Harry Thuku (1895-1970), Kenyan politician, was one of the pioneers in the development of modern African nationalism in Kenya.

Harry Thuku was born in the Kambui district of Kenya; he traced his descent from one of the most influential Kibuyu families of the region. He spent 4 years at the school of the Kambui Gospel Mission, and in 1911 he received a 2-year prison sentence for forging a check. Next Thuku became a typesetter for the Leader, a European settler newspaper. In 1918 he became a clerk-telegraph operator in the government treasury office in Nairobi. All this experience had made Thuku one of the first of Kenya's Africans to be fully capable of working in the English language.

At this time the first African organizations were being formed to defend African interests against the European rulers of Kenya. One of the first, the Kikuyu Association, was a nonmilitant group with ties...