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• Born: 17 August 1887
• Birthplace: St. Ann's Bay, Jamaica
• Died: 10 June 1940 (cerebral hemorrhage)
• Best Known As: Founder of the "back to Africa" movement

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. 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.

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.

Garvey, Marcus (1887–1940), social activist and journalist. As a major figure of the Harlem Renaissance, Marcus Garvey was in the vanguard of the new awakening among African Americans. Although his philosophy was at odds with other leading figures of the era, such as W. E. B. Du Bois, his influence could not be abated. Promoting his ideals in the art of oratory and through his newspapers, first Negro World and later the Blackman, Garvey has influenced almost every generation of African American writers since.

Images depicting the destructive element in racial prejudice, one of the cornerstones of Garvey's ideology, were initially seen when major fiction writers of the Harlem Renaissance, such as Nella Larsen, grappled with the infirmities of ““color”” prejudice. In Larsen's so-called passing novels, Quicksand (1928) and Passing (1929), mulattoes move into the white world to escape personal oppression and limited opportunity. As is typical in Garveyism, this social mobility leads to selfhate and racial ambivalence.

Richard Wright and his school of fiction writers was the next group to depict the struggle of African Americans against social and political forces. Richard Wright's Bigger Thomas in Native Son (1940), for example, is an ““Everyman”” motif for social, political, and cultural disenfranchisement of African Americans. Bigger 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 Arts Movement. Extending James Baldwin's protest themes in Nobody Knows My Name (1960) and The Fire Next Time (1963), the aggressive poets of the sixties, such as Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones), decry the destructive environment of the northern ghetto and portray Garvey's contempt for such dehumanizing existence. Beyond the 1960s, an aesthetic perspective that embraces the racial loyalty and pride found in Garveyism is seen in works such as Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye (1970). Thus, the influence of the Garvey social and political movement continues.

Bibliography

• Tony Martin, Literary Garveyism: Garvey, Black Arts and the Harlem Renaissance, 1983.
• James de Jongh, Vicious Modernism: Black Harlem and the Literary Imagination, 1990

Patricia Robinson Williams

Marcus Mosiah Garvey (1887-1940), a black man from the West Indies, was the first to forcefully articulate the concept of African nationalism - of black people returning to Africa, the continent of their forefathers, to build a great nation of their own.

Marcus Garvey was born in St. Ann's Bay, Jamaica, on Aug. 17, 1887. He went to elementary school there and at the age of 14 became an apprentice in the printing trade. In 1903 he went to the capital, Kingston, to work as a printer. He soon became involved in public activities and helped form the Printers Union, the first trade union in Jamaica. He subsequently published a periodical called the Watchman.

In 1910 began a series of travels that transformed Garvey from an average person concerned about the problems of the underprivileged to an African nationalist determined to lift an entire race from bondage and debasement. He visited Costa Rica, Panama, and Ecuador. After briefly returning home, he proceeded to England, where contacts with African nationalists stimulated in him a keen interest in Africa and in black history. In each country he visited, he noted that the black man was in an inferior position, subject to the whim, caprice, and fancy of stronger races. His reading of Booker T. Washington's Up from Slavery at this time also had great effect upon him.

On his return in 1914 from England, where he had done further study, Garvey formed the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) and the African Communities League. These organizations were intended "to work for the general uplift of the Negro peoples of the world."

In 1916 Garvey went to the United States to raise funds to carry on the work of his Jamaican organizations. He was immediately caught up in the agitation of the times, and his voice thundered in the evenings on the streets of Harlem in New York City. A New York branch of the UNIA was established, soon followed by branches in other cities in the United States, in Central and South America, and in the Caribbean. The expansion of the UNIA was fostered by its official organ Negro World, a newspaper published in English, Spanish, and French. Published in New York City from 1918 to 1933, it was succeeded by the monthly Black Man, which ran through the 1930s, published after 1934 in London.

The Negro World reached out to black communities all over the world. It even penetrated into the interior of Africa, although it had been banned there by the white rulers. Garvey stressed the need for blacks to return to Africa for the building of a great nation, but he realized that until this was accomplished Africans needed to make themselves economically independent wherever they were. He encouraged blacks to start their own businesses, taking the commerce of their ghettos into their own hands.

Together with the American clergyman Archbishop George A. McGuire, Garvey formed the African Orthodox Church. This was in accordance with one of his basic principles, for he believed that each race must see God through its own racial spectacles. The Black Christ and the Black Madonna were proclaimed at the UNIA convention of 1924.

The Black Star Line shipping company and the Negro Factories Corporation were to be the commercial arms of the Garvey movement. It was the failure of the shipping venture that gave Garvey's enemies their chance to destroy him. Investments in the line were lost, and Garvey was imprisoned in 1925 in the United States. After serving 2 years 10 months of a 5-year sentence, he was deported to Jamaica. Previously, his plans for colonization in Liberia had been sabotaged by the colonial powers who brought pressure to bear on the Liberian government. As a result, the land which had been granted to the Garvey organization for the settlement of overseas Africans was given to the white American industrialist Harvey Firestone, and the expensive equipment shipped to Liberia for the use of Garvey's colonists was seized.

In Jamaica, Garvey attempted to enter local politics, but the restricted franchise of the time did not allow the vote to the black masses. He went to England and continued his work of social protest and his call for the liberation of Africa. He died in London on June 10, 1940.

Marcus Garvey was married twice. His second wife, Amy Jacques, whom he married in 1922, bore him two sons.

The Garvey movement was the greatest international movement of African peoples in modern times. At its peak, in 1922-1924, the movement counted over 8 million followers. The youngest cadres were taken in at 5 years of age and, as they grew older, they graduated to the sections for older children.

Garvey emphasized the belief in the One God, the God of Africa, who should be visualized through black eyes. He told black people to become familiar with their ancient history and their rich cultural heritage. He called for pride in the black race - for example, he made black dolls for black children. His was the first voice clearly to demand black power. It was he who said, "A race without authority and power is a race without respect."

In emphasizing the need to have separate black institutions under black leadership, Garvey anticipated the mood and thinking of the future black nationalists by nearly 50 years. He died, as he lived, an unbending apostle of African nationalism. The symbols which he made famous, the black star of Africa and the red, black, and green flag of African liberation, continued to inspire younger generations of African nationalists.

Further Reading

For Garvey's views the definitive work is edited by his widow, Amy Jacques Garvey, Philosophy and Opinions of Marcus Garvey (2 vols., 1923-1925). Her Garvey and Garveyism (1963) is a biography. E. David Cronon, Black Moses: The Story of Marcus Garvey and the Universal Negro Improvement Association (1955), is a well-documented work which, however, fails to assess accurately Garvey's impact. A biographical sketch of Garvey is in Wilhelmena S. Robinson, Historical Negro Biographies (1967). See also E. Franklin Frazier, "The Garvey Movement" in August Meier and Elliott Rudwick, eds., The Making of Black America: Essays in Negro Life and History (1969), and C. L. R. James, A History of Pan-African Revolt (1969).

activist

Personal Information

Born Marcus Moziah Garvey, August 17, 1887; died from complications of a stroke, June, 1940; son of Sarah Jane Richards and Marcus Garvey, Sr.; married Amy Ashwood (playwright and lecturer), December, 1919 (divorced, 1921); married Amy Jaques (editor), July, 1922.

Life's Work

Marcus Garvey was one of the twentieth century's most influential leaders of black nationalism. In establishing the United Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), Garvey hoped to build--through enterprise and mass education--a unified nation of people of African blood. A powerful orator, organizer, and writer, Garvey recruited nearly one million UNIA members worldwide. In 1919 he charted the Black Star Shipping Line (B.S.L.), which promoted black cross-continental trade. Under his red, black, and green banner of Pan-Africanism--a commitment to the solidarity of all black peoples--Garvey encouraged the worship of a black deity and the study of black history. Devoted to the separation of the black and white races, a position that he believed was vital to racial prosperity and cultural development, Garvey warned black workers to avoid the possible manipulation of white trade unions and Communist organizations. Although his success was short-lived, Garvey continues to symbolize racial pride and destiny for blacks around the world.

Born in St. Ann's Bay, Jamaica, in August of 1887, Garvey was the youngest of 11 children. A bright student, he acquired a passion for books at an early age. Family financial problems led to his apprenticeship in the printing trade, where he developed journalist skills. In 1907, participation in a failed printer's strike influenced Garvey to enter politics. Roughly four years later he joined the mass migration of Jamaicans seeking employment in Central and South America. In Costa Rica he contributed to publications that presented the oppressive conditions of black workers. While abroad, Garvey's futile attempts to gain British colonial protection for West Indians promoted his growing racial awareness.

Returning to Jamaica in 1912, Garvey realized that the island offered little opportunity for a young black politician. Traveling to London that same year, he met with black laborers, intellectuals, and businessmen whose descriptions of the injustices suffered under European colonial rule contributed to his gradual path toward racial militancy. The most influential of these acquaintances was a Sudanese-Egyptian actor, journalist, and nationalist named Duse Mohammed Ali. Working for Ali's publication African Times and Oriental Review exposed Garvey to the role of African business and the triumphs of Africa's ancestral past. While in London he read Booker T. Washington's autobiography Up From Slavery. The book's vivid account of racial conditions in America inspired the young Jamaican to become a "race leader."

On the voyage back to his homeland in 1914, Garvey conceived of the plan to create the UNIA and its coordinating body, the African Communities League. On August l, with the assistance of a few colleagues, he officially launched his organization. Adopting the motto "One God! One Aim! One Destiny!," the UNIA offered opportunity to all blacks. The organization's plan of African redemption centered upon the establishment of black educational institutions. Following Booker T. Washington's Tuskegee model, Garvey sought to build Jamaican trade schools that would provide missionaries for "Mother Africa." Black middle-class Jamaicans, however, remained indifferent to his vision. In need of funds and support, Garvey wrote to Washington, who in turn invited him to come to America. Tragically, Washington died in 1915, before the two could meet.

The following year Garvey arrived--at the age of 28--in New York City. Penniless and unknown, he struggled to raise support for his Jamaican educational program. At first, residents of New York City's Harlem were unresponsive to his speeches. Garvey became aware that to gain black support in the U.S. he would have to alter his Jamaican strategy; while his previous orientation had been strictly reformist, Garvey's outlook in America became increasingly revolutionary. He endorsed a broad economic plan for private business and industry. By the end of World War I in 1918, black migration, racial violence, and continuing segregation had provided a climate that vastly benefitted the expansion of Garveyism. The UNIA's economic strategy and publication, Negro World, attracted thousands of new proponents. Rapid success encouraged Garvey to move his base of operations from Jamaica to New York.

On August l, 1920, the first UNIA convention opened with a parade that stretched for miles along Lenox avenue in Harlem. That evening, before a crowd of 25,000 in Madison Square Garden, Garvey boldly announced his plan to build an African nation-state. Sympathizing with the plight of Irish Home Rule and Jewish Zionism advocates, he called upon blacks to seek their own "place in the sun." The highlight of the week-long convention was the adoption of the Declaration of the Rights of the Negro Peoples of the World. Containing a bill of rights, the document proclaimed the equality of the black race and included resolutions for the creation of independent legal and educational systems.

Around the time of the convention, Garvey organized several business enterprises. These included the Negro Factories Corporation, a restaurant, a millinery, a publishing house, and a chain of cooperative grocery stores. But most importantly, he attempted to create a maritime fleet that he hoped would give blacks political power and bring them to the forefront of worldwide trade. Selling shares of five-dollar stock through the mail enabled him to acquire enough capital to purchase three ships for the Black Star Shipping Line. The shipping company contributed to Garvey's growing prominence as an international champion of Pan-Africanism. Consequently, he introduced a plan to transfer his organization's headquarters to Monrovia, Liberia.

Despite his emerging popularity, Garvey received widespread opposition among both black and white political, labor, and religious organizations. During the postwar era, a growing fear of Socialist and Communist conspiracies led many to view Garvey's movement as a harbinger of radical black power. In 1919 Garvey was summoned by the U.S. State Department regarding the legality of the B.S.L. operation. Although the investigation failed to produce any evidence against Garvey, the State Department pursued a plan for his eventual deportation.

Harshest resistance arose among black leaders, including Socialist Labor Party spokesman A. Philip Randolph and the African Blood Brotherhood's Cyril V. Briggs. After 1920 Garvey suffered continual attacks from the Negro publications Chicago Defender and Crisis, the journal of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). W.E.B. DuBois, cofounder of the NAACP, was one of the leading adherents to the mounting "Garvey Must Go" campaign. Although he was a black nationalist and Pan-Africanist, DuBois rejected Garvey's segregationist and economic policies. As a result, the two became embroiled in bitter dispute over black progress and African liberation.

In the years following the first UNIA convention, the organization began to decline. After a trip to Central America in 1921 Garvey was denied a visa by the State Department, thereby delaying his reentry into the United States for several months. A year later, federal officials convicted Garvey of mail fraud. Released on bail, he tried to rescue the failing B.S.L. from collapse. Due to the poor condition and exorbitant operating costs of the company's vessels, however, the B.S.L. was forced into insolvency. During the same year, Garvey's meeting with the acting Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) greatly contributed to his faltering status. His statements that the UNIA and the KKK shared a similar policy of racial separation spread outrage throughout the black community. Garvey's demand for a unified African Orthodox church left him almost entirely alienated from conventional black religious denominations.

In 1923 the murder of former UNIA member Reverend James Eason generated further controversy. Eason's death motivated eight of Garvey's enemies to send an incriminating letter to Attorney General Harry Dougherty. The correspondence hastened the State Department's decision to bring Garvey to trial. With Garvey acting as his own defense, the hearing became a forum for his racial beliefs. Unable to adequately defend against the charge of mail fraud, he was incarcerated; six months later he was released on $25,000 bail. In 1924 he attempted to establish a second commercial fleet--the Black Cross Navigation and Trading Company--but facing a shortage of funds, the business soon folded. UNIA efforts to found an independent Liberian republic also proved unsuccessful. In 1925, despite an appeal to the Supreme Court, Garvey was sent to the Atlanta penitentiary. After serving two years, federal authorities ordered his release and immediate deportation.

Upon his return to Jamaica in 1927 Garvey entered local politics. Struggling to form the People's Political Party, he developed a program of national economic, agricultural, labor, and political reform. Although the UNIA's 1929 convention in Kingston, Jamaica, recaptured some of the splendor and enthusiasm of its earlier Harlem era, the organization never again amassed a substantial membership. Under a new charter, Garvey returned the UNIA headquarters to Jamaica, causing widespread fragmentation and desertion among branches in the United States. In 1935, confronted with ensuing political defeat and financial problems, Garvey took up permanent residence in London. But in England his racial program and political aspirations were met with indifference. From 1936 to 1938 Garvey attended conventions in Toronto, Canada, where he set up the School of African Philosophy. After a long period of failing health, he suffered a stroke in 1940 that led to his death in June of that year.

Despite limited success in his lifetime, Garvey has become an international symbol of black freedom. The Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., called him "the first man, on a mass scale to give millions of Negroes a sense of dignity and destiny." During its heyday the UNIA claimed as members Black Muslim leader Elijah Mohammed and the father of Malcolm X. In 1964 the Jamaican government proclaimed Garvey a national hero. His legacy served as an integral force in the "Black is Beautiful" consciousness of the 1960's. More recently, Garvey has become an inspirational figure within the Jamaican Rastafarian religious movement. Indebted to the perseverance and dedication of Garvey's Pan-African struggle, Malcolm X wrote, "Each time you see another independent nation on the African continent you know Marcus Garvey is alive."

Further Reading

Books

• Black Leaders of the Twentieth Century, edited by John Hope Franklin and August Meir, University of Illinois Press, 1982.
• Clarke, John Henry, with Amy Jaques Garvey, Marcus Garvey and the Vision of Africa, Random House, 1974.
• Cronon, Edmund David, Black Moses: The Story of Marcus Garvey and the Universal Improvement Association, foreword by John Hope Franklin, University of Wisconsin Press, 1955.
• Garvey, Amy Jaques, Garvey and Garveyism, United Printers Ltd., 1963.
• The Marcus Garvey and Universal Negro Improvement Association Papers, edited by Robert Hill, University of California Press, 1983.
• Irvin, Jeannette Smith, Marcus Garvey's Footsoldiers, African World Press, Inc., 1988.
• Lewis, Rupert, Marcus Garvey: Anti-Colonial Champion, African World Press, Inc., 1988.
• Philosophy and Opinions of Marcus Garvey; or, Africa for Africans, compiled by Amy Jaques Garvey, second edition, Frank Case and Co., Ltd., 1967.
• Stein, Judith, The World of Marcus Garvey: Race and Class in Modern Society, Louisiana State University Press, 1986.
• Vincent, Theodore G., Black Power and the Garvey Movement, Ramparts, 1971.

Periodicals

• Crisis, May 1924.
• Ebony, November 1926.
• Journal of Negro History, January 1951.
• Journal of Southern History, May 1988.
• New York Times, February 1922.
• Time, August 1924.
• --John Cohassey

For more information on Marcus Moziah Garvey, visit Britannica.com.

(1887-1940), black nationalist leader. Born in Jamaica, Garvey aimed to organize blacks everywhere but achieved his greatest impact in the United States, where he tapped into and enhanced the growing black aspirations for justice, wealth, and a sense of community. During World War I and the 1920s, his Universal Negro Improvement Association (unia) was the largest black secular organization in African-American history. Possibly a million men and women from the United States, the Caribbean, and Africa belonged to it.

Garvey came to New York in 1916 and concluded that the growing black communities in northern cities could provide the wealth and unity to end both imperialism in Africa and discrimination in the United States. He combined the economic nationalist ideas of Booker T. Washington and Pan-Africanists with the political possibilities and urban style of men and women living outside of plantation and colonial societies. Garvey's ideas gestated amid the social upheavals, anticolonial movements, and revolutions of World War I, which demonstrated the power of popular mobilization to change entrenched structures of power.

Garvey's goals were modern and urban. He sought to end imperialist rule and create modern societies in Africa, not, as his critics charged, to transport blacks "back to Africa." He knitted black communities on three continents with his newspaper the Negro World and in 1919 formed the Black Star Line, an international shipping company to provide transportation and encourage trade among the black businesses of Africa and the Americas. In the same year, he founded the Negro Factories Corporation to establish such businesses. In 1920 he presided over the first of several international conventions of the unia. Garvey sought to channel the new black militancy into one organization that could overcome class and national divisions.

Although local unia chapters provided many social and economic benefits for their members, Garvey's main efforts failed: the Black Star Line suspended operations in 1922 and the other enterprises fared no better. Garvey's ambition and determination to lead inevitably collided with associates and black leaders in other organizations. His verbal talent and flair for the dramatic attracted thousands, but his faltering projects only augmented ideological and personality conflicts. In the end, he could neither unite blacks nor accumulate enough power to significantly alter the societies the unia functioned in.

Finally, the Justice Department, animated by J. Edgar Hoover's Federal Bureau of Investigation and sensing his growing weakness, indicted Garvey for mail fraud. He was convicted in 1923, imprisoned in 1925, and deported to Jamaica in 1927. Unable to resurrect the unia, he moved to London, where he died in 1940.

Garvey's movement was the first black attempt to join modern urban goals and mass organization. Although most subsequent leaders did not try to create black economic institutions as he had, Garvey had demonstrated to them that the urban masses were a potentially powerful force in the struggle for black freedom.

Bibliography:

Robert Hill, ed., The Marcus Garvey and Universal Negro Improvement Association Papers, 10 vols. projected (1983-); Judith Stein, The World of Marcus Garvey: Race and Class in Modern Society (1986).

Author:

Judith Stein

See also Africa-U.S. Relations; Black Nationalism; Black Power; Expatriates and Exiles; Washington, Booker T.

1887–1940, American proponent of black nationalism, b. Jamaica. At the age of 14, Garvey went to work as a printer's apprentice. After leading (1907) an unsuccessful printers' strike in Jamaica, he edited several newspapers in Costa Rica and Panama. During a period in London he became interested in African history and black nationalism. His concern for the problems of blacks led him to found (1914) the Universal Negro Improvement Association and in 1916 he moved to New York City and opened a branch in Harlem. The UNIA was an organization designed “to promote the spirit of race pride.” Broadly, its goals were to foster worldwide unity among all blacks and to establish the greatness of the African heritage. Garvey addressed himself to the lowest classes of blacks and rejected any notion of integration. Convinced that blacks could not secure their rights in countries where they were a minority race, he urged a “back to Africa” movement. In Africa, an autonomous black state could be established, possessing its own culture and civilization, free from the domination of whites. Garvey was the most influential black leader of the early 1920s. His brilliant oratory and his newspaper, Negro World, brought him millions of followers. His importance declined, however, when his misuse of funds intended to establish a steamship company, the Black Star Line, resulted in a mail fraud conviction. He entered jail in 1925 and was deported to Jamaica two years later. From this time on his influence decreased, and he died in relative obscurity.

Bibliography

See Philosophy and Opinions of Marcus Garvey, compiled by A. J. Garvey (2d ed. 1967); biography by E. D. Cronon (1955, repr. 1969); studies by A. J. Garvey (1963), T. Vincent (1971), E. C. Fax (1972), E. D. Cronon, ed. (1973), J. H. Clarke, ed. (1974), and J. Stein (1985).

Jamaican-born black nationalist who founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association in the 1920s to encourage self-help among blacks. Opposed to colonialism, Garvey advocated black separatism and nationalism. The Black Star shipping line, which facilitated emigration of American blacks to Africa, was among his projects. He was eventually jailed for mail fraud and deported to Jamaica by the U.S. government, which feared his influence in the black community. (See also W. E. B. DuBois.)

Quotes:

"If you have no confidence in self, you are twice defeated in the race of life. With confidence, you have won even before you have started."