MARCUS MOSIAH GARVEY
Hon. Rt. Excellent, Marcus Garvey.
Marcus Garvey was born 1887 in St. Anne's Jamaica. He was a West Indian by birth and a revolutionary by disposition. Garvey dedicated his life to what he called the "uplifting" of the black people of the world through the creation of the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) and the African Communities League. Like Malcolm X a generation later, he believed that blacks could never achieve equality unless they became independent--founding their own nations, governments, businesses, industrial enterprises, and military establishments--in short, those same institutions by which other peoples of the world had risen to power.
The youngest of 11 children, Garvey moved to Kingston at age 14, found work in a print shop, and became acquainted with the abysmal living conditions of the laboring class. He quickly involved himself in social reform, participating in the first Printers' Union strike on Jamaica and setting up a newspaper called The Watchman. Leaving the island to earn money to finance his projects, he visited Central and South America, amassing evidence that black people everywhere were victims of discrimination.
Back in Jamaica in 1911, he laid the groundwork of the Universal Negro Improvement Association, to which he was to devote his life. Undaunted by lack of enthusiasm for his plans, Garvey left for England in 1912 in search of additional financial backing. While there, he worked for an Egyptian scholar and learned much of the history of Africa--particularly with reference to the exploitation of black peoples by colonial powers.
In 1916, acquainted with the work of Booker T. Washington, he came to the United States, where he formulated what he called the "Back to Africa" program for the resettlement of the black in his ancestral homeland. In New York City particularly his ideas attracted popular support and thousands enrolled in the UNIA.
He began publishing the newspaper The Negro World and toured the United States preaching black nationalism to popular audiences. In a matter of months, he had founded over 30 UNIA branches and launched some ambitious business ventures, notably the Black Star Line, a black steamship company. On the negative side, he ran into trouble with the New York District Attorney's Office, which he had publicly criticized and other enemies began to appear.
In 1920 the UNIA convened a 31-day international conclave in Madison Square Garden, where they presented a policy statement on the Back to Africa program and proclaimed a formal Declaration of Rights for blacks all over the world.
Following this, Garvey set himself the task of negotiating for the repatriation of blacks to Liberia. Rumors that Garvey's real intention was to seize power in Liberia to withdraw all support from the venture, leaving Garvey stunned from the realization that he had actually been rebuffed by a black African nation.
With the Black Star Line in serious financial difficulties, Garvey promoted two new business organizations--the African Communities League and the Negro Factories Corporation. He also tried to salvage his colonization scheme by sending a delegation to appeal to the League of Nations for transfer to the UNIA of the African colonies taken from Germany during World War I.
Financial betrayal by trusted aides and a host of legal entanglements (based on charges that he had used the U. S. mails to defraud prospective investors) eventually led to Garvey's imprisonment in Atlanta Federal Penitentiary for a five-year term. In 1927 his half-served sentence was commuted, and he was deported to Jamaica by order of President Calvin Coolidge.
Garvey then turned his energies to Jamaica politics, campaigning on a platform of self-government, minimum wage laws and land and judicial reform. He was soundly defeated at the polls, however, because most of his followers did not have the necessary voting qualifications.
In 1935, Garvey left for England where, in near obscurity, he died five years later in a cottage in West Kensington.
Critics have labeled Garvey a pretentious mountebank, whereas his supporters call him a genius. From a historical viewpoint he must be regarded as a fanatic visionary, a man literally driven by the notion that the blacks' sole means for surviving in the twentieth century was through the foundation of a unified, separatist empire in Africa. Although his ideas were rejected by most people of his day, it is clear that, since then, these very ideas have strongly influenced the policies of black leaders all over the world. (From the African American)
Check these links on Garvey.
Marcus Garvey Facts on Marcus Garvey Garveyites Rastafari on Marcus Garvey
Twelve Tribes on Garvey Marcus Garvey & U.N.I.A.
Marcus Garvey Library Garvey's photos U.N.I.A-ACL site
Garvey's generations Garvey & U.N.I.A Philosophy & Opinions New Marcus Garvey Library Marcus Garvey's Opinions
Garvey Speaks
The Image of God Dissertation on Man Brotherhood
Marcus Garvey's U.S.A. return Marcus on the U.N.I.A
