Chris Braithwaite
*This date marks the birth of Chris Braithwaite in 1885. He was an Afro Caribbean union activist in the Colonial Seamen's Association.
Braithwaite, also known as Chris Jones, was born in Barbados. As a teenager, he went to sea with the British Merchant Navy and traveled the world as a sailor. He settled in Chicago before rejoining the Merchant Navy during World War I. After World War I, he lived in New York City before settling in London, working for the Shipping Federation. He married a white woman, Edna, from Stepney, where they lived.
In 1930, Braithwaite became a National Union of Seamen member and joined the Seamen's Minority Movement, a rank-and-file group organized by the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB). Taking the pseudonym "Chris Jones" to avoid victimization by his employer, Braithwaite helped distribute the Negro Worker, and Arnold Ward helped launch the Negro Welfare Association, publicizing the case of the Scottsboro Boys.
In 1933, he followed George Padmore in resigning from the CPGB to protest the implicit shift away from anti-imperialism involved with the emerging "Popular Front" strategy. In 1935, opposing the new British Shipping (Assistance) Act of 1935, Braithwaite founded the Colonial Seamen's Association, which included Asian seamen alongside other Black colonial seamen. He became organizing secretary of the International African Service Bureau (IASB), established in May 1937, whose members included Padmore, C. L. R. James, Jomo Kenyatta, Amy Ashwood Garvey, and I. T. A. Wallace-Johnson.
Braithwaite wrote a monthly column, "Seamen's Notes," for the IASB journal, International African Opinion. Braithwaite, Padmore, and James opposed the CPGB meeting to heckle CPGB meetings. Braithwaite and Padmore worked with the Independent Labor Party (ILP). Chris Braithwaite died from pneumonia on September 9, 1944.
