Thread by @YorubaHistory

August Agboola O'Browne

1895-1976

Celebrated Polish Jazz percussionist.

The only black member of WWII Polish Nazi resistance.

He survived the brutal war in which 94% of Warsaw residents were either killed or displaced, and continued living in the ravaged city until 1958.

August Agboola O'Browne was born on 22 July 1895 in Lagos, to Wallace and Josefina Agboola.

Very little is known about his early life in Lagos, but he stowed away to the UK aboard a British merchant ship, with the help of his father who was a longshoreman on the ship.

In Britain, he first joined a small British travelling theatre group. He somehow ended up in Poland in 1922, at 27 first in Krakow & later moving to Warsaw. It is uncertain if he went to Poland with the theatre group, what informed the choice and why he chose to live there.

In any case it became home for the next 36 years.

He made a living as a jazz drummer, working the Warsaw club circuit. He is said to have released or featured on an album in 1928. He married a Polish woman, Zofia and had two children, Ryszard (1928) and Aleksander (1929).

“A Black-White marriage. Strictly speaking, not black-white, but white-chocolate took place in Kraków, where authentic Negro, Mr. August Braoun, married authentic Polish Ms. Zofia Pykówna. Exotic wedding gathered crowds in church. You can see newlyweds & guests on our photo.”

Browne gained great fame playing in a quartet in Warsaw's famous Ziemanska club, where his 6 feet plus imposing height, good looks, charm and African origins set him apart.

His marriage unfortunately didn’t last long. He later remarried after returning to England in 1958 & had a daughter, Tatiana. No one knows what motivated him to stay on in Poland during WWII, as he arranged for his former wife & children to escape to the UK at the outbreak.

The dauntless documentarist Ed Keazor, @seal_67 records a funny incident in his first marriage, in an article:

“...in 1931, Browne left home after an argument with his wife, and stayed away, playing gigs for a few days...

...His wife not to be outdone, placed a missing persons ad in the Warsaw newspapers, of which poor Browne had to respond a few days later, sheepishly explaining that he had merely been out earning a living and pleading with his wife not to wash their dirty linen in public...

...This incident aside, Browne was widely acknowledged by friends and neighbours as a courteous, well-mannered gentleman, who was much loved and respected by most who knew him.”

The details of his role in the Polish resistance was only recently discovered by historian Zbigniew Osiński, in the Warsaw Uprising Museum in 2010. Apparently he had applied in 1949, after the war, to join a Polish veterans association.

Most of the information we know about his role are contained in the application form, which the researcher found.

In it, he revealed that he defended the country during the invasion of Poland in 1939. He also fought in the Warsaw uprising of 1944.

It also revealed that he operated as an insurgent during the uprising, under the code name Ali in a unit of the battalion Iwo.
Before the uprising, he had been an operative in the resistance, distributing illegal propaganda material & sheltering refugees from the ghetto.

The Germans put down the uprising brutally. It is quite remarkable that he survived unscathed, despite standing out on account of colour. This was an insurgency in which, of the about 50,000 fighters that took part, approximately 18,000 of them were killed & about 25,000 wounded.

After the war, he continued to live in the wreaked city, working with Warsaw’s Department of Culture & Art. He continued with work as a professional musician in the evenings in the clubs.

He moved to England in 1958, & continued his life as a musician in London’s jazz district.

A recent BBC report, said of his time in England: “All who met Browne described him as a handsome man and a sharp dresser.”

His only surviving offspring is 61 year old Tatiana, his daughter from his second marriage. She says her father never talked about what had happened to him and she knows very little of his background in Poland or his early years in Lagos.

She remembers him as "very quiet, very private, and quite distant", probably to bury the trauma endured and atrocities witnessed. “Dad had a real quick wit and a real charm about him.”

“When we used to go to church on a Sunday, I used to see him interact with other people. He had a real warmth that drew you in so you automatically liked him.
“When he was in company with other people, there was just this [energy]. People were drawn to him.”

His involvement in the war is also told in a brief chapter titled “Insurgent from Nigeria” in a book Afryka w Warszawie, or “Africa in Warsaw”, published in 2010, edited by Mamadou Diouf and Dr Paweł Średziński.

In 2019, a monument honouring his role in the Polish resistance was unveiled in Warsaw.
At the event, the Mayor of Warsaw Rafal Trazaskowski said; “...according to my knowledge, he’s the only black Warsaw insurgent – a Nigerian man who became a Warsaw citizen.”

Details of the monument and the inscription on it.

He died at 81, in 1976 and is buried in London’s Hampstead cemetery.

Main sources: Ed Keazor: musicinafrica.net/magazine/augus…

Nicholas Boston: google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.…