Garvey, Marcus
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'''Marcus Mosiah Garvey''' (August 17, 1887– June 10, 1940), West Indian spokesman of black nationalism and economic development, was a talented publisher, journalist, entrepreneur, and the Founder of the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League (UNIA-ACL). He was born in Saint Ann's Bay, Saint Ann, [[Jamaica]]. Respectfully dubbed by his admirers as the "'''Prophet of Africanism'''," Garvey is best remembered as a key proponent of the "Back-To-Africa" movement, a socio-political awakening that encouraged people of African ancestry to strive for authentic and full equality by returning to their ancestral motherland. This movement would eventually inspire other spin-offs, ranging from the [[Nation of Islam]] to the [[Rastafari|Rastafari Movement]]. Garvey declared that he wished for those of African ancestry to re-occupy and "redeem" Africa, and for the European colonial powers to cease their occupation of it. | '''Marcus Mosiah Garvey''' (August 17, 1887– June 10, 1940), West Indian spokesman of black nationalism and economic development, was a talented publisher, journalist, entrepreneur, and the Founder of the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League (UNIA-ACL). He was born in Saint Ann's Bay, Saint Ann, [[Jamaica]]. Respectfully dubbed by his admirers as the "'''Prophet of Africanism'''," Garvey is best remembered as a key proponent of the "Back-To-Africa" movement, a socio-political awakening that encouraged people of African ancestry to strive for authentic and full equality by returning to their ancestral motherland. This movement would eventually inspire other spin-offs, ranging from the [[Nation of Islam]] to the [[Rastafari|Rastafari Movement]]. Garvey declared that he wished for those of African ancestry to re-occupy and "redeem" Africa, and for the European colonial powers to cease their occupation of it. |
Revision as of 16:32, 20 August 2018
, education, and aid to the poor. He continued his dabbling in regional politics until 1935, when he left Jamaica for London, where he settled just after the invasion of Ethiopia by Fascist Italy. Following that invasion, his public criticism of Haile Selassie's behavior alienated many of Garvey's remaining supporters. His final years of fading into ever-increasing obscurity brought him the ultimate indignity of reading his own obituaries, one month prior to his June 10, 1940 death.
Legacy: The UNIA and the Cause of Black Self-Help
Garvey's universal popularity spans the globe, keeping alive and well his memory. That memory could be encapsulated in the following statement he once uttered:
"The world has made being black a crime, and I have felt it in common with men who suffer like me. And instead of making it a crime, I hope to make it a virtue."
That hope is part of the reason that schools, colleges, libraries, and highways 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. The flag's black was for the race; its red, for the blood of the race; and its green, for the hope of the race. Garvey understood how to balance the pragmatic with the symbolic. In 1980, a bust of Garvey was unveiled at the Organization of American States' Hall of Heroes, in Washington, DC.
As did Booker T. Washington, Marcus Garvey extolled Capitalism and free enterprise as "necessary to the progress of the world." This teaching and his undying opposition to Communism played major parts in motivating blacks to distrust friendly overtures from the proponents of Socialism and Marxism. At the same time, Garvey held no illusions regarding Capitalism. He suggested ways of reforming it, and he delivered scorching critiques of what he deemed its negative aspects. Garvey became the object of the scorn and ridicule of those who were motivated by a civil rights vision of the race problem. Nevertheless, the Prophet of Africanism left a legacy of using wealth and economic clout to combat racism and prejudice. His civil rights critics, he pointed out, never did this, and they seemed to have no desire to encourage the methodology of self-help and entrepreneurship. Garvey was quick to point out how the lack of focus upon business development among blacks would be excruciatingly detrimental, in the long run, to their cause of attaining genuine equality in America and elsewhere around the world. While political protests and demands were crucial, of equal import, he maintained, was the generation of independent wealth.[1]
Marcus Garvey and the Back-To-Africa Movement
Garvey's widow, Amy Jacques Garvey, always maintained that "the term 'back-to-Africa' was used and promoted by newspapers—Negro newspapers mostly—to ridicule Garvey. There was no back-to-Africa movement, except in a spiritual sense." This observation was basically true, despite the fact that Africa was pivotal to all of Garvey's doctrine and propaganda. His vision was of an Africa gradually liberated from the chains of colonial domination, with its nations ultimately involved as stable, dignified partners with the rest of the global community. Although some of his oratorical bombast seemed to imply it, he never actually envisioned the en masse return of blacks from the diaspora.
Memorials to a Jamaican National Hero
Following his death, Garvey's 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. By that time, Garvey had been proclaimed Jamaica's first National Hero.
Ralph Ellison used Garvey as the basis for Ras the Exhorter, the West Indian black nationalist demagogue in his novel Invisible Man.
In the book Neuromancer by William Gibson, the tugboat piloted by Maelcum is named The Marcus Garvey.
Garvey has been honored in many ways, both in Jamaica and abroad:
- a statue of Garvey erected on the grounds of the St. Ann's Bay Parish Library;
- a secondary school in Saint Ann named for him;
- a major highway in Kingston bearing his name;
- a bust of Garvey unveiled at Apex Park, Kingston in 1978;
- his likeness appears on the Jamaican 50 cent coin and 20 dollar coin;
- the building housing the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (New Kingston) bears his name;
- a park with his name in New York City's Harlem neighborhood;
- a street named for him in New York City's Brooklyn borough;
- a park named for him in the Tenderloin region of San Francisco, California;
- a major street named for him in Nairobi, Kenya;
- a small park named for him in London's Hammersmith;
- the Marcus Garvey Center, Lenton, Nottingham, UK.
There is also a Marcus Garvey Library located inside the Tottenham Green Leisure Centre building in North London.
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.
Quotations From Marcus Garvey
- "Anybody can talk and write, but writing and talking are not going to save the Negro. The men who are really going to make the race are the businessmen, the people who take chances. Men like Jesse Binga, R.R. Wright, Watt Terry, the heads of our insurance companies and our banks and corporations. Women like Mrs. Maggie Walker, Madam C. J. Walker, Mrs. Annie Malone. These are the people who are constructively building to help the race, because out of their efforts, which is at a great risk, employment is being found for the people, and opportunity is being given for them to exist." (1925)
- "In America, compromises have been struck that would never have been arrived at, but for the presence of the Universal Negro Improvement Association. Even the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People has had a better time because of my presence in America, because they were able to use my name and UNIA's in approaching white men for their patronage. Because if [whites] did not support the middle, that is, the NAACP, they would have to grapple with the extreme movement of the Universal Negro Improvement Association and the uncompromising radicalism of Marcus Garvey. This scare brought more money into the coffers of the NAACP than they would have gotten otherwise. Many men opposed me because it was profitable to them …. That is why certain white people looked upon me as a dangerous man, because they were prompted to that belief by my enemies, to take money out of them… " (1930)
- "We are now launching out, in keeping with our original objects, on the proposition of building factories in the United States…. We hope that in ten years, the Negro will be on the right road to the solution of his problems. We are anticipating opposition from the same group of men, who do nothing but oppose. They have not, up to now, brought out any economic solution of our race problem. Yet they agitate to oppose anything undertaken by others for the good of the race. We must realize that our greatest enemies are not those on the outside, but those in our midst." (1930)
Notes
- ↑ The Marcus Garvey and Universal Negro Improvement Association Papers Project UCLA African Studies Center. Retrieved August 13, 2018.
ReferencesISBN links support NWE through referral fees
- Burkett, Randall K. Garveyism As A Religious Movement: The Institutionalization of A Black Civil Religion. Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1978. ISBN 0810811634
- Campbell, Horace. Rasta and Resistance: From Marcus Garvey to Walter Rodney. Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 1987. ISBN 0865430357. Preface by Eusi Kwayana.
- Clarke, John Henrik, ed. Marcus Garvey and the Vision of Africa. New York: Vintage Books, 1974. ISBN 0394718887. With the assistance of Amy Jacques Garvey.
- Cronon, Edmund David. Black Moses: The Story of Marcus Garvey and The Universal Negro Improvement Association. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1969. ISBN 029901214X
- Garvey, Amy Jacques. Garvey and Garveyism. New York: Octagon Books, 1978, [1968] ISBN 0374930155. Introd. by John Henrik Clarke.
- Garvey, Amy Jacques (ed.). The Philosophy and Opinions of Marcus Garvey. New York: Atheneum ; Toronto: Maxwell Macmillan Canada, 1992. ISBN 068970819X
- Garvey, Marcus. Message to the People: The Course of African Philosophy by Marcus Garvey, Edited by Tony Martin. Dover, MA: Majority Press, 1986. ISBN 0912469196 Foreword by Hon. Charles L. James, President General, Universal Negro Improvement Association.
- Garvey, Marcus. The Poetical Works of Marcus Garvey, Compiled and edited by Tony Martin. Dover, MA: Majority Press, 1983. ISBN 091246903X
- Hill, Robert A. (ed.). The Marcus Garvey and Universal Negro Improvement Association Papers. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983-1995. ISBN 0520044568 (v. 1) ISBN 0520202112 (v. 9)
- Hill, Robert A., ed. The Marcus Garvey and Universal Negro Improvement Association Papers, Vol. IX: Africa for the Africans June 1921-December 1922. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1995. ISBN 0520202112.
- Hill, Robert A., and Barbara Bair (eds.). Marcus Garvey, Life and Lessons: A Centennial Companion to the Marcus Garvey and Universal Negro Improvement Association Papers. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1987. ISBN 0520062140
- James, Winston. Holding Aloft the Banner of Ethiopia: Caribbean Radicalism in Early Twentieth-Century America. London; New York: Verso, 1999. ISBN 1859841406
- Kornweibel, Theodore. Seeing Red: Federal Campaigns Against Black Militancy 1919-1925. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998. ISBN 0253333377
- Lemelle, Sidney J. and Robin D. G. Kelley. Imagining Home: Class, Culture, and Nationalism in the African Diaspora. London; New York: Verso, 1994. ISBN 0860915859
- Lewis, Rupert. Marcus Garvey: Anti-Colonial Champion. Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 1988. ISBN 0865430624
- Lewis, Rupert, ed. and Patrick Bryan, ed. Garvey: His Work and Impact. Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 1991. ISBN 0865432252
- Lewis, Rupert and Maureen Warner-Lewis. Garvey: Africa, Europe, The Americas. Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 1994. ISBN 0865434166
- Manoedi, M. Korete. Garvey and Africa. New York: New York Age Press, 1922.
- Martin, Tony. Race First: The Ideological and Organizational Struggle of Marcus Garvey and The Universal Negro Improvement Association. Majority Press, 1986. ISBN 0912469234
- Martin, Tony. Literary Garveyism: Garvey, Black Arts, and the Harlem Renaissance. Dover, MA: Majority Press, 1983. ISBN 0912469005
- Martin, Tony, ed. African Fundamentalism: A Literary and Cultural Anthology of Garvey's Harlem Renaissance. Dover, MA: Majority Press, 1991 ISBN 0912469099
- Martin, Tony. Marcus Garvey: Hero. Dover, MA: Majority Press, 1983 ISBN 0912469056
- Martin, Tony. The Pan-African Connection: From Slavery to Garvey and Beyond. Cambridge, MA: Schenkman Pub. Co., 1983 ISBN 0870737139
- Martin, Tony, ed. The Poetical Works of Marcus Garvey. Dover, MA: Majority Press, 1983. ISBN 091246903X
- Smith-Irvin, Jeannette. Marcus Garvey's Footsoldiers of the Universal Negro Improvement Association: Their Own Words. Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 1989 ISBN 0865431116
- Solomon, Mark I. The Cry was Unity: Communists and African-Americans, 1917-1936. Jackson, MI: University Press of Mississippi, 1998. ISBN 1578060958
- Stein, Judith. The World of Marcus Garvey: Race and Class in Modern Society. Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 1991. ISBN 080711670X
- Tolbert, Emory J. The UNIA and Black Los Angeles. Los Angeles, CA: Center of Afro-American Studies, University of California, 1980. ISBN 0934934053
- Vincent, Theodore. Black Power and the Garvey Movement. Baltimore, MD: Black Classic Press, 2006. ISBN 9781574780406
External links
All links retrieved August 13, 2018.
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