John Francis Bray

John Francis Bray (1809–1897) was a radical, Chartist, writer on socialist economics and activist in both Britain and his native America in the 19th century. He was hailed in later life as the 'Benjamin Franklin' of American labor.

John Bray was born in Oregon Country (in what is today the US state of Washington) to parents who were in show business. His father had been born into a Yorkshire family of farmers and clothiers around Huddersfield. In 1822 they moved back to the West Riding, to Leeds. But their initial plans were stymied when his father died shortly after their return. Young John was then lodged with a relative and was apprenticed into the printing trade around the West Riding. He moved back to Leeds in 1832 and worked on a local paper and became involved in the working class movement in Leeds, including the Chartist Movement, then growing in Leeds around Feargus O'Connor's Northern Star. He also helped to found the Leeds Working Men's Association in 1837 and became its first treasurer. He delivered a number of lectures to the membership from which his first pamphlet "Labour's wrongs and labour's remedy" was drawn.

Following the repression of the first wave of the Chartist movement in the wake of the abortive uprising attempts of 1839 and the economic depression of 1841 - 1842, Bray returned to the US in 1842 and became a printer in Detroit. He later moved to Pontiac, Michigan where he began a family and later moved from printing into farming on a nearby farm. During the 1850s and 1860s he was active in the Democratic and working class movement locally and throughout the midwest. He wrote articles and lectured around the midwest opposing a range of social ills from Spiritualism to the Civil War and slavery. He supported the Socialist Labor Party and joined the Knights of Labor. As an old man he helped to shape the politics of the Populist Party of the 1890s.

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