On this day, 22 July 1895, August Agbola O'Browne, the only Black person believed to have participated in the anti-Nazi Warsaw uprising of 1944 was born in Lagos, Nigeria. A professional musician and polyglot, speaking six languages, he moved to Poland in 1922, lived in Warsaw and played drums in clubs in the city. He initially took part in the defence of Warsaw during the 1939 German invasion, and later took part in the 1944 insurrection (not to be confused with the Warsaw ghetto uprising of 1943) under the codename “Ali” in the Iwo battalion. In 1958, O'Browne migrated to Britain where he died in the late 1970s.
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