Alfred A. Thorne

Photograph of A. A. Thorne

Alfred Athiel Thorne, also known as A.A. Thorne (August 14, 1871 – April 23, 1956), was a politician, author, advocate for educational access, and human rights advocate in British Guiana, now Guyana. In 1894, Thorne founded and oversaw the Middle School, a co-educational private secondary school providing educational access to students regardless of gender, ethnicity, color, or socio-economic status. Thorne served as an elected official for over 50 years, working to unify working-class white British colonists, Indo-Guyanese, Afro-Guyanese, Chinese, Portuguese, and Indigenous Amerindian communities across British Guiana. He served in multiple elected and appointed roles at both the national and municipal levels, including as Mayor of British Guiana's capital city, Georgetown. Thorne worked for decades as an educator, columnist, and elected official in British Guiana, advocating for access to education, workplace safety, human rights, democracy, and self-determination. He was a lifelong journalist and published columns under the pen name Demos.

Thorne advocated for workplace safety and pay equity by bringing together diverse groups to align around their shared interests. Thorne's worker alliances created representation for workers from working-class and middle-class backgrounds, including first-generation descendants of formerly enslaved Africans; formerly indentured servants from India, China, and Portugal; and white working-class colonists from England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales. The resulting alliances established, increased, and enforced new standards and principles for pay equity and workplace safety.

Born in the British West Indies island of Barbados, Thorne was educated as a British classical scholar, earning both his bachelor's and master's degrees from Durham University. He was the first person of African descent across the entire British Empire to earn both a bachelor's degree and an advanced degree conferred by a British University. He earned both with academic honors.

Advocate for educational access

After graduating with honors with two degrees from the University of Durham in England, A. A. Thorne moved to British Guiana, where in 1894 he founded one of the world's first coeducational private secondary schools that provided equal access to qualified students regardless of gender, color, ethnicity or socio-economic status. It was called The Middle School because it provided students from middle-class and working-class families in the British colony the opportunity 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) and aristocrats. The performance of Thorne's Middle School students on the national tests exceeded the levels achieved by private British schools, such as the Queen's College (a boys-only school) and Bishops' High School (a girls-only school).

A. A. Thorne oversaw the development of this co-educational secondary school as its Headmaster for many years, recruiting teachers from across the country. Thorne established a need-based financial aid system for all students, which he financed, enrolling both boys and girls from underprivileged working-class and moderate-income families with 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 institutions—creating educational access to girls and minorities long before gender rights and civil rights were protected by anti-discrimination laws. Thorne's private school became renowned for the education it provided. As a result, Thorne's school also began attracting student applications from high-income families, and Queen's College recognized the Middle School as a competition for the most talented students in the country. Ultimately, the trustees of Queen's College and Bishop's High School sought to merge Thorne's school with their institutions, in exchange for the commitment from Queens College and Bishop's High School to revise their admissions policies by assuring that all academically qualified applicants from the groups previously excluded from their admissions would now have access to these elite schools, regardless of their ethnicity, color, or socio-economic background. The result was that subsequent generations of students across Guyana from working-class families and minority backgrounds have since attended Queen's College.

Political service and positions

A.A. Thorne served in public service for decades, holding multiple elected offices at both the municipal and national levels continuously for 50 years (from 1902 to 1952). Nationally, he was elected to the Combined Court in 1906 and re-elected to the Court again in 1916; elected as the Financial Representative for the North West District and New Amsterdam (1906-1911 and 1916–1921); elected and re-elected repeatedly as Georgetown City Council Member for 47 years starting in 1902; elected as Deputy Mayor in 1921, 1922 and 1925; and serving as Mayor of Georgetown.

While serving in the legislative, judicial, and executive Branches of government, Thorne became recognized for opening avenues of employment to Guianese.

• 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

Pioneer and advocate for human rights and workplace safety

Thorne led the British Guiana Labour Union, the country's first workers union. He also founded and led the country's second trade union, the British Guiana Workers' League, in 1931, and served as the League's leader for 22 years. The League sought to protect 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. The union's activities focused mostly on protecting factory workers on the sugar plantation estates, municipal workers in Georgetown—the country's capital, and ward-maids at the Georgetown Hospital. His efforts led to the establishment of seven other labor unions beginning in 1938.

Thorne also served as President of the British Guiana Trades Union Council. 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. 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.

In 1902, Thorne was elected to the City Council of the British colony's capital city Georgetown. As a member of the 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. The planters arranged for an article of their own to be published in The Argosy, the local newspaper of Georgetown. Each of the Argosy article's claims was disproven in a court of law, and Thorne won a libel case against the planter-controlled Argosy and was awarded 500 British pounds by the court. The court case is documented as one of the trials over the past 300 years that helped to shape the modern rule of law in the Americas, and the entire trial's transcript is published in Making of Modern Law: Trials, 1600–1926.

International thought 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 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), an honor which they had only conferred previously on two other men: 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 advocated for fair wages for all citizens and led the way for the 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).

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, resulted in rice being priced higher in British Guiana than in neighboring countries and islands. One of Thorne's sons, the Ivy League-educated economics professor Alfred P. Thorne, built on these insights in reference to the global, widespread causes of economic under-development that result from sustained efforts to maintain a supply of low-cost labor in colonies and kingdoms in his book.

A. A. Thorne is referenced as a historical figure in connection with the development and spread of principles behind the concepts of self-determination, democracy, educational access, workplace safety, human rights, gender equality, civil rights, and the rule of law, each of which he promoted. These concepts led to many social changes that spread across the world during the 19th century. His perspectives were included in Nancy Cunard's Negro: An Anthology in a chapter titled 'The Negro and his Descendants in British Guiana'. 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.

Journalism and writing

Thorne worked as a journalist nearly his entire life. He was a columnist who wrote for the African-Guianese owned newspaper Echo under the pen names Junius Junior and Demos. He was also briefly lead writer there in the late 19th century. In 1911 and 1912 he published "On Industrial Training in B.G.", articles for Timehri, the journal of the Royal Agricultural and Commercial Society of British Guiana. In these, he referenced efforts to establish school gardens and model school gardens, then agricultural apprentices and later an Agricultural School in 1910. These efforts were squashed by the colonial government. He was also a prodigious letter writer to all the major colonial newspapers.

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 schoolmaster in Barbados. A. A. Thorne completed his early education at the Lodge School, then graduated from Codrington College in St. John, Barbados, and subsequently earned both his Bachelor's and Advanced degrees in England at the University of Durham, graduating with honors.

The British Empire's highest-scoring secondary school graduating student on the national exam each year was awarded a national scholarship to attend Durham University in England. Thorne achieved the highest score in the national exam. However, the country's Scholarship Committee denied Thorne's academic scholarship award and instead offered the scholarship to the white student who had achieved the second-highest score on the national exam. Thorne sued the National Scholarship Committee in the British colonial courts—and won his first court case. The British court ordered the Scholarship Committee to comply with the British rules for the university scholarship and required the rules to be followed as written. As a result, Thorne was granted the academic scholarship to attend Durham University in England, where he graduated with two degrees, with Honors.

After graduating from Durham University, Thorne moved to British Guiana. He married schoolteacher and artist Eleanor Amanda McLean, and then became a widower upon her death. Years later, he married a teacher named Violet Janet Ashurst. Ashurst was born and raised in British Guiana, the daughter of Charles Ashurst and Elizabeth Jane Alexander. Her family was from Belfast, Ireland, and Ethiopia. A. A. Thorne remained married to Violet 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 national newspapers in Guyana);

2. & 3. Twin brothers (Albert Athiel Thorne and Alfred McLean Thorne, an 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. Alfred Palmerston Thorne, PhD, MBA (Fulbright Scholar, economics professor, and author who earned his PhD at Columbia University in New York City);

7. Duncan John Vivian Thorne, DDS (one of the first Black orthodontists in New York City, having earned his doctorate at the University of Pennsylvania);

8. Arthur George Thorne (who was his mother Violet's primary caregiver into her 100th year);

9. Aileen Roselle Callender (who became the first Black female manager of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey);

10. C. Michael Thorne, MD (physician and chief of staff at a leading hospital in Ohio, and a medical school professor at The Ohio State University School of Medicine).

Publications

• 'On Industrial Training in British Guiana', Timehri: The Journal of the Royal Agricultural and Commercial Society of British Guiana, 1911 & 1912
• 'Education in British Guiana, Part I', Timehri: The Journal of the Royal Agricultural and Commercial Society of British Guiana, 1911
• 'Education in British Guiana, Part II', Timehri: The Journal of the Royal Agricultural and Commercial Society of British Guiana, Vol. 11, (third series), (1912).
• 'British Guianese Progress and Limitations', Timehri: The Journal of the Royal Agricultural and Commercial Society of British Guiana, Vo1. II, (third series), (1912).
• 'A. A. Thorne v. The Argosy Co., Ltd. and W. Macdonald' (BiblioLife Network, Harvard Law School Library), 1905

See also

• Alfred P. Thorne

External links

• Thorne, Alfred Athiel in Oxford African American Studies Center