Bookmark and Share
Comment and read the comments of others on the BlackCommentator.com Blog.  http://blackcommentator.blogspot.com/
Click to go to the home page.
Click to send us your comments and suggestions.
Click to learn about the publishers of BlackCommentator.com and our mission.
Click to search for any word or phrase on our Website.
Click to sign up for an e-Mail notification only whenever we publish something new.
Click to remove your e-Mail address from our list immediately and permanently.
Click to read our pledge to never give or sell your e-Mail address to anyone.
Click to read our policy on re-prints and permissions.
Click for the demographics of the BlackCommentator.com audience and our rates.
Click to view the patrons list and learn now to become a patron and support BlackCommentator.com.
Click to see job postings or post a job.
Click for links to Websites we recommend.
Click to see every cartoon we have published.
Click to read any past issue.
Click to read any think piece we have published.
Click to read any guest commentary we have published.
Click to view any of the art forms we have published.
Road Scholar - the world leader in educational travel for adults. Top ten travel destinations for African-Americans. Fascinating history, welcoming locals, astounding sights, hidden gems, mouth-watering food or all of the above - our list of the world’s top ten "must-see" learning destinations for African-Americans has a little something for everyone.
 
Garvey and Economic Independence - Worrill’s World - By Dr. Conrad W. Worrill, PhD - BlackCommentator.com Columnist
 
Custom Search
 
 

In this present era of economic and educational onslaught against the African Community in America, it is important that we understand that the rise of the African Centered Education Movement should be linked to our quest for economic independence. We must free the “African mind” through African Centered Educational activities so that we might better understand the importance of economic self-reliance.

One model that we draw strength from in pursuing economic and educational liberation is the model established by the Honorable Marcus Mosiah Garvey and the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) in the 1920s.

The more I read and study about Marcus Garvey, the more I am amazed at the great contributions he made to African people to become a self-reliant and self-sufficient people. At the core of Marcus Garvey’s program was his urging of African people to acquire education and economic power. As he always stated, “A race without power is a race without respect.”

When we examine the economic condition of Africans in America, and throughout the world, we find one glaring problem - African people do not control our economic resources at the level we should. This is primarily due to our miseducation as a people. In a disproportionate manner, African people depend on the European and Asian world for food, clothing, and shelter. More often than not, the European and Asian worlds are the producers, processors, distributors, and wholesalers. African people are the consumers.

This was one of the major problems that the Honorable Marcus Mosiah Garvey addressed during his lifetime and that Minister Louis Farrakhan continues to address.

As Dr. Tony Martin writes in his book Race First: The Ideological and Organizational Struggles of Marcus Garvey and the Universal Negro Improvement Association (New Marcus Garvey Library) , which is one of the best books written on the works of Marcus Garvey, “Marcus Garvey, unlike his major rivals in the United States, built a mass organization that went beyond civil-rights agitation and protest and based itself upon a definite, well thought out program that he believed would lead to the total emancipation of the race from white dominion.”

To implement his program, Garvey set up the Negro Factories Corporation (NFC). Its objective was to build and operate factories in the big industrial centers of the United States, Central America, the Caribbean, and Africa. The NFC established a chain of cooperative grocery stores, a restaurant, a steam laundry, tailor and dressmaking shop, a millinery store, and a publishing house. Mr. Garvey also established a steamship company, The Black Star Line. He envisioned a fleet of steamers carrying passengers and establishing trade among African people of the United States, Central America, the Caribbean, and Africa.

In the summer of 1920, Garvey launched his full blown program at the First Annual Convention of the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) of which he was the founder and first President General. On August 2, 1920, after a massive parade of thousands of well drilled, uniformed ranks of the UNIA, 35,000 delegates from allover the United States and some twenty-five countries convened at Madison Square Garden, in New York City. It was, according to the New York Times, one of the largest gatherings in the history of the hall.

Dr. Martin explains that, “Central to the ideological basis underpinning Garvey’s program was the question of race. For Garvey, the Black man was universally oppressed on racial grounds, and no matter how much people try to shy away from this issue, the fact is, this is still true today.”

As Malcolm X used to say, it was our Blackness “which caused so much hell not our identity as Elks, Masons, Baptists or Methodists.” If we are ever to become a liberated people this idea must be deeply rooted in the day to day organizing and mobilizing of our people as we seek economic and educational liberation. Far too many Africans in America have abandoned this idea in their organizing projects.

Mr. Garvey understood that the foundation of our liberation was economic and educational independence based on racial solidarity. There are numerous lessons we can learn from the legacy of the Honorable Marcus Mosiah Garvey. Without economic independence tied to the acquisition of political power, African people in America and African people everywhere will continue to be the subjects of the whims of other people.

In this regard, Garvey said, “...you can be educated in soul, vision and feeling, as well as in mind. To see your enemy and know him is a part of the complete education of man... Develop yours and you become as great and full of knowledge as the other fellow without entering the classrooms.”

BlackCommentator.com Columnist, Conrad W. Worrill, PhD, is the National Chairman of the National Black United Front (NBUF). Click here to contact Dr. Worrill.

Any BlackCommentator.com article may be re-printed so long as it is re-printed in its entirety and full credit given to the author and www.BlackCommentator.com. If the re-print is on the Internet we additionally request a link back to the original piece on our Website.

Your comments are always welcome.

eMail re-print notice

If you send us an eMail message we may publish all or part of it, unless you tell us it is not for publication. You may also request that we withhold your name.

Thank you very much for your readership.

Your comments are always welcome.

 

March 5 , 2009
Issue 314

is published every Thursday

Executive Editor:
Bill Fletcher, Jr.
Managing Editor:
Nancy Littlefield
Publisher:
Peter Gamble
Est. April 5, 2002
Printer Friendly Version in resizeable plain text format or pdf format.
Frequently Asked Questions
Comment and read the comments of others on the BlackCommentator.com Blog.  http://blackcommentator.blogspot.com/
click here to buy & benefit BC
Cedille Records Sale