Marcus Garvey was a lecturer for the movements of black nationalism and pan-Africanism, which is why he founded the Universal Association for the Promotion of Blacks and the Alliance of African Communities. Garvey has advanced the Pan-African philosophy that inspired the global mass movement, known as Garveyism. Garveism would ultimately inspire others, from the nation of Islam to the Rastafarian action.
Early Life
Marcus Mosiah Garvey, Jr., was born August 17, 1887, in St. John’s Bay. Ann’s, Jamaica. Self-taught, Garvey founded the Universal Association for the Advancement of Blacks, dedicated to the promotion of African-Americans and immigration to Africa. He launched several companies in the United States to promote a distinct black nation. After being convicted of postal fraud and deported to Jamaica, he continued his work to bring blacks back to Africa.
Garvey was the last of 11 children born to Marcus Garvey, a sister, and Sarah Jane Richards.
His father was a mason, and his mother, a domestic worker, and farmer. Marcus the Elder had a significant influence on Garvey, who once described him as “strict, firm, determined, daring and strong, refusing to give in even to higher powers if he believed he was right.” His father was known to have an extensive library, in which young Garvey learned to read.
At 14, Garvey became a printer trainee. In 1903 he traveled to Kingston, Jamaica, and quickly became involved in union activities.
In 1907, he went on a failed strike with the press, and the experience ignited his passion for political activism.
Three years later, he traveled to Central America, working as a newspaper editor and writing about the exploitation of migrant workers on the plantations. He then went to London, where he attended Birkbeck College (University of London) and worked for the African Times and Orient Review, which defended Pan-African nationalism.
Founded the United Negro Improvement Association (U.N.I.A.)
Garvey’s philosophy and beliefs
Garvey returned to Jamaica in 1912 and founded the United Negro Improvement Association (U.N.I.A.) to unite the entire African diaspora to “establish a country and its absolute government.” After contacting Booker T. Washington, an American educator who founded the Tuskegee Institute, Garvey traveled to the United States in 1916 to raise funds for a similar endeavor in Jamaica. He moved to New York and founded the U.N.I.A., a chapter in Harlem to promote a separatist philosophy of social, political, and economic freedom for blacks. In 1918 Garvey started publishing the prominent newspaper Black World to get his message out.
Black star line
In 1919, Garvey and the U.N.I.A. He founded the Black Star Line, a shipping company that would trade between Africans in America, the Caribbean, Central, and South America, Canada, and Africa. At the same time, Garvey founded the Black Factory Association, a series of companies that will market products in all the major industrial centers of the Western Hemisphere and Africa.
In August 1920, the U.N.I.A. It has claimed 4 million members and held its first international convention at Madison Square Garden in New York. In front of a crowd of 25,000 people around the world, Marcus Garvey explained how he was proud of African history and culture. Many of his words were inspiring, but not all. Some established black leaders felt that their separatist philosophy was misunderstood. W.E.B.
Du Bois, a prominent black leader and N.A.A.C.P.officer he called Garvey, “the most dangerous enemy of the black race in the United States.” Garvey regarded Du Bois as an agent of the white elite.
Under the supervision of J. Edgar Hoover
Du Bois was not Garvey’s worst opponent; history soon revealed that F.B.I. Director J. Edgar Hoover was keen to ruin Garvey for his radical ideas. Hoover felt threatened by the black leader, fearing to encourage a black man across the country to take up the militant challenge.
Hoover called Garvey a “notorious black agitator.” For several years, he desperately searched for ways to find personal information about him, even by hiring the first black F.B.I. in .1919, the agent entered Garvey’s ranks and spied on him.
“They spied on the U.N.I.A.,” said historian Winston James. “They sabotaged the Black Star Line. The engines of the ships were damaged by foreign material thrown into the fuel.”
Hoover will use the same methods decades later to obtain information about black leaders such as Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X.
Accused, deported to Jamaica
1922 Garvey and three other members of the U.N.I.A. Officials have been charged with postal fraud related to the Black Star Line. The trial record indicates several irregularities in the prosecution of the case.
It did not help that the books on the delivery vessel contained many accounting irregularities. On June 23, 1923, Garvey was convicted and sentenced to five years in prison. Claiming to be the victim of a miscarriage of justice for political reasons, Garvey appealed the decision but was dismissed. In 1927, he was released from prison and deported to Jamaica.
Garvey continued his political activism, and the work of the U.N.I.A. in Jamaica then moved to London in 1935. But that did not have the same impact as before. Perhaps in despair or maybe in deception, Garvey worked with segregationist and supreme white senator Theodore Bilbo of Mississippi to promote the compensation plan.
The great Liberian law of 1939 deported 12 million African-Americans to Liberia for federal spending to reduce unemployment. The act failed in Congress, and Garvey lost even more support among the black population.
Death and Accomplishment
Garvey died in London in 1940 after several strokes. Due to travel restrictions during the Second World War, his body was buried in London. In 1964, his remains were exhumed and taken to Jamaica, where he was appointed the first national hero of Jamaica by the government. He was buried again in a sanctuary in the Heroes National Park, but his memory and his influence remain. His message of pride and dignity inspired many people at the start of the civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s. In tribute to his numerous contributions, the bust of Garvey was exhibited at the Hall of Fame of the Organization of States States of America in Washington, DC. Ghana Country Named Black Star Line Delivery Line And Its National Football Team Black Stars In Honor Of Garvey