Harry Thuku

Harry Thuku was born in 1895 in Kambui, Kiambu. Educated at the Gospel Missionary Society school, he worked as a compositor and telegraphist in Nairobi, becoming acutely aware of colonial land alienation, forced female labour, and the humiliating kipande registration pass system.

In 1921, Thuku founded the Young Kikuyu Association (later the East African Association), forging pan-ethnic anti-colonial alliances with coastal and Indian activists. When he was arrested in March 1922, thousands of protesters led by Mary Muthoni Nyanjiru marched on the central police station in Nairobi, resulting in a massacre by colonial police. Exiled to Kismayu and northern Kenya for nine years, he returned to pioneer commercial coffee farming for indigenous Kenyans.