Information AboutMarcus Garvey |
|
The Right Excellent 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 UNIA-ACL . He was born in Jamaica . Garvey is best remembered as a champion of the "Back-To-Africa" movement, which encouraged people of African ancestry to return to their ancestral Homeland s. He is also recognized as an important Prophet of the "back-to-Africa" Rastafari Movement . 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 . PUBLISHING ACTIVITIES Garvey's journalistic experience began with a newspaper called ''The Watchman'' which he started in 1910 . This newspaper was short-lived and was succeeded by others, also short lived, which Garvey published during his early Central American travels. They were: : ''La Nación'', Costa Rica; : ''La Prensa'', Colón, Panama; and : ''The Bluefields Messenger'', Costa Rica. Garvey was also associated with other publications ''The African Times and Orient Review'', ''The Daily Negro Times'', Harlem, 1922-1924; ''The Blackman'', Kingston, Jamaica, 1929-1931; ''The New Jamaican'', Kingston, 1932-33; ''The Black Man Magazine'', which was started in Kingston in 1933 and continued in England until 1939 . 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 And African Communities League (UNIA) and became its first president. The association sought to unite "all the people of African ancestry of the world into one great body to establish a country and Government absolutely their own." A weekly newspaper, the ''Negro World'', was produced by Garvey to discuss issues related to the UNIA. After corresponding with Booker T. Washington , who died in late 1915, Garvey went to the United States Of America in 1916 to give a lecture tour. By 1920 , the association had over 1,100 branches in more than 40 countries. uses three colors: red, black and green.]] Garvey advanced several ideas designed to promote social, political and economic freedom for blacks, including launching the , 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 steam laundry, a Tailor and dressmaking shop, a Millinery store, and a publishing house were also 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 , deriving much of his program from Progressive Era notions of "race improvement" and expressing his admiration for the accomplishments and heroes of Western Civilization . He even approved of the white racist Ku Klux Klan because it sought to separate the races. He also held largely Left-wing political views in these years, expressing considerable enthusiasm for the Russian Revolution . CHARGED WITH MAIL FRAUD After an FBI investigation, a charge of Mail Fraud was brought against Garvey for selling stock in the 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 multiple ships over the course of its history and was in the process of procuring 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. Many historians today see these as trumped up charges. 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 , and on his release 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 whites 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 an 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 antipathy. Du Bois called Garvey "a lunatic or a traitor." Garvey responded by calling Du Bois "a little Dutch, a little French, a little Negro...a mulatto...a monstrosity." This led to an acrimonious relationship between Garvey and the NAACP . Somewhat ironically Du Bois would nevertheless be 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 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 . 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." 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:
There is also a Marcus Garvey library located inside the Tottenham Green Leisure Centre building in North London. In the book Neuromancer by William Gibson , the tug piloted by Maelcum is named The Marcus Garvey. 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!" "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." SEE ALSO African American Literature EXTERNAL LINKS
MARCUS GARVEY BIBLIOGRAPHY Works by Marcus Garvey
Books
Theses
|
|
|