By Tony Martin

Marcus Garvey died on June 10, 1940 after building the most successful Pan-African government of all time. Garvey organized the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League in 1914 at a time when the future of the African World looked grim. The final touches to the European imperialistic conquest of Africa were being put in place. Heaped upon the devastation of four and a half centuries of trans-Atlantic and Arab slave trades, there now came, in the wake of European conquest, genocide, forced labor, slavery and political and cultural subjugation.

In Afro-America the civil rights gains of the post-Civil War period had been wiped out.  A reign of terror unleashed by the Klu Klux Klan and similar groups, aided and abetted by racist state legislatures, a conniving judiciary and an indifferent federal government, had all conspired to return  the African-American population to the brink of slavery.  By 1914 thousands of Black people had been savagely murdered in the streets, at the hands of mobs of white people, numbering at times in the thousands.

In the Caribbean, poverty and lack of educational opportunity had conspired  to expel tens of thousands of emigrants who scoured the world in search of education, work and political space.  Despite the relative absence of overtly racist laws such as obtained in the United States, the British colonizers nevertheless successfully prevented over ninety percent of its Caribbean subjects from voting.  Among the few voters, a disproportionate number was white.  Similar distressing situations existed in other areas of African populations, such as Brazil and in areas of minor African settlements, such as Europe and Canada.

Into this situation Garvey forcefully injected himself with a bold plan to gather up an embattled people, reverse their downward slide and point them on the way forward to freedom, justice, equality and power.  Garvey's main goals may have been summarized as follows- first, he sought to build confidence in self.   His slogan "Race First" suggested that Black people must see beauty in themselves.  They must also reclaim the right to interpret their own reality and control their own destiny.  Black people, he taught, must write their own history, criticize their own literature, build and lead their own organiztions and worship a God that looked like them.

Garvey stressed, secondly, the goal of self reliance, especially in the area of economic activity.  His Black Star Line, Negro Factories Corporation and other ventures were efforts in that direction.  Garvey stressed, thirdly, nationhood or political self-determination.  He saw a strong Africa as crucial in this regard, since its ancestral significance and economic resources made it a potential anchor for Pan-African struggle.

Garvey's impact on his own was without parallel.   Approximately twelve hundred branches of the UNIA in over forty countries speak for itself.  His impact on succeeding generations has also been immense, in spite of a concerted mainstream effort first to expunge him from the pages of history and secondly, when the effort failed, to distort his record.  Many African leaders in succeeding decades have expressly acknowledged their debt to Garvey's influence.  They include Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, Nnamdi Azikewe of Nigeria and Jomo Kenyatta of Kenya.   Modified versions of Garvey's red, black and green flag can be seen in the national flag of Kenya and the flag of the African National Congress in South Africa.  The strong influence of Garveyism on the ANC of the 1920's and '30s continued in the ANC Youth League of the 1940s and resides today in the Pan-Africanist Congress of Azania.

Garvey's influence in Afro-America can be traced through a variety of major organizations and leaders.  Elijah Muhammad was a member of the UNIA in Detroit and his Nation of Islam bore many obvious similarities to Garvey's organization.  The parents of Malcolm X were both local UNIA leaders in Omaha, Milwaukee and Lansing Michigan.  Garvey himself visited the home of Malcolm's parents on more than one occasion.  Carlos Cooks of the African Nationalist Pioneer Movement, former Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm and ex-congressman Charles Diggs are among the post-Garvey leaders who emerged out of a Garvey background.  The entire Black Power Movement of the 1960's and 70's was permeated with Garveyite symbols and ideas.

The Black Arts Movement was a counterpart of Garvey's literary and cultural program which spearheaded the Harlem Renaissance.  In the Caribbean practically the entire group of labor/political leaders who emerged circa the 1930's were influenced in one way or another by Garveyism.  They included Clement Payne of Barbados and Trinidad, St. William Grant of Jamaica, D. Hamilton Jackson of St. Croix and others.

Garvey's influence can be traced also in non-African figures, particularly Ho Chi Minh of Viet Nam, an ardent support of UNIA during his New York sojourn in his younger days.

The African World since Garvey has accomplished much, thanks to the efforts of Garvey and others who labored long and often died before hope loomed on the horizon.  Political independence has been achieved even in areas of most tenacious colonialism, such as Zimbabwe, Angola and Namibia.

South Africa, the most outrageous case of settler colonialism for the entire twentieth century, now appears poised for a showdown.  The Civil Rights and Black Power struggles in the United States have brought a restoration of basic rights not enjoyed since Reconstruction.  Some inroads have been made in politics, business, and education.

Yet, much remains to be done and these gains have sometimes been tempered by losses.  Colonialism still persists in the French West Indies, where the lessons of Guinea, Viet Nam and Algeria appear to have been forgotten.   South African destabilization was wrought great havoc in the neighboring frontline states, particularly economics of many African and other states.

Independent African and Caribbean states have often been slow to assert control over education and media, leaving their populations at the mercy of alien influences.  In economic and military terms Africa is probably weaker, vis-a-vis the major powers, than it was in 1441, when the Trans-Atlantic slave trade had its beginnings.  Whereas countries such as Brazil, Argentina, Israel, India, Iraq and the racist regime in South Africa have become important manufacturers of armaments, Africa still remains in danger of being left behind.  This would have distressed Garvey, who saw a people without power as being a people without respect.

Garvey's efforts to mobilize technical and financial support scattered Africans for Africa's regeneration still remains a viable goal.   The neutralizing of South Africa's destabilizing influence and the hopeful revitalizing of African economies may yet lay the foundation for an African resurgence in the 21st century, of which Garvey would be proud.  Afro-America, despite its problems, edges ever closer to the heart of power in the United States, in Congress, in the armed forces, in entertainment, business, sports and education.  African Brazil, the sleeping giant of Pan-Africanism, has begun to stir.  And the Caribbean, with its highly educated and globally oriented population, and with its proximity to North and South America and Africa itself, may yet fulfill Garvey's 1913 prophesy, that out of this area may come the instruments for uniting and empowering a scattered and embattled race.

The Impact of Marcus Garvey

  By Dr. John Henrik Clarke

When Marcus Garvey died in 1940 the role of the British Empire was already being challenged by India and the rising expectations of her African colonies. Marcus Garvey's avocation of African redemption and the restoration of the African state's sovereign political entity in world affairs was still a dream without fulfillment.

After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941, the United States would enter, in a formal way, what had been up to that date strictly a European conflict. Marcus Garvey's prophesy about the European scramble to maintain dominance over the whole world was now a reality. The people of Africa and Asia had joined in this conflict but with different hopes, different dreams and many misgivings. Africans throughout the colonial world were mounting campaigns against this system which had robbed them of their nation-ness and their basic human-ness. The discovery and the reconsideration of the teachings of the honorable Marcus Mosiah Garvey were being rediscovered and reconsidered by a large number of African people as this world conflict deepened.

In 1945, when World War II was drawing to a close the 5th Pan-African Congress was called in Manchester, England. Some of the conventioneers were: George Padmore, Kwame Nkrumah, W.E.B. Dubois, Nnamdi Azikiwe of Nigeria, and Jomo Kenyatta of Kenya. Up to this time the previous Pan-African Congresses had mainly called for improvements in the educational status of the Africans in the colonies so that they would be prepared for self-rule when independence eventually came.

The Pan-African Congress in Manchester was radically different from all of the other congresses. For the first time Africans from Africa, Africans from the Caribbean and Africans from the United States had come together and designed a program for the future independence of Africa. Those who attended the conference were of many political persuasions and different ideologies, yet the teachings of Marcus Garvey were the main ideological basis for the 5th Pan-African Congress in Manchester, England in 1945.

Some of the conveners of this congress would return to Africa in the ensuing years to eventually lead their respective nations toward independence and beyond. In 1947, a Ghanaian student who had studied ten years in the United States, Dr. Kwame Nkrumah returned to Ghana on the invitation of Joseph B. Danquah, his former schoolmaster. Nkrumah would later become Prime Minister. In his fight for the complete independence for the Gold Coast later to be known as Ghana, Kwame Nkrumah acknowledged his political indebtedness to the political teachings of Marcus Garvey.

On September 7, 1957, Ghana became a free self-governing nation, the first member of the British Commonwealth of Nations to become self-governing. Ghana would later develop a Black Star Line patterned after the maritime dreams of Marcus Garvey. My point here is that the African Independence Explosion, which started with the independence of Ghana, was symbolically and figuratively bringing the hopes of Marcus Garvey alive.

In the Caribbean Islands the concept of Federation and Political union of all the islands was now being looked upon as a realizable possibility. Some constitutional reforms and changing attitudes, born of this awareness, were improving the life of the people of these islands.

In the United States the Supreme Court's decision of 1954, outlawing segregation in school systems was greeted with mixed feelings of hope and skepticism by African-Americans. A year after this decision the Montgomery Bus Boycott, the Freedom Rides and the demand for equal pay for Black teachers that subsequently became a demand for equal education for all, would become part of the central force that would set the fight for liberation in motion.

The enemies of Africans, the world over were gathering their counter-forces while a large number of them pretended to be sympathetic to the African's cause. Some of these pretenders, both Black and White, were F.B.I. and other agents of the government whose mission it was to frustrate and destroy the Civil Rights Movement. In a different way the same thing was happening in Africa. The coups and counter-coups kept most African states from developing into the strong independent and sovereign states they had hoped to become.

While the Africans had gained control over their state's apparatus, the colonialist's still controlled the economic apparatus of most African states. Africans were discovering to their amazement that a large number of the Africans, who had studied abroad were a detriment to the aims and goals of their nation. None of them had been trained to rule an African state by the use of the best of African traditional forms and strategies. As a result African states, in the main, became imitations of European states and most of their leaders could justifiably be called Europeans with black faces. They came to power without improving the lot of their people and these elitist governments continue until this day.

In most cases what went wrong was that as these leaders failed to learn the lessons of self-reliance and power preparation as advocated by Marcus Garvey and in different ways by Booker T. Washington, W.E.B Dubois, Elijah Muhammad and Malcolm X. Africa became infiltrated by foreign agents. Africans had forgotten, if they knew at all, that Africa is the world's richest continent, repository of the greatest mineral wealth in the world. They had not asked themselves nor answered the most critical question. If Africa is the world's richest continent, why is it so full of poor people? Marcus Garvey advocated that Africans control the wealth of Africa. He taught that control, control of resources, control of self, control of nation, requires preparation, Garveyism was about total preparation.

There is still no unified force in Africa calling attention to the need for this kind of preparation. This preparation calls for a new kind of education if Africans are to face the reality of their survival.

Africans in the United States must remember that the slave ships brought no West Indians, no Caribbeans, no Jamaicans or Trinidadians or Barbadians to this hemisphere. The slave ships brought only African people and most of us took the semblance of nationality from the places where slave ships dropped us off. In the 500 year process of oppression the Europeans have displaced our God, our culture, and our traditions. They have violated our women to the extent that they have created a bastard race who is confused as to whether to be loyal to its mother's people or its fathers people and for the most part they remain loyal to neither. I do not think African people can succeed in the world until the hear again Marcus Garvey's call:

AFRICA FOR THE AFRICANS, THOSE AT HOME AND ABROAD.

We must regain our confidence in ourselves as a people and learn again the methods and arts of controlling nations. We must hear again Marcus Garvey calling out to us:

UP! UP! YOU MIGHTY RACE! YOU CAN ACCOMPLISH WHAT YOU WILL!

Marcus Garvey

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In several ways, and certainly from political and cultural standpoints, we are still weighing the monumental impact of Marcus Garvey around the world. His clarion call of "One Aim, One God, One Destiny," and "Africans for Africans at home and abroad," still resonate, having an especially significant value in the spiritual and psychological outlook of Black people wherever they reside.

Born in St. Ann's Bay, Jamaica, August 17, 1887, Garvey would be celebrating his 110th birthday this coming summer. Garvey was virtually self-taught, reading voraciously from his father's extensive library. By 1910, and then residing in Kingston, he quickly established himself as a orator, a skill that was the hallmark of his illustrious political career.

For the next four years or so Garvey traveled throughout the West Indies, Central America and Europe, primarily working as a printer and an editor. In England he worked briefly at the prestigious Africa Times and Orient Review, where he came under the estimable influence of Duse Muhammad. Upon his return to Jamaica, he was convinced of a need for an organization to uplift the downtrodden people of his island. Thus was born the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA).

Two years later, after being completely captivated by Booker T. Washington's autobiography "Up From Slavery," Garvey wrote to the great man and was soon thinking of building his own institution modeled after Washington's Tuskegee Institute. Through the correspondence with Washington, Garvey made plans to visit the United States. Unfortunately, when he finally arrived in America, Washington had died the previous year in 1915, but a visionary like Garvey was not deterred by this setback.

As part of his introduction to the states, Garvey toured the country, lecturing and establishing contacts. It took the energetic Garvey only a couple of years to place the UNIA on the political map, and this notoriety was ushered along by his extremely potent weekly the Negro World.

At its peak, some historians have written, the UNIA boasted a membership of more than four million, with almost as many sympathizers. How it rose to this prominence and its ultimate eclipse which has been insightfully discussed in the works of Robert Hill and Tony Martin. What is apparent in their exhaustive studies is the powerful impression Garvey left on our spiritual and mental health. His fervent nationalism, his belief in self-reliance is an indelible stamp that marks our progress as a people. We salute the magnificent Garvey on this 110th year of his birth, knowing that his prodigious soul-force will carry us through the 21st century and beyond.

Ethiopianism includes the appreciation of Ethiopia's ancient civilization as well as its role in the Bible. To blacks, Africa (interchangeable with Ethiopia) became a glorious, Biblical homeland equated with Zion. The recognition of African roots and the desire for repatriation has been a central theme in New World black religion before and since emancipation. Ethiopianism became a "black religious reaction to pro-slavery propaganda."
Marcus Garvey's "Back to Africa" movement developed the spirit of Ethiopianism to its fullest extent.

White people have seen their God through white spectacles, we have only now started out (late though it be) to see our God through our own spectacles. The God of Isaac and the God of Jacob let him exist for the race that believe in the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob. 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 through the spectacles of Ethiopia.

A. J. Garvey, The Philosophy and Opinions of Marcus Garvey

Garvey's words planted the seeds for most "Black Cod" movements in the US and Caribbean. Stressing the superiority of the ancient Africans and the dignity of the black race, he inspired many successful nationalist movements and numerous African leaders from Kenyatta to Nyerere.

Marcus Mosiah Garvey was born in St. Ann, Jamaica, in 1887, descended from the fiercely proud Maroons. He founded the newspaper The Negro World, which took as its motto his nationalist cry, "One God, One Aim, One Destiny." In 1917, he founded UNIA (Universal Negro Improvement Association) in Harlem. Its aims were described in a speech delivered by Garvey in 1924 at Madison Square Garden, New York:

"The Universal Improvement Association represents the hopes and aspirations of the awakened Negro. Our desire is for a place in the world, not to disturb the tranquility of other men, but to lay down our burden and rest our weary backs and feet by the banks of the Niger and sing our songs and chant our hymns to the God of Ethiopia."

Garvey's goal of repatriation was expressed in his famous slogan "Africa for the Africans." His well-known Black Star Line steamship company was established to trade and eventually carry New World blacks to Africa. This prophet of African redemption was not always successfull in his countless business ventures, but by the 1920s Garvey was the most powerful leader among the black masses in the United States. In 1916, before he left for his US campaign, Garvey's farewell address to Jamaicans included the words "Look to Africa for the crowning of a Black king; he shall be the Redeemer."

 

How Marcus Garvey Influenced Trinidad

Rasta Word: The Sayings of Marcus Garvey | book review  : Bubblers am Mittwoch, 18. Dezember 2002

EDITED BY KEN JONES Reviewed by Dr Alfred Sangster Sunday, August 04, 2002 There have been many books on Marcus Garvey, the most extensive being the 7 volume series by the Jamaican, Robert Hill, now a professor at the University of California. The author who has worked in the diplomatic service and in the media, has drawn extensively from this series, from discussions with Marcus Garvey's sons, Julius and Marcus Jr, his widow Amy Jacques, and the writer of the forward, the late Professor John Henry Clarke of Hunter College, New York. It is unfortunate that his sources are not quoted. The book published by Ken Jones in 2002, is available at local bookstores and the production is sponsored by a number of institutions.   Garvey was a man way ahead of his time, but one whose influence on the aspirations and development of black people everywhere has been monumental. The author quotes many persons who attribute much of their own strength and determination, to the writings and initiatives of Marcus Garvey. In fact, the book is replete with the quotations of a wide international endorsements of the man and his message. Two quotations will suffice: * Martin Luther King, Civil Rights Leader, USA: " Marcus Garvey was the first man of colour in the history of the United States to lead and develop a mass movement. He was the first man, on a mass scale, to give millions of Negroes a sense of dignity and make the Negro feel that he was somebody." * CLR James, Black Historian, Caribbean: "When Marcus Garvey finished, all recognised that black people were a social force. Garvey was the beginning... the first man to make black people aware of themselves as an international force... Before Marcus Garvey, there was no black movement. The black movements that we have today, all started with him." Garvey's philosophy runs like a scarlet thread through the book. It is epitomized in the saying: "Up You Mighty Race! You can Accomplish What You Will" But Garvey's philosophy was undergirded by a philosophical system which was characterized by a fine set of values: * He was a good family man and his wife Amy Jacques, and sons, Marcus Jr and Julius testify to that * He was proud of his race and brought that pride and self confidence to all that he said and did * He was a fighter for black people but without the bitterness that has often marked much racial conflict * He was a firm believer in the value of hard work and diligent effort * He had a deep commitment to Christian values and cherished the Bible These characteristics are evident in his 'sayings' recorded by the author. A few examples illustrate his stand: * On Education. "Before we can properly help the people, we have to destroy the old education... that teaches them that somebody is keeping them back and that God has forgotten them and that they can't rise because of their colour.. we can only build... with faith in ourselves and with self-reliance, believing in our own possibilities, that we can rise to the highest in God's creation." (1923) * On Freedom. "History teaches us no race, no people, no nation has ever been freed through cowardice, through cringing, through bowing and scraping, but all that has been achieved to the glory of mankind, to the glory and honour of races and nations was through the manly determination and effort of those who lead and those who are led." (1920) * On Jamaica. "Thank God there is no racial friction in Jamaica, and I pray that the day may never dawn to see anything of racial friction or open racial prejudice in this country." (1915) * On Leadership. "There is a great deal of work to do and it calls for sacrifice and determination on the part of those who are leading, and if men believe that money should be the only consideration for leadership, then there can be no successful achievement." (1920) * On Government. "Before you have a government, you must have the people. Without the people there can be no government. The government must .. must be, therefore, an expression of the will of the people." (1923) * On Religion. "God does not... give people positions or jobs or... good conditions such as they desire; they must do that for themselves.. God does not build cities nor towns nor nations, nor homes, nor factories; men and people do that and all those who want must work for themselves and pray to God to give them strength to do it." (1914) Read a chapter from the Bible every day.. The greatest wisdom of the age is to be found in the Scriptures." (1929) * On Self-Reliance. "Chance has never yet satisfied the hope of suffering people. Action, self-reliance, the vision of self and the future have been the only means by which the oppressed have seen and realised the light of their own freedom." (1920) Garvey's struggles in a variety of endeavours were undermined at every turn. There was the white economic establishment who blocked his moves, his own black brothers who robbed and double-crossed him and the political system which was not yet ready to entertain the possibility of the sharing of power. As author Ken Jones notes Garvey's role, which endured a long period of silence, is becoming more recognised through education, the influence of Bob Marley -"emancipate yourselves from mental slavery'- and many others. "Garvey's work is by no means finished. The objectives which he dramatically articulated remain a challenge to those who follow in his footsteps. His ideas and his deeds may have shortened the journey and made the terrain less difficult to traverse; yet the Negro, as a race of people, has seen only an outline of the promised land." It is of interest to note that Liberty Hall in downtown Kingston is being refurbished as a tribute to Garvey's memory and the first women's hall of residence at CAST (now UTech), was named after Amy Jacques Garvey in the early 1970s. source: Jamaica Observer Anmerkung: Source is the Jamaica ObserverBook Cover (Observer Link)

Marcus Garvey 

Marcus Mosiah Garvey was born 1887 in St. Ann's Bay, Jamaica. His father, Marcus, was a stonemason and a descendant of the Maroon tribesmen, who 200 years earlier had organized slave revolts and created autonomous societies. The social consciousness of his ancestors must have been passed on to Garvey, who by the age of 20 had organized a printer's strike for higher wages. He was fired but went on to earn a reputation as a radical, a spokesperson for the poor and dispossessed, and an organizer and speaker for the working classes. 

In 1910, Garvey left Jamaica for Costa Rica, where an uncle got him a job on a sugarcane plantation. That didn't last. He settled in an area where West Indians lived and started a newspaper, La Nacion/The Nation, which organized immigrants. Despite harassment from local authorities, he traveled to other Latin American nations. Two years later, he visited Europe and worked on the docks in England. Then he traveled to France, Germany, Italy, and Austria, writing for many newspapers. 

It was not until 1914, when he returned to Jamaica, that Garvey's most important role would materialize. He founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), which he modeled after Booker T. Washington's Tuskegee Institute. It soon became one of the largest independent Black organizations the world had seen. Its message of racial pride and self-reliance struck a chord among Blacks worldwide. 

Inspired by Washington's Up from Slavery, Garvey left Jamaica in 1916 for the United States. He began a lecture tour to organize chapters of the UNIA. In 1918, he started Negro World, a newspaper that reached 50,000 readers and was the first to publish many writers of the Harlem Renaissance. 

Garvey was successful, acquiring restaurants, hotels, and the Black Star Line—the steamship company he procured to link people of African descent worldwide. He bought three ships, naming them after Black leaders, including the Booker T. Washington. He also organized the African Orthodox Church. 

In 1920, he campaigned for $2 million and collected $137,000 in just a few months to organize the first International Convention of the UNIA. It attracted tens of thousands of followers who marched through Harlem honoring their philosopher/prophet. According to historian Lerone Bennett, Jr., Garvey sold stock to his followers and admirers under an arrangement that barred white purchasers. He created the red, black, and green UNIA flag, which would later represent Black liberation. During this same period, he unsuccessfully appealed to the League of Nations to turn over German-held African nations to independent Black rule. 

Garvey had enemies, including J. Edgar Hoover, and, ironically, W.E.B. Du Bois. Du Bois was an integrationist who did not support a separate Black state and repatriation. Du Bois was also opposed to Garvey's association with the Ku Klux Klan, his criticism of "mulatto" leadership, and his belief in Black racial purity. 

In 1923, when his steamship company went bankrupt, Garvey was convicted of mail fraud. He went to jail for two years. His sentence was commuted by President Coolidge before Garvey was deported to Jamaica. Garvey died in London at age 53 without setting foot in Africa.

From Great African Americans.  Copyright, Publications International, Ltd.

www.black-collegian.com/.../35thAnn/garvey.shtml

Marcus Garvey

Marcus Garvey (far right) in parade