sons, the Ivy League-educated economics professor , later built on these insights in reference to the problematic issues that emerged from artificially maintaining a supply of low-cost labor in developing countries, in his book Poor By Design.

A.A. Thorne is widely referenced as a pivotal historical figure in connection with the development and spread of core principles behind the concepts of self-determination, democracy, educational access, workplace safety, human rights, gender equality, civil rights, and rule of law, each of which he promoted rigorously. These concepts led to many transformational social changes that spread across the world during the 19th century.^[10][11][12] His perspectives were included in Nancy Cunard's Negro: An Anthology in a chapter titled 'The Negro and his Descendants in British Guiana'^[13] In it, he describes the social and economic conditions of black and brown people living in the plantation-based colonies of Guiana under Dutch, French and British rule.

Early life, education, and family[]

A.A. Thorne was born in the former British island colony of Barbados, to Louisa Jane Alleyne and Samuel Athiel Thorne, a highly educated schoolmaster in Barbados. A.A. Thorne completed his early education at the Lodge School and Codrington College in St John, Barbados, and subsequently earned both his Bachelor's and Master's degrees in England at the University of Durham, graduating with honors.

Each year, the nation's highest-scoring secondary school graduating student on the national exams was awarded a national scholarship to attend Durham University in England. However, no person of color had ever before won this prestigious national scholarship. Thorne achieved the highest score in the national exam. However, due to his skin color, the Scholarship Committee denied the scholarship award to Thorne despite being the undisputed highest-scoring student on the national exams. Instead, the Scholarship Cmmittee offered the scholarship to a white student with the second-highest score on the national exams. Revealing a level of courage and charisma that would define Thorne's storied future career, Thorne sued the national college committee in the British colonial courts, and the recent high school graduate won his case. Persuaded by Thorne's convincing arguments, the British court ordered the Scholarship Committee to comply with the British rules for the university scholarship, requiring the rules to be followed as written. As a result of Thorne's first (but not last) history-making court case, Thorne was properly granted the scholarship as the top score on the national exams, and proceeded to attend and graduate from Durham University, where he earned two degrees -- graduating with Honors. He became the first person of African heritage in the British Empire to earn both a bachelor's and advanced degree from any university in England.

After graduating from Durham University, Thorne returned to the Caribbean, residing in British Guiana. He married schoolteacher and artist Eleanor Amanda McLean, becoming a young widower upon her untimely death. Years later, he married a beautiful and talented young teacher named Violet Janet Ashurst, who was a British Classical Scholar and artist who was born and raised in British Guiana. She was the daughter of Charles Ashurst and Elizabeth Jane Alexander, whose family was from Belfast, Ireland. A.A. Thorne remained happily married to Violet Thorne for the rest of his life. A.A. Thorne had ten children, including two sets of twins:

1. Alfred Hubert Thorne (Editor-in-Chief of Argosy and Chronicle, two influential national newspapers in Guyana),

2.& 3. Twin brothers Albert Athiel Thorne and Alfred Thorne (attorney who earned his law degree in the UK and worked as a justice of the peace in Guyana),

4.& 5. Twin sisters Alfreda and Elfreda,

6. (Fulbright Scholar, economics professor, and author who earned his PhD at Columbia University in New York City)

7. Duncan John Vivian Thorne, DDS (orthodontist in New York City who earned his doctorate at University of Pennsylvania),

8. Arthur George Thorne (who assisted his mother Violet as an at-home care giver into her 100th year),

9. Aileen Roselle Callender (the first black female manager at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey),

10. Cecil Michael Thorne, MD (physician, named "physician of the year" and chief of staff at a leading private hospital in the state of Ohio, and faculty member at The Ohio State University School of Medicine)

Publications[]

• 'On Industrial Training in British Guiana', Timehri, 1911 & 1912
• 'Education in British Guiana, Part I', Timehri, 1911^[14]
• 'Education in British Guiana, Part II', Timehri, Vol. 11, (third series), (1912).
• 'British Guianese Progress and Limitations', Timehri, Vo1. II, (third series), (1912).
• 'The Negro and his Descendants in British Guiana', Negro: An Anthology, N. Cunard (Ed.), 1934
• 'A.A. Thorne v. The Argosy Co., Ltd. and W. Macdonald' (BiblioLife Network, Harvard Law School Library), 1905

References[]

See also[]

Thorne, Alfred Athiel in Oxford African American Studies Center

Thorne, Alfred P.