information on marcus garvey

8/7/2019 Information on Marcus Garvey

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Information on Marcus Garvey

"Up! You mighty race, you can accomplish what you will."

--Marcus Mosiah Garvey

Marcus Mosiah Garvey, one of the greatest leaders African people have produced, was born

August 17, 1887 in St. Ann's Bay, Jamaica, and spent his entire life in the service of his

people--African people. He was bold; he was uncompromising and he was one of the most

powerful orators on record. He could literally bring his audiences to a state of mass

hysteria. Garvey emphasized racial pride. His goal was nothing less that the total and

complete redemption and liberation of African people around the planet. His dream was

the galvanization of Black people into an unrelenting steamroller that could never be

defeated. I consider myself, along with many others, as one of Garvey's children.

As a young man of fourteen, Garvey left school and worked as a printer's apprentice. He

participated in Jamaica's earliest nationalist organizations, traveled throughout CentralAmerica, and spent time in London, England, where he worked with the Sudanese-Egyptian

nationalist Duse Mohamed Ali. In 1916 Garvey was invited by Booker T. Washington to

come to the United States in the hopes of establishing an industrial training school, but

arrived just after Washington died. In March 1916, shortly after landing in America, Garvey

embarked upon an extended period of travel. When he finally settled down, he organized a

chapter of the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League.

The UNIA & ACL had been formed in Jamaica in 1914. Its motto was "One God, One Aim,

One Destiny," and pledged itself to the redemption of Africa and the uplift of Black people

everywhere. It aimed at race pride, self-reliance and economic independence.

Within a few years Garvey had become the best-known and most dynamic African leader in

the Western Hemisphere and perhaps the entire world. In 1919 Mr. Garvey 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.

No other organization in modern times has had the prestige and the impact as the UNIA &

ACL. During the 1920s UNIA divisions existed throughout North, South and Central

America, the Caribbean, Africa, Europe and Australia.http://www.africawithin.com/garvey/garvey_bio.htm

Marcus Garvey was born in St. Ann's Bay, Jamaica, on 17th August, 1887. After seven years

of schooling he worked as a printer. He became an active trade unionist and in 1907 was

elected vice president of compositors' branch of the printers' union. He helped lead a

printer's strike (1908-09) and after it collapsed the union disintegrated.


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In 1911 Garvey moved to England and briefly studied at Birbeck College where he met

other blacks who were involved in the struggle to obtain independence from the British

Empire. Inspired by what he heard he returned to Jamaica and established the Universal

Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) and published the pamphlet, The Negro Race and

Its Problems. Garvey was influenced by the ideas of Booker T. Washington and made plans

to develop a trade school for the poor similar to the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama.

Garvey arrived in the United States on 23rd March 1916 and immediately launched a year-

long tour of the country. He organized the first branch of UNIA in June 1917 and began

published the Negro World, a journal that promoted his African nationalist ideas. Garvey's

organization was extremely popular and by 1919 UNIA had 30 branches and over 2 million

members.

Like the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People (NAACP) Garvey

campaigned against lynching, Jim Crow laws, denial of black voting rights and racialdiscrimination. Where UNIA differed from other civil rights organizations was on how the

problem could be solved. Garvey doubted whether whites in the United States would ever

agree to African Americans being treated as equals and argued for segregation rather than

integration. Garvey suggested that African Americans should go and live in Africa. He wrote

that he believed "in the principle of Europe for the Europeans, and Asia for the Asiatics"

and "Africa for the Africans at home and abroad".

Garvey began to sign up recruits who were willing to travel to Africa and "clear out the

white invaders". He formed an army, equipping them with uniforms and weapons. Garvey

appealed to the new militant feelings of black that followed the end of the First World War

and asked those African Americans who had been willing to fight for democracy in Europe

to now join his army to fight for equal rights.

In 1919 Garvey formed the Black Cross Navigation and Trading Company. With

$10,000,000 invested by his supporters Garvey purchased two steamships, Shadyside and

Kanawha, to take African Americans to Africa. At a UNIA conference in August, 1920,

Garvey was elected provisional president of Africa. He also had talks with the Ku Klux Klan

about his plans to repatriate African Americans and published the first volume of

Philosophy and Opinions of Marcus Garvey.

After making a couple of journeys to Africa the Black Cross Navigation and Trading

Company ran out of money. Garvey was a poor businessman and although he was probably

honest himself, several people in his company had been involved in corruption. Garvey was

arrested and charged with fraud and in 1925 was sentenced to five years imprisonment. He


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had served half of his sentence when President Calvin Coolidge commuted the rest of his

prison term and had him deported to Jamaica.

In 1928 Garvey went on a lecture tour of Britain, France, Belgium, Switzerland and Canada.

On Garvey's return to Jamaica he established the People's Political Party and a new daily

newspaper, The Blackman. The following year Garvey was defeated in the general election

for a seat in Jamaica's colonial legislature.

In July, 1932, Garvey began publishing the evening newspaper, The New Jamaican. The

venture was unsuccessful and the printing presses were seized for debts in 1933. He

followed this with a monthly magazine, Black Man. He also launched an organization that

he hoped would raise money to help create job opportunities for the rural poor in Jamaica.

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAgarvey.htm

information on marcus garvey

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