BULAYA CHANDA

Samson Jackson is one of five black Africans known to have served as a combatant on the Western Front during the First World War. He changed his name in 1915 from Bulaya Chanda to Samson Jackson to enlist. In the 1920s, he started using the name Chief Luale (Luali) for his stage work in London’s West End and in amusement parks across England. He appeared on stage with John Gielgud, Hermione Baddeley and others, and befriended Paul Robeson before working with Billy Butlin prior to the latter starting Butlin’s holiday camp and his own show ’The African Village’. He died aged 34, never having seen his homeland after leaving it in 1914, despite requests to the Colonial Office in the 1920s. This is the story of how Bulaya came to be Chief Luale and how he navigated white British society in the early twentieth century as a black African.