Marcus Garvey (1887-1940), Jamaica’s first national hero, was an orator for the Black Nationalism and Pan-Africanism movements, to which end he founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League.
“Garvey advanced a Pan-African philosophy which inspired a global mass movement, known as Garveyism,” says Biography.com. “Garveyism would eventually inspire others from the Nation of Islam to the Rastafari movement.”
It said Marcus Mosiah Garvey, Jr. was born on Aug. 17, 1887, in St. Ann’s Bay, Jamaica.
“Self-educated, Garvey founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association, dedicated to promoting African Americans and resettlement in Africa,” Biography.com said. “In the United States, he launched several businesses to promote a separate Black nation.”
After Garvey was convicted of mail fraud and deported back to Jamaica, he continued his work for Black repatriation to Africa.
Biography.com said Garvey was the last of 11 children born to Marcus Garvey, Sr. and Sarah Jane Richards. His father was a stonemason, and his mother a domestic worker and farmer.
“Marcus Sr. was a great influence on Garvey, who once described him as ‘severe, firm, determined, bold, and strong, refusing to yield even to superior forces if he believed he was right,” Biography.com said. “His father was known to have a large library, where young Garvey learned to read.”
At 14, it said Garvey became a printer’s apprentice. In 1903, he traveled to Kingston, the Jamaican capital, and soon became involved in union activities.
In 1907, Biography.com said Garvey took part in an unsuccessful printer’s strike, stating that “the experience kindled in him a passion for political activism.
Three years later, it said Garvey traveled throughout Central America working as a newspaper editor and writing about the exploitation of migrant workers in the plantations.
He later traveled to London, where he attended Birkbeck College (University of London) and worked for the African Times and Orient Review, which advocated Pan-African nationalism, Biography.com said.
It said Garvey returned to Jamaica in 1912 and founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association (U.N.I.A.), with the goal of uniting all of African Diaspora to “establish a country and absolute government of their own.”
After corresponding with Booker T. Washington, the American educator who founded Tuskegee Institute, Garvey traveled to the United States in 1916 to raise funds for a similar venture in Jamaica, Biography.com said.
It said he settled in New York City and formed a U.N.I.A. chapter in Harlem “to promote a separatist philosophy of social, political and economic freedom for Black people”.
In 1918, Garvey began publishing the widely distributed newspaper Negro World to convey his message, Biography.com said.
It said that, by 1919, Garvey and U.N.I.A. had launched the Black Star Line, a shipping company that would establish trade and commerce between Africans in America, the Caribbean, South and Central America, Canada and Africa.
At the same time, Biography.com said Garvey started the Negros Factories Association, “a series of companies that would manufacture marketable commodities in every big industrial center in the Western hemisphere and Africa.”
In August 1920, U.N.I.A. claimed four million members and held its first International Convention at Madison Square Garden in New York City, Biography.com said.
Before a crowd of 25,000 people from all over world, it said Marcus Garvey spoke of having pride in African history and culture.
“Many found his words inspiring, but not all,” Biography.com said. “Some established Black leaders found his separatist philosophy ill-conceived. W.E.B. Du Bois, a prominent Black leader and officer of the N.A.A.C.P. called Garvey, the most dangerous enemy of the Negro race in America.’”
Biography.com said Garvey felt “Du Bois was an agent of the white elite”.
But it said Du Bois wasn’t the worst adversary of Garvey, stating that “history would soon reveal F.B.I. Director J. Edgar Hoover’s fixation on ruining Garvey for his radical ideas.
“Hoover felt threatened by the Black leader, fearing he was inciting Black people across the country to stand up in militant defiance,” Biography.com said. “Hoover referred to Garvey as a ‘notorious negro agitator’ and, for several years, desperately sought ways to find damning personal information on him, even going so far as to hire the first Black F.B.I. agent in 1919 in order to infiltrate Garvey’s ranks and spy on him.”
“They placed spies in the U.N.I.A.,” Biography.com quoted historian Winston James as saying. “They sabotaged the Black Star Line. The engines… of the ships were actually damaged by foreign matter being thrown into the fuel.”
Biography.com said “Hoover would use the same methods decades later to obtain information on Black leaders like Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X.”
It said that, in 1922, Garvey and three other U.N.I.A. officials were charged with mail fraud involving the Black Star Line.
“The trial records indicate several improprieties occurred in the prosecution of the case,” Biography.com said. “It didn’t help that the shipping line’s books contained many accounting irregularities.”
On Jun. 23, 1923, it said Garvey was convicted and sentenced to prison for five years.
Claiming to be a victim of a politically motivated miscarriage of justice, Biography.com said Garvey appealed his conviction but was denied.
In 1927, he was released from prison and deported to Jamaica, Biography.com said.
It said Garvey continued his political activism and the work of U.N.I.A. in Jamaica, and then moved to London in 1935.
“But he did not command the same influence he had earlier,” Biography.com said. “Perhaps in desperation or maybe in delusion, Garvey collaborated with outspoken segregationist and white supremacist Senator Theodore Bilbo of Mississippi to promote a reparations scheme.
“The Greater Liberia Act of 1939 would deport 12 million African Americans to Liberia at federal expense to relieve unemployment,” it added. “The act failed in Congress, and Garvey lost even more support among the Black population.”
Biography.com said Garvey died in London in 1940 after several strokes.
Due to travel restrictions during World War II, his body was interred in London, it said.
In 1964, his remains were exhumed and taken to Jamaica, where the government proclaimed him Jamaica’s first national hero and re-interred him at a shrine in the National Heroes Park, Biography.com said.
“But his memory and influence remain,” it said. “His message of pride and dignity inspired many in the early days of the civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s.”
In tribute to his many contributions, Biography.com said Garvey’s bust has been displayed in the Organization of American States’ Hall of Heroes in Washington, D.C.
The country of Ghana has named its shipping line the Black Star Line and its national soccer team the Black Stars, in honor of Garvey, Biography.com said.
