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 from which we draw strength 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 started, “A race without power is a race without respect.”
When we examine the economic condition of Africans
in America, and throughout he 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,
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 all over 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.”
BC columnist Conrad W. Worrill, PhD, is the
National Chairman of the National Black United Front (NBUF).
Click
here to contact Dr. Worrill |