about marcus garvey and the black star line

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About Marcus Garvey and theBlack Star Line

Martha King

[Garvey was born in 1887]

Garvey, called a "black Moses" during his lifetime, created the largest African American organization, withhundreds of chapters across the world at its height. While Garvey is predominantly remembered as a back-tAfrica proponent, it is clear that the scope of his ideas and the UNIAs actions go beyond thatcharacterization . . . .

Garvey's ideas particularly resonated with African Americans during the postwar period. At the core ofGarvey's program was an emphasis on black economic self-reliance, black peoples rights to political self-determination, and the founding of a black nation on the continent of Africa. . . .

Perhaps the largest endeavor of the UNIVERSAL NEGRO IMPROVEMENT ASSOCIATION (UNIA,) wathe Black Star Steamship Line, an enterprise intended to provide a means for African Americans to return to

Africa while also enabling black people around the Atlantic to exchange goods and services. The companythree ships (one called the SS FrederickDouglass) were owned and operated by black people and madetravel and trade possible between their United States, Caribbean, Central American, and African stops. Theeconomically independent Black Star Line was a symbol of pride for blacks and seemed to attract moremembers to the UNIA . . . .

As a result of large financial obligations and managerial errors, the Black Star Line failed in 1921 and endeoperations. . . . Early in 1922 Garvey was indicted on mail fraud charges regarding the Black Star Line'sstock sale. . . . [Garvey was convicted but released after serving three years in federal prison. He was thendeported to Jamaica.] In the United States Garveyism was central to the development of the blackconsciousness and pride at the core of the twentieth-century freedom-movement.

FromAfricana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience. Ed. KwameAnthony Appiah and Henry Louis Gates, Jr. Copyright 1999 by Kwame Anthony Appiah andHnery Louis Gates, Jr.

Patricia Robinson Williams


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As a major figure of the Harlem Renaissance, Marcus Garvey was in the vanguard of the new awakeningamong African Americans. Although his philosophy was at odds with other leading figures of the era, such W E. B. Du Bois, his influence could not be abated. Promoting his ideals in the art of oratory and through hnewspapers, firstNegro Worldand later theBlackman, Garvey has influenced almost every generation ofAfrican American writers since.

Images depicting the destructive element in racial prejudice, one of the cornerstones of Garveys ideology,

were initially seen when major fiction writers of the Harlem Renaissance, such as Nella Larsen, grappledwith the infirmities of "color" prejudice. In Larsen's so-called passing novels, Quicksand(1928) and Passin(1929), mulattoes move into the white world to escape personal oppression and limited opportunity. As istypical in Garveyism, this social mobility leads to self-hate and racial ambivalence.

Richard Wright and his school of fiction writers was the next group to depict the struggle of AfricanAmericans against social and political forces. Richard Wright's Bigger Thomas inNative Son (1940), forexample, is an "Everyman" motif for social, political, and cultural disenfranchisement of African AmericanBigger acquires self-pride and faces his troubles through the aid of two white males, both unlikely cohorts,and becomes the folk hero often created through the use of Garveyism.

The next generation of writers displaying Garveyism might be termed the precursors of the Black Artsmovement. Extending James Baldwin's protest themes inNobody Knows My Name (1960) and The Fire NeTime (1963), the aggressive poets of the sixties, such as Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones), decry the destructiveenvironment of the northern ghetto and portray Garvey's contempt for such dehumanizing existence. Beyonthe 1960s, an aesthetic perspective that embraces the racial loyalty and pride found in Garveyism is seen inworks such as Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye (1970). Thus, the influence of the Garvey social and politicamovement continues.

See--Tony Martin,Literary Garveyism: Garvey, Black Arts and the Harlem Renaissance, 1983. James deJongh, Vicious Modernism: Black Harlem and the Literary Imagination, 1990.

From The Oxford Companion to African American Literature. Copyright 1997 by OxfordUniversity Press.

[Editor's Note: The following is a small selection of materials from the extensive

Marcus Garvey site at UCLA]

Marcus Garvey: An Overview

Marcus Garvey and the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) form a critical link in black

America'scenturies-long struggle for freedom, justice, and equality. As the leader of the largest organized massmovement in black historyand progenitor of the modern "black is beautiful" ideal, Garvey is now best remembered as a champion of tback-to-Africamovement. In his own time he was hailed as a redeemer, a "Black Moses." Though he failed to realize all hobjectives, hismovement still represents a liberation from the psychological bondage of racial inferiority.


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Garvey was born on 17 August 1887 in St. Ann's Bay, Jamaica. He left school at 14, worked as a printer,joined Jamaicannationalist organizations, toured Central America, and spent time in London. Content at first withaccommodation, on his returnto Jamaica, he aspired to open a Tuskegee-type industrial training school. In 1916 he came to America atBooker T.Washington's invitation, but arrived just after Washington died.

Garvey arrived in America at the dawn of the "New Negro" era. Black discontent, punctuated by East St.Louis's bloody raceriots in 1917 and intensified by postwar disillusionment, peaked in 1919's Red Summer. Shortly afterarriving, Garveyembarked upon a period of travel and lecturing. When he settled in New York City, he organized a chapter the UNIA,which he had earlier founded in Jamaica as a fraternal organization. Drawing on a gift for oratory, he meldeJamaican peasantaspirations for economic and cultural independence with the American gospel of success to create a newgospel of racial pride.

"Garveyism" eventually evolved into a religion of success, inspiring millions of black people worldwide whsought relief fromracism and colonialism.

To enrich and strengthen his movement, Garvey envisioned a great shipping line to foster black trade, totransport passengersbetween America, the Caribbean, and Africa, and to serve as a symbol of black grandeur and enterprise. ThUNIAincorporated the Black Star Line in 1919. The line's flagship, the S.S. Yarmouth, made its maiden voyage inNovember andtwo other ships joined the line in 1920. The Black Star Line became a powerful recruiting tool for the UNIAbut it wasultimately sunk by expensive repairs, discontented crews, and top-level mismanagement and corruption.

By 1920 the UNIA had hundreds of chapters worldwide; it hosted elaborate international conventions andpublished the Negro World, a widely disseminated weekly that was soon banned in many parts of Africa anthe Caribbean. Over the next few years, however, the movement began to unravel under the strains of interndissension, opposition from black critics, andgovernment harassment. In 1922 the federal government indicted Garvey on mail fraud charges stemmingfrom Black Star Linepromotional claims and he suspended all BSL operations. (Two years later, the UNIA created another line,

the Black CrossNavigation and Trading Co., but it, too, failed.) Garvey was sentenced to prison. The government latercommuted his sentence,only to deport him back to Jamaica in November 1927. He never returned to America.

In Jamaica Garvey reconstituted the UNIA and held conventions there and in Canada, but the heart of hismovement stumbledon in America without him. While he dabbled in local politics, he remained a keen observer of world eventswriting


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voluminously in his own papers. His final move was to London, in 1935. He settled there shortly beforeFascist Italy invadedEthiopia and his public criticisms of Haile Selassie's behavior after the invasion alienated many of his ownremaining followers.In his last years he slid into such obscurity that he suffered the final indignity of reading his own obituaries month before his 10June 1940 death.

Copyright 1995 The Marcus Garvey and UNIA Papers Project, UCLAOnline Source: http://www.isop.ucla.edu/mgpp/intro.htm

Marcus Garvey and The Black Star Line--An Exhibit

Marcus Garvey, 1920

Online Photo Source: http://www.isop.ucla.edu/mgpp/photo01.htm


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Negro Worldmasthead and headline



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African Redemption Fund Flyer



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UNIA membership card of Mndindwa Marwanqana, South Africa



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Black Star Line stock certificate


Negro Worldmasthead and headline



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Black Star Line Steamship Corporation flyer


Inspection of the S.S. Yarmouth by UNIA members



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