Creole parents in Wilberforce, British Sierra Leone, a village adjoining the capital city, Freetown. His father was a farmer, while his mother was a fishwife who sold her goods in markets in neighbouring villages. Many of his relatives held low-status jobs involving craftsmanship, carpentry and masonry. His poor upbringing and low social status influenced his understanding and empathy of the working class, as seen in his early association with communism and later, his leadership in the West African labour movement. Wallace-Johnson received his primary education at Centenary Tabernacle Day School before entering United Methodist Collegiate School in 1911. There, he engaged in numerous leadership activities. On one such occasion, he led his classmates in a protest against unreasonable punishment by school authorities. He also edited the school's newspaper, Wall Paper. He dropped out two years later to support his family. He was first employed as a temporary outdoor officer at the customs department. Soon, he became a permanent employee of the department. He became involved in a labour strike for increased pay and better working conditions. It is widely believed that Wallace-Johnson led the strike, but this fact remains uncertain. All employees involved in the strike were dismissed, but reinstituted to their jobs a year later after the Secretary of State for the Colonies assessed the case. During the one-year break, he held jobs as a surveyor, farmer, fisher and a clerk in a law office. He was very popular as a lay preacher among rural villagers. He was interested in joining the ministry, but he lacked the proper education needed to enter the occupation. All during this time, he wrote articles in the Aurora, a newspaper edited by H. C. Bankole-Bright. Wallace-Johnson considered Bankole-Bright to be the most influential person in his life at the time. Following a 1938 feud, Bankole-Bright would become Wallace-Johnson's political nemesis. A year after being reinstated to his job in the customs department, he quit and enlisted as a clerk for the Carrier Corps during World War I. During the war, he served with a British infantry during military campaigns in Cameroon, East Africa and the Middle East. Wallace-Johnson received exposure to the world outside his tiny village. After being demobilised in 1920, he moved from job to job, unable to find a comfortable niche to settle in. While working as a clerk in the Freetown municipal government, a corruption scandal erupted, involving the