Em-Hotep Brothers and Sisters, today on August 17th, 2009 we celebrate the 122nd birthday of the Honorable, charismatic and brilliant Marcus Mosiah Garvey, Jr. Marcus Garvey was born in August 17, 1887 on a farm in St. Ann's Bay Jamaica to Marcus Garvey, Sr. and Sarah Jane Richards. Marcus Garvey had 11 siblings and he gained appreciation, admiration and inclination in reading books because of his father enormous and extensive home library and this embarked on his search and accumulation of knowledge.
Marcus Garvey started working at the age of 14 when he moved to Kingston, Jamaica at a printing house called P.A. Benjamin, Limited and was blacklisted and fired for his participation in a strike and in 1909, he started his own newspaper publication called "The Watchman" which only lasted for a couple of issues. In 1910, Marcus Garvey moved to the Central American region to Costa Rica at a banana plantation as a time keeper then Panama where he would create and start newspaper publications for the clientele of the workers. Afterwards in 1912, he moved to London, England where he began to do his own studying on politics, history, geography, journalism, current events, etc. Garvey began to network with journalists and community leaders who advocated the ideology of Pan-Africanism and Black nationalism and from Garvey's various travels he realized from the Carribean, to Central America and all the way to Europe that people of African descent were mentally enslaved, economically impoverished, politically and physically suppressed and for the most part inferior as a people. Garvey also studied at the Birbeck College and worked for the African Times and Orient Review. Garvey's scope began to expand during his travel's and his only thought of solution for the liberation of African people universally was the unity of African people into one nation controlled by Black people.
While in London, he read the book "Up From Slavery" which is an autobiography by Booker T. Washington who was a prominent and paraount African American leader at the time who started and built the Tuskeegee Institute and who's main advocacy for Black people was accomodationism to the American system, economic independence for Black people nationally and for self reliance. Garvey was well intrigued by his philosophy and by the idea of Black nationhood and he wanted to take his new found knowledge and this philosophy back to Jamaica.
In 1914, he moved back to Jamaica where he started the Universal Negro Improvement Association- African Communities League (U.N.I.A.-A.C.L.) for the purpose uniting the Black race universally, continentally and internationally into one "Grand Racial Hierarchy." The motto was "One God, One Aim, One Destiny." The organization was a social self help group which wanted to develop the Black race socially, economically, politically, mentally, spiritually, and all means which would lead to independence and Black nationhood. Between the years of 1915-16, he was in communication with the great Booker T. Washington and eventually he gave Garvey the invitation to come to the United States to work with him and to raise money to build a school tantamount to the Tuskegee Institute in Jamaica.
In 1916 when he arrived to the United States, he missed Washington because he had already died. When he arrived to America, he visited the Tuskegee Institute visited the various Black leaders throughout America, moved to Harlem to work as a printer during the day and as a street corner minister during the afternoon and night. Garvey went on a 38 state tour around the United States to raise funds for the U.N.I.A. back in Jamaica but instead, membership in the United States began to rapidly and exponentially increase. African Americans were well impressed by Garvey's grandiloquent and fiery oratorical style which captivated and attracted people to him and this help expanded his popularity and the opulence of the U.N.I.A.
In 1918, Marcus Garvey started various business and enterprise programs to vitalize the program and notion of economic independence for Black people and started the newspaper publication entitled "The Negro World". and in 1919 membership of the U.N.I.A. grown to two million people. The publication was distributed internationally and the popularity of the group was recognized internationally by African people across the Caribbean, South America, and Africa and in Europe. Since the Garvey movement gained international recognition, Garvey incorporated the Black Star line Steamship so that Black people could interdependently trade amongst one another to practice economic independence and self reliance.
The U.N.I.A. also started and converted Black churches into the doctrine of Black Zionism and nationalism where the depiction of all of the prophets and the messiah would be people of African descent. Garvey knew that "all men regardless of color were created in the image of God" and that in order for a people to have respect and admiration for themselves then they should unite under one God and worship a messiah that looks like them so that African people as a whole could move forward under one faith. Garvey started grocery food chains, restaurants, Laundromats, publishing houses, the Negro Factories Corporation, and the Black Nursing group to model the American Red Cross. In October of 1919, Marcus Garvey almost lost his life when a man by the name of George Tyler and fired a 38 caliber revolver and fired 4 shots that hit Garvey's scalp and right leg and he arrested the next day after committing suicide from the third tier of a Harlem jail.
By 1920, the U.N.I.A. claimed four million members when 25,000 members assembled and filled the Madison Garden for its international convention. In 1922, Marcus Garvey married Amy Jacques after divorcing the U.N.I.A. activist Amy Ashwoood after a four moth wedding. During that same year, Garvey devised a plan called the Liberia Program too industrially to develop the country and to colonize the county under the U.N.I.A. Garvey and U.N.I.A.'s popularity began to expand tremendously, and the movement not only caught the attention of Black people but of J.Edgar Hoover and the F.B.I. In 1923, Garvey was also criticized and accused of being a "sellout" because the U.N.I.A. did a joint conference with the Ku Klux Klan. They meticulously scrutinized Garvey's movement and thoroughly infiltrated it from the complacency of the Black Star Steamship Line, to the disunity within the movement, to A. Phillip Randolph and W.E.B. DuBois denouncing the Garvey movement, money y mismanagement and him eventually being arrested, charged and convicted for mail fraud.
His trial ended in 1923 an he was sentenced to five years in prison in the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary. Garvey continuously wrote letters collectively to the U.N.I.A. members and during his sentence, the group remained strong and loyal to Marcus Garvey while he was in jail. In 1927, President Coolridge ended Garvey's prison term and agreed to deport him from New Orleans to Jamaica. In 1928, Garvey travelled to Geneva to present a petition to the Negro Race for universal equal rights for Black people, Garvey temporarily taught classes on African history in Toronto, Canada, moved back to London to work on this magazine called "Black Man". After Garvey was deported the U.N.I.A. dwindled in popularity but there were still some loyal Garveyites who kept the group alive and until Garvey's death on June 10, 1940 he remained loyal and lived for the liberation of his people. Garvey lived a life in solitaire, depression, unpopular and isolated.
Marcus Garvey will always be remembered for being the father of Pan-Africanism and to have ever lead the largest Black movement ever in world history with 9 million members internationally. Garvey created the red, black and green flag which is adopted and known as the Black Liberation flag. His ideology influenced the Rastafarian movement in which its followers look canonized Garvey as a "Black John the Baptist" and his ideology of Black Nationalist also influenced the Lost and Found Nation of Islam. Garvey's philosophy was revitalized by Dr. Kwame Nkrumah who founded an independent Ghana in 1957 and the O.A.U. in 1960 in order to extricate Africa from neo colonialism to form a "United States of Africa." Even though Garvey didn't completely fulfill his goal, his philosophy is still alive and it is up for us to free "Africa at home and abroad." In closing, let that Garvey whirlwind repatriate us back into our brilliant “Afrikan” minds which would lead to our unity and liberation and in the words of Marcus Garvey, "a reading man is a ready man and a writing man is exact." Once we learn a knowledge of self, then we will be able to embark on a road to actualize a "United States of Africa.
"With confidence, you have won before you have started."
Marcus Garvey
Marcus Garvey started working at the age of 14 when he moved to Kingston, Jamaica at a printing house called P.A. Benjamin, Limited and was blacklisted and fired for his participation in a strike and in 1909, he started his own newspaper publication called "The Watchman" which only lasted for a couple of issues. In 1910, Marcus Garvey moved to the Central American region to Costa Rica at a banana plantation as a time keeper then Panama where he would create and start newspaper publications for the clientele of the workers. Afterwards in 1912, he moved to London, England where he began to do his own studying on politics, history, geography, journalism, current events, etc. Garvey began to network with journalists and community leaders who advocated the ideology of Pan-Africanism and Black nationalism and from Garvey's various travels he realized from the Carribean, to Central America and all the way to Europe that people of African descent were mentally enslaved, economically impoverished, politically and physically suppressed and for the most part inferior as a people. Garvey also studied at the Birbeck College and worked for the African Times and Orient Review. Garvey's scope began to expand during his travel's and his only thought of solution for the liberation of African people universally was the unity of African people into one nation controlled by Black people.
While in London, he read the book "Up From Slavery" which is an autobiography by Booker T. Washington who was a prominent and paraount African American leader at the time who started and built the Tuskeegee Institute and who's main advocacy for Black people was accomodationism to the American system, economic independence for Black people nationally and for self reliance. Garvey was well intrigued by his philosophy and by the idea of Black nationhood and he wanted to take his new found knowledge and this philosophy back to Jamaica.
In 1914, he moved back to Jamaica where he started the Universal Negro Improvement Association- African Communities League (U.N.I.A.-A.C.L.) for the purpose uniting the Black race universally, continentally and internationally into one "Grand Racial Hierarchy." The motto was "One God, One Aim, One Destiny." The organization was a social self help group which wanted to develop the Black race socially, economically, politically, mentally, spiritually, and all means which would lead to independence and Black nationhood. Between the years of 1915-16, he was in communication with the great Booker T. Washington and eventually he gave Garvey the invitation to come to the United States to work with him and to raise money to build a school tantamount to the Tuskegee Institute in Jamaica.
In 1916 when he arrived to the United States, he missed Washington because he had already died. When he arrived to America, he visited the Tuskegee Institute visited the various Black leaders throughout America, moved to Harlem to work as a printer during the day and as a street corner minister during the afternoon and night. Garvey went on a 38 state tour around the United States to raise funds for the U.N.I.A. back in Jamaica but instead, membership in the United States began to rapidly and exponentially increase. African Americans were well impressed by Garvey's grandiloquent and fiery oratorical style which captivated and attracted people to him and this help expanded his popularity and the opulence of the U.N.I.A.
In 1918, Marcus Garvey started various business and enterprise programs to vitalize the program and notion of economic independence for Black people and started the newspaper publication entitled "The Negro World". and in 1919 membership of the U.N.I.A. grown to two million people. The publication was distributed internationally and the popularity of the group was recognized internationally by African people across the Caribbean, South America, and Africa and in Europe. Since the Garvey movement gained international recognition, Garvey incorporated the Black Star line Steamship so that Black people could interdependently trade amongst one another to practice economic independence and self reliance.
The U.N.I.A. also started and converted Black churches into the doctrine of Black Zionism and nationalism where the depiction of all of the prophets and the messiah would be people of African descent. Garvey knew that "all men regardless of color were created in the image of God" and that in order for a people to have respect and admiration for themselves then they should unite under one God and worship a messiah that looks like them so that African people as a whole could move forward under one faith. Garvey started grocery food chains, restaurants, Laundromats, publishing houses, the Negro Factories Corporation, and the Black Nursing group to model the American Red Cross. In October of 1919, Marcus Garvey almost lost his life when a man by the name of George Tyler and fired a 38 caliber revolver and fired 4 shots that hit Garvey's scalp and right leg and he arrested the next day after committing suicide from the third tier of a Harlem jail.
By 1920, the U.N.I.A. claimed four million members when 25,000 members assembled and filled the Madison Garden for its international convention. In 1922, Marcus Garvey married Amy Jacques after divorcing the U.N.I.A. activist Amy Ashwoood after a four moth wedding. During that same year, Garvey devised a plan called the Liberia Program too industrially to develop the country and to colonize the county under the U.N.I.A. Garvey and U.N.I.A.'s popularity began to expand tremendously, and the movement not only caught the attention of Black people but of J.Edgar Hoover and the F.B.I. In 1923, Garvey was also criticized and accused of being a "sellout" because the U.N.I.A. did a joint conference with the Ku Klux Klan. They meticulously scrutinized Garvey's movement and thoroughly infiltrated it from the complacency of the Black Star Steamship Line, to the disunity within the movement, to A. Phillip Randolph and W.E.B. DuBois denouncing the Garvey movement, money y mismanagement and him eventually being arrested, charged and convicted for mail fraud.
His trial ended in 1923 an he was sentenced to five years in prison in the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary. Garvey continuously wrote letters collectively to the U.N.I.A. members and during his sentence, the group remained strong and loyal to Marcus Garvey while he was in jail. In 1927, President Coolridge ended Garvey's prison term and agreed to deport him from New Orleans to Jamaica. In 1928, Garvey travelled to Geneva to present a petition to the Negro Race for universal equal rights for Black people, Garvey temporarily taught classes on African history in Toronto, Canada, moved back to London to work on this magazine called "Black Man". After Garvey was deported the U.N.I.A. dwindled in popularity but there were still some loyal Garveyites who kept the group alive and until Garvey's death on June 10, 1940 he remained loyal and lived for the liberation of his people. Garvey lived a life in solitaire, depression, unpopular and isolated.
Marcus Garvey will always be remembered for being the father of Pan-Africanism and to have ever lead the largest Black movement ever in world history with 9 million members internationally. Garvey created the red, black and green flag which is adopted and known as the Black Liberation flag. His ideology influenced the Rastafarian movement in which its followers look canonized Garvey as a "Black John the Baptist" and his ideology of Black Nationalist also influenced the Lost and Found Nation of Islam. Garvey's philosophy was revitalized by Dr. Kwame Nkrumah who founded an independent Ghana in 1957 and the O.A.U. in 1960 in order to extricate Africa from neo colonialism to form a "United States of Africa." Even though Garvey didn't completely fulfill his goal, his philosophy is still alive and it is up for us to free "Africa at home and abroad." In closing, let that Garvey whirlwind repatriate us back into our brilliant “Afrikan” minds which would lead to our unity and liberation and in the words of Marcus Garvey, "a reading man is a ready man and a writing man is exact." Once we learn a knowledge of self, then we will be able to embark on a road to actualize a "United States of Africa.
"With confidence, you have won before you have started."
Marcus Garvey
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