T. Ras Makonnen (born George Thomas N. Griffiths; c. 7 October 1909 – 18 December 1983) was a Guyanese-born Pan-African activist of Ethiopian descent.
Shortly after his arrival in Texas he was drawn into YMCA activities through which he developed his solidarity with the African cause and laid the foundation for his repute as a gifted speaker.
Makonnen was friends with West Indians and Africans such as future Nigerian president Nnamdi Azikiwe during this period, and with them formed the Libyan Institute, where the members "read learned papers on aspects of Africa".
[3] Makonnen also listened on the street corners and at other meetings to Black socialists and communists, including George Padmore, "but never became a party man; [though] I borrowed a lot from them".
[4] Makonnen lent his energies to the Brookwood Labor College, working on "a primer on American history and a dictionary of terms essential to the workers' movement".
His brief flirtation with the radical American left during this period, drew in his own words, jocular remarks from Azikiwe and Ugandan Ernest Kalibala, who were also in America around that time.
It was during a brief visit in London, en route to Denmark where he met and shared a platform with C. L. R. James and Jomo Kenyatta at a meeting in Trafalgar Square on the Ethiopian crisis organised by the International African Friends of Ethiopia (IAFE).
It was around this time that Mussolini unravelled his designs on Ethiopia that the young Griffiths changed his name to Makonnen, when he was part of a delegation, that included Jomo Kenyatta and ITA Wallace Johnson; to welcome Haile Selassie to the City of Bath.
Writing about Makonnen's role in the Bureau, historian Carol Polsgrove presents him as the group's business manager, selling its journal, Pan Africa, at political meetings and handling the bills.
[6] In London, Makonnen became a founder member of the first attempt to form a Pan-African Federation in mid-1936, which brought together representatives from North, South, East and West Africa, and the Caribbean.
Makonnen naturally also became involved with the International African Friends of Abyssinia (IAFA), which was chaired by C. L. R. James; one of its leading members was Jomo Kenyatta.
After the Italian conquest of Abyssinia, IAFA transformed itself into the International African Service Bureau (IASB), under the chairmanship of Padmore, with Makonnen as "executive and publicity secretary".
The IASB stood for "the progress and social advancement of Africans at home and abroad; full economic, political and racial equality; and for self-determination".
The IASB was in touch with colonial organisations such as the Gold Coast Aborigines Rights Protection Society, which solicited its support for its 1935 petition regarding monopolistic control of cocoa exports.
Monolulu, who earned an occasionally lucrative living as a race-course tipster, had a "kind of Rasputin tone [and] traded in subtle vulgarity of a high order".
[1] True to his entrepreneurial spirit, he opened four restaurants and an exclusive nightclub, all of which did exceptionally well, especially after the arrival of US, especially African American, troops in the area during the war.
He also opened a bookshop which catered to the students at the nearby Manchester University, and eventually owned a number of houses which he let to Black people.
He distributed it across Africa and the Americas, but it was hard to collect fees, and in some places bookstores and subscribers were nervous about being seen with what was then, under colonial rule, a publication that critiqued the governance of European powers.
Makonnen's political contacts and activities also included work with the Sudanese Umma Party and particular with men like Abdalla Khalil Bey and Mohammed Majoub.
[1] In July 1937, the Bureau had begun to publish a duplicated paper, Africa and the World, whose 14 August 1937 (and apparently final) issue noted that Makonnen had been among the speakers at a Trafalgar Square meeting regarding the situation in the West Indies, where there was widespread agitation for civil and trade union rights.
[1] The Pan-African Federation (PAF) was re-formed in Manchester in 1944 under the presidency of Dr Peter Milliard, a politically active physician of British Guianese origins; Makonnen was the secretary.
[1] In mid-1946 Makonnen began to advertise the "Panaf Service" as "importers and exporters, publishers, booksellers, printers, and manufacturers' representatives", based at his premises at 58 Oxford Road, Manchester, which was also the PAF's home.
Profits from these new activities went to finance the PAF, which maintained old contacts and made new ones with political groups and activists in Africa and the Caribbean whose concerns were publicised and whose delegations to Britain were helped when possible.
Makonnen was arrested following a coup in Ghana in 1966 and spent time in prison before his release was secured by Kenyatta, who had been an IASB colleague in Britain.