THE RT. EXCELLENT MARCUS MOSIAH GARVEY
Marcus Mosiah Garvey, Jamaica’s first national hero and one of the greatest leaders African people have produced, was born August 17, 1887 in St. Ann's Bay, Jamaica. He spent his entire life in the service of his people. He was one of the most powerful orators on record who could literally bring his audiences to a state of mass hysteria. Garvey emphasized racial pride. His goal was the total redemption and liberation of African people all around the globe.
Marcus Garvey migrated to Kingston where he worked as a printer and later published a small paper “The Watchman”. He formed the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) in 1914. Its motto was "One God, One Aim, One Destiny," and pledged itself to the redemption of Africa and to uplift Black people everywhere. He travelled throughout Central America and visited London and in 1916, Garvey was invited to the United States by Booker T. Washington to assist in establishing an industrial training school, but he arrived just after Washington died. In March 1916, shortly after landing in America, Garvey established a chapter of the Universal Negro Improvement Association.
Within a few years Marcus Garvey had become the best-known and most dynamic African leader in the Western Hemisphere and perhaps the entire world. In 1919 he created an international shipping company called the Black Star Line. By 1920 the UNIA had hundreds of divisions. It hosted elaborate international conventions and published a weekly newspaper entitled the Negro World. However, USA officials disapproved of his activities and he was imprisoned and then deported. No other organization in modern times has had the impact as the UNIA. During the 1920s UNIA divisions existed throughout North, South and Central America, the Caribbean, Africa, Europe and Australia.
Garvey’s movement was the largest mass-movement of Black people ever assembled in the United States. This movement was ahead of all Black organizations of its day - and of ours - in the all-sided totality of cultural, political, economic, and spiritual liberation for Black people to which it aspired, and at least within its own ranks began to achieve. So great was this totality that Garveyism has been described a ‘a Black civic religion’. In addition, one of the movement’s greatest strengths was internationalism. The Garveyite movement saw that black people - like the Jews - constituted a single planetary people who had been forcibly removed from their homeland, sold into slavery, and scattered into a ‘Black Diaspora’.
In the present period of economic cultural decline, the cultural totality and planetary scope of the Garveyist movement is a model worth remembering for both Black and Non-Black members of the planetary underclass.
Through his public speeches and his newspaper Negro World, Marcus Garvey became one of the most influential black leaders of the early 20th century. Born and raised in Jamaica, Garvey travelled in Central and South America, then moved to England to continue his education. In 1914 he started the Universal Negro Improvement Association and began speaking out publicly in favor of worldwide black unity and an end to colonialism. He moved to the United States in 1916 and helped start a steamship company, the Black Star Line.
The name of the Black Star Line was a riff on the White Star Line, the famous British shipping company whose most famous vessel was the Titanic.
It was both a business venture and a part of his "back to Africa" plan for Americans of African descent -- the notion that African-Americans should return to Africa and set up their own new country there. Garvey was always a controversial figure: he favored fiery rhetoric and elaborate uniforms, and was considered a dangerous character by some established politicians. Garvey was jailed in 1925 after being convicted of mail fraud (related to the sale of stock in the Black Star line), but his sentence was reduced and he was deported to Jamaica two years later. Garvey eventually moved back to London, England, where he died in 1940. His body was returned to Jamaica in 1964.
Marcus Garvey migrated to Kingston where he worked as a printer and later published a small paper “The Watchman”. He formed the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) in 1914. Its motto was "One God, One Aim, One Destiny," and pledged itself to the redemption of Africa and to uplift Black people everywhere. He travelled throughout Central America and visited London and in 1916, Garvey was invited to the United States by Booker T. Washington to assist in establishing an industrial training school, but he arrived just after Washington died. In March 1916, shortly after landing in America, Garvey established a chapter of the Universal Negro Improvement Association.
Within a few years Marcus Garvey had become the best-known and most dynamic African leader in the Western Hemisphere and perhaps the entire world. In 1919 he created an international shipping company called the Black Star Line. By 1920 the UNIA had hundreds of divisions. It hosted elaborate international conventions and published a weekly newspaper entitled the Negro World. However, USA officials disapproved of his activities and he was imprisoned and then deported. No other organization in modern times has had the impact as the UNIA. During the 1920s UNIA divisions existed throughout North, South and Central America, the Caribbean, Africa, Europe and Australia.
Garvey’s movement was the largest mass-movement of Black people ever assembled in the United States. This movement was ahead of all Black organizations of its day - and of ours - in the all-sided totality of cultural, political, economic, and spiritual liberation for Black people to which it aspired, and at least within its own ranks began to achieve. So great was this totality that Garveyism has been described a ‘a Black civic religion’. In addition, one of the movement’s greatest strengths was internationalism. The Garveyite movement saw that black people - like the Jews - constituted a single planetary people who had been forcibly removed from their homeland, sold into slavery, and scattered into a ‘Black Diaspora’.
In the present period of economic cultural decline, the cultural totality and planetary scope of the Garveyist movement is a model worth remembering for both Black and Non-Black members of the planetary underclass.
Through his public speeches and his newspaper Negro World, Marcus Garvey became one of the most influential black leaders of the early 20th century. Born and raised in Jamaica, Garvey travelled in Central and South America, then moved to England to continue his education. In 1914 he started the Universal Negro Improvement Association and began speaking out publicly in favor of worldwide black unity and an end to colonialism. He moved to the United States in 1916 and helped start a steamship company, the Black Star Line.
The name of the Black Star Line was a riff on the White Star Line, the famous British shipping company whose most famous vessel was the Titanic.
It was both a business venture and a part of his "back to Africa" plan for Americans of African descent -- the notion that African-Americans should return to Africa and set up their own new country there. Garvey was always a controversial figure: he favored fiery rhetoric and elaborate uniforms, and was considered a dangerous character by some established politicians. Garvey was jailed in 1925 after being convicted of mail fraud (related to the sale of stock in the Black Star line), but his sentence was reduced and he was deported to Jamaica two years later. Garvey eventually moved back to London, England, where he died in 1940. His body was returned to Jamaica in 1964.
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