Marcus Garvey

Marcus Garvey (far right) in parade

Marcus Mosiah Garvey, National Hero of Jamaica, (August 17, 1887– June 10, 1940) was a publisher, journalist, entrepreneur, crusader for black nationalism, and founder of the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League (UNIA-ACL). He was born in St. Ann's Bay, Saint Ann, Jamaica. Garvey is best remembered as an important proponent of the "Back-To-Africa" movement, which encouraged people of African ancestry to return to their ancestral homelands. This movement would eventually inspire other movements ranging from the Nation of Islam to the Rastafari movement, who see him as a prophet. Garvey said he wanted those of African ancestry to "redeem" Africa, and for the European colonial powers to leave it. Although Garvey was raised Methodist, he became a Roman Catholic.

Founding of the UNIA-ACL

Garvey returned to Jamaica in 1914. Convinced that uniting blacks was the only way to improve their condition, Garvey launched the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) and African Communities League (ACL) and became its first president. Garvey said that he established this organization to "unite all people of African ancestry of the world to one great body to establish a country and absolutely government of their own".

After corresponding with Booker T. Washington, Garvey went to the United States of America in 1916 to give a lecture tour. By 1920, the association had over one thousand branches in more than 40 countries.

Garvey advanced several ideas designed to promote social, political and economic freedom for blacks, including launching the Black Star Line Steamship Corporation and its successor company, the Black Cross Navigation and Trading Company. However, the line failed owing to mismanagement and fraud. Another venture was the Negro Factories Corporation, which sought to build and operate factories in the big industrial centres of the United States, Central America, the West Indies and Africa to manufacture every marketable commodity. A chain of grocery stores, a restaurant, a publishing house and others business places were started.

Convinced that blacks should have a permanent homeland in Africa, Garvey's movement sought to develop Liberia. In response to suggestions that he wanted to take all Americans of African ancestry back to Africa, he said, "I have no desire to take all black people back to Africa; there are blacks who are no good here and will likewise be no good there." He further reasoned, "our success educationally, industrially and politically is based upon the protection of a nation founded by ourselves. And the nation can be nowhere else but in Africa." The Liberia program, launched in 1920, was intended to build colleges, universities, industrial plants and railroads as part of an industrial base from which to operate, but was abandoned in the mid 1920s after much opposition from European powers with interests in Liberia.

Garvey was not a believer in black supremacy, but a believer in race improvement. He approved of the white racist Ku Klux Klan (the KKK), because it sought to separate the races. On one occasion in early 1922 Garvey went to Atlanta, Georgia for a conference with Edward Young Clarke, Imperial Giant of the Ku Klux Klan, to see whether he could hope for Klan support for his Back to Africa program.

Charged with mail fraud

After an investigation by the U.S. Postal Inspector General, a charge of mail fraud was brought against Garvey by the Attorney General for selling stock in the failed Black Star Line enterprise. It was revealed that, contrary to representations, the corporation did not actually possess the ship pictured in the company's stock brochure. The Black Star Line did own and operate several ships over the course of its history and was in the process of negotiating for the disputed ship at the time. Of all those charged in connection with the enterprise Garvey was the only one found guilty of using the mail service to defraud. Garvey supporters called the trial fraudulent. While it seems clear that there were serious accounting irregularities within the Black Star Line and that claims made by Garvey in selling Black Star Line stock were misleading, Garvey's ultimate prosecution may have been politically motivated. Garvey was convicted and sentenced to a five year term, and imprisoned in the Atlanta Federal Prison in 1925. To this day, efforts on the part of his supporters to exonerate him from the charges continue. His sentence was eventually commuted by President Calvin Coolidge. Since Garvey had been convicted of a felony, and was not a United States citizen, immigration laws required his immediate deportation as an undesirable alien. Upon his release from prison in November 1927, Garvey was deported from New Orleans to Jamaica, where a large crowd met him at Orrett's wharf in Kingston. A huge procession and band marched to the UNIA headquarters.

Other controversies

Around 1921 Marcus Garvey's nationalism and life history led him to proclaim a belief in "racial purity." He admired the efforts toward independence of Catholics in Ireland, so it was not a racist idea in the traditional sense. Instead he feared encouragement of miscegenation would disadvantage those who did not or were not mixed. Still this led him to a controversial praise of Warren G. Harding's speech against miscegenation and discussion that races might be better off separate. For not entirely unrelated reasons, he had a strong antagonism toward W. E. B. Du Bois. Previously Du Bois had expressed hostility to the Black Star Line and other ideas. Garvey began to suspect Du Bois was prejudiced towards him as a Caribbean of darker skin tone. By the late 1920s, this antagonism turned to an almost pathological disdain. Du Bois called Garvey "a lunatic or a traitor." Garvey responded by calling Du Bois "purely and simply a white man's nigger," and "a little Dutch, a little French, a little Negro...a mulatto...a monstrosity." This led to an acrimonious relationship between Garvey and the NAACP. Garvey would later accuse W. E. B. DuBois of paying conspirators to sabotage the Black Star Line, and seeking to destroy his reputation. Du Bois was, nevertheless, a strong supporter of Pan-Africanism. PBS,UCLA

Later years

Garvey travelled to Geneva in 1928 where he presented the "Petition of the Negro Race" to the League of Nations. The petition outlined the abuse of Africans around the world. In September 1929, he founded the People's Political Party (PPP), Jamaica's first modern political party, mostly centered around workers' rights, education and aid to the poor.

Garvey was elected Councillor for the Allman Town division of the Kingston and St. Andrew Corporation (KSAC) in 1929. He lost his seat, however, because of his absence from council meetings while serving a prison sentence for contempt of court. In 1930 he was re-elected, unopposed, along with two other PPP candidates; he agitated for the adoption of some of the points in the PPP's manifesto. In April 1931, Garvey launched the Edelweiss Amusement Company, which Garvey used to help artists make a living from their work, including putting on plays. Several Jamaican entertainers who went on to become popular locally, received their initial exposure there. These included Kidd Harold, Ernest Cupidon, Bim & Bam, and Ranny Williams.

Garvey left Jamaica for London in 1935. He lived and worked there until his death in 1940. During these last five years in London, he remained active, keeping in touch with events in Ethiopia (then Abyssinia) where war was being waged, and also with events in the West Indies. In 1938, he gave evidence before the West Indian Royal Commission on conditions in the West Indies. In that year also, he set up a School of African Philosophy to train the leadership of the UNIA. He continued to work on the magazine The Black Man.

Garvey's political views in his later years were increasingly right-wing. In 1937, a group of his American supporters who called themselves the Peace Movement of Ethiopia openly collaborated with Mississippi Senator Theodore Bilbo in the promotion of a repatriation scheme introduced in the U.S. Congress under the name "Greater Liberia Act". Garvey also expressed considerable sympathy for fascism and speculated about its positive application in Africa. However, shortly before his death Garvey expressed his solidarity with Britain during The Blitz.

Due to difficulties in travel resulting from World War II, after his death, following a stroke, on 10 June 1940, his body was interred in the Kensal Green Cemetery in London. In November 1964, the Government of Jamaica had his remains brought to Jamaica and ceremoniously reinterred at a shrine dedicated to him in National Heroes Park, Garvey having been proclaimed Jamaica's first National Hero.

Influence

Worldwide, Garvey's memory has been kept alive in many ways. Schools, colleges, highways and buildings in Africa, Europe, the Caribbean and the USA have been named after him. The UNIA's red, black and green flag has been adopted as the Black Liberation Flag. And a bust of Garvey was unveiled at the Organization of American States' Hall of Heroes, in Washington, DC in 1980.

Ralph Ellison used Garvey as the basis for Ras the Exhorter, the West Indian black nationalist demagogue in his novel Invisible Man.

In the book Neuromancer by William Gibson, the tug piloted by Maelcum is named The Marcus Garvey.

Garvey and Rastafari

Rastafarians consider Garvey to be a religious prophet, and sometimes even the reincarnation of John the Baptist. This is partly due to Garvey's statement in the 1920s in which he said, "Look to Africa, for there a king will be crowned," but his beliefs are deeply influential over all elements of Rastafari They took this as a prophecy about the crowning of Haile Selassie. The early Rastas were associated with Garvey's Back-to-Africa movement in Jamaica, and in its doctrines, the Rastafari movement can be seen as an offshoot or development of Garveyite philosophy. As his beliefs have greatly influenced Rastafari, he has been a popular theme in much reggae music, especially that of Burning Spear (see the Marcus Garvey album).

Garvey himself never identified with the Rastafari movement, however, and was harshly critical of Haile Selassie in the wake of the invasion of Ethiopia before World War II.

Memorials to Garvey in Jamaica and Beyond

Garvey has been honored in many ways, both in Jamaica and abroad:

a statue of Garvey erected on the grounds of the St. Ann's Bay Parish Library;
a Secondary School in St. Ann named for him;
a major highway in Kingston bearing his name;
a bust of Garvey unveiled at Apex Park, Kingston in 1978;
his likeness appears on the Jamaican 50 cent coin and 20 dollar coin;
the building housing the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (New Kingston) bears his name.
a park with his name in New York City's Harlem neighborhood.
a street named for him in New York City's Brooklyn borough.
a major street named for him in Nairobi, Kenya.
a small park named for him in London's Hammersmith.
the Marcus Garvey Centre, Lenton, Nottingham, UK

There is also a Marcus Garvey library located inside the Tottenham Green Leisure Centre building in North London.

The spoken word introduction to The Orb's track "Towers of Dub" from the album U.F.Orb features a prank call made by satirist Victor Lewis-Smith to London Weekend Television, in which Smith claims to be Garvey, and leaves a message for Haile Selassie, whom he claims will be arriving there shortly.

Quotes

"Up You Mighty Race, Accomplish What You Will..."
"Whatsoever things common to man, that man has done, man can do."
"One God! One Aim! One Destiny!"
"Africa for the Africans...At Home and Abroad!"
"We Negroes believe in the God of Ethiopia, the everlasting God - God the Son, God the Holy Ghost, the one God of all ages. That is the God in whom we believe, but we shall worship him though the spectacles of Ethiopia."
"A people without the knowledge of their past history, origin and culture is like a tree without roots."
"Look for me in the whirlwind or the storm."
"A reading man and woman is a ready man and woman, but a writing man and woman is exact."
"There shall be no solution to this race problem until you, your selves, strike the blow for liberty."
"If you have no confidence in self, you are twice defeated in the race of life. With confidence, you have won before you have started."
"CHANCE has never yet satisfied the hope of a suffering people."

There is a park to his name in the Tenderloin region of San Francisco, CA

External links

"Marcus Garvey: Look for Me in the Whirlwind" PBS documentary film
Marcus Garvey website
UNIA website
Hear Marcus Garvey speak in his only known voice recording. 4:45 minutes. Archived on Netherlands Rastafarian website. Retrieved May 19, 2005.

Marcus Garvey bibliography

Works by Marcus Garvey

The Philosophy and Opinions of Marcus Garvey. Edited by Amy Jacques Garvey. 412 pages. Majority Press; Centennial edition, November 1, 1986. ISBN 0912469242. Avery edition. ISBN 0405018738.
Message to the People: The Course of African Philosophy by Marcus Garvey. Edited by Tony Martin. Foreword by Hon. Charles L. James, President General, Universal Negro Improvement Association. 212 pages. Majority Press, March 1, 1986. ISBN 0912469196.
The Poetical Works of Marcus Garvey. Compiled and edited by Tony Martin. 123 pages. Majority Press, June 1, 1983. ISBN 0912469021.
Hill, Robert A., Editor. The Marcus Garvey and Universal Negro Improvement Association Papers. Vols. I-VII, IX. University of California Press, ca. 1983- (ongoing). 1146 pages. University of California Press, May 1, 1991. ISBN 0520072081.
Hill, Robert A., Editor. The Marcus Garvey and Universal Negro Improvement Association Papers: Africa for the Africans 1921-1922. 740 pages. University of California Press, February 1, 1996. ISBN 0520202112.

Books

Burkett, Randall K. Garveyism As A Religious Movement: The Institutionalization of A Black Civil Religion. Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press and The American Theological Library Association, 1978.
Campbell, Horace. Rasta and Resistance: From Marcus Garvey to Walter Rodney. Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, Inc., 1987.
Clarke, John Henrik, Editor. Marcus Garvey and the Vision of Africa. With the assistance of Amy Jacques Garvey. New York: Vintage Books, 1974.
Cronon, Edmund David. Black Moses: The Story of Marcus Garvey and The Universal Negro Improvement Association. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1955, reprinted 1969.
Garvey, Amy Jacques, Garvey and Garveyism. London, England: Collier-MacMillan Ltd., 1963, 1968.
Hill, Robert A., Editor. Marcus Garvey, Life and Lessons: A Centennial Companion to the Marcus Garvey and Universal Negro Improvement Association Papers. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1987.
—. The Marcus Garvey and Universal Negro Improvement Association Papers. Vols. I-VII, IX. University of California Press, ca. 1983- (ongoing).
James, Winston. Holding Aloft the Banner of Ethiopia: Caribbean Radicalism in Early Twentieth-Century America. London: Verso, 1998.
Kornweibel, Jr., Theodore. Seeing Red: Federal Campaigns Against Black Militancy 1919-1925. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1998.
Lemelle, Sidney and Robin D. G. Kelley. Imagining Home: Class, Culture, and Nationalism in the African Diaspora. London: Verso, 1994.
Lewis, Rupert. Marcus Garvey: Anti-Colonial Champion. Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, Inc., 1988.
Lewis, Rupert and Bryan, Patrick, Editors. Garvey: His Work and Impact. Mona, Jamaica: Institute of Social and Economic Research, 1988.
Lewis, Rupert and Maureen Warner-Lewis. Garvey: Africa, Europe, The Americas. Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, Inc., 1986, 1994.
Manoedi, M. Korete. Garvey and Africa. New York: New York Age Press, 1922.
Martin, Tony. Race First: The Ideological and Organizational Struggle of Marcus Garvey and The Universal Negro Improvement Association. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1976.
—. Literary Garveyism: Garvey, Black Arts, and the Harlem Renaissance. Dover, MA: Majority Press, 1983.
—. African Fundamentalism: A Literary and Cultural Anthology of Garvey's Harlem Renaissance. Dover, MA: Majority Press, 1983, 1991.
—. Marcus Garvey: Hero. Dover, MA: Majority Press, 1983.
—. The Pan-African Connection: From Slavery to Garvey and Beyond. Dover, MA: Majority Press, 1983.
—. The Poetical Works of Marcus Garvey. Dover, MA: Majority Press, 1983.
Smith-Irvin, Jeannette. Marcus Garvey's Footsoldiers of the Universal Negro Improvement Association. Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, Inc., 1989.
Solomon, Mark. The Cry was Unity: Communists and African-Americans, 1917-1936. Jackson, MI: University Press of Mississippi, 1998.
Stein, Judith. The World of Marcus Garvey: Race and Class in Modern Society. Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 1986.
Tolbert, Emory J. The UNIA and Black Los Angeles. Los Angeles, CA: Center of Afro-American Studies, University of California, 1980.
Vincent, Theodore. Black Power and the Garvey Movement. Berkeley, CA: Ramparts Press, 1971.

Theses

Taylor, Ula L. The Veiled Garvey: The Life and Times of Amy Jacques Garvey. (Unpublished Dissertation).