Each
August that we celebrate Marcus Garvey�s birthday, we should
revisit his contributions and study the works of this great
African hero. Marcus Garvey left a rich historical legacy
for us to study and utilize in our continued quest for independence
and liberation as a people.
Since
the Paris Peace Conference, the founding of the League of
Nations and the United Nations, several historic and precedent
setting appeals, petitions, and complaints have been submitted
to the international community speaking for African people
in the United States. On December 10, 1918, the Honorable
Marcus Mosiah Garvey and the Universal Negro Improvement
Association (UNIA) convened a mass meeting of more than
7,000 people in the Place Casino in New York to discuss
and ratify nine �peace aims to the Allied Democracies of
Europe and America, and to the people of democratic tendencies
of the world� assembled at the Paris Peace Conference. Garvey
and representatives also attended the founding meeting of
the League of Nations in 1920.
It
was in that spirit of the pioneering international work
of Marcus Garvey and the UNIA on behalf of African people
that the Durban 400, a delegation led by the December 12th
Movement International Secretariat and the National Black
United Front (NBUF) traveled to Durban, South Africa in
August 2001 for the United Nations World Conference Against
Racism. It was at this conference that the Trans Atlantic
Slave Trade and Slavery were declared �Crimes Against Humanity
and that Reparations are owed to African people.� It is
in this context that African people�s demand for reparations
continues. This serves as a tribute to the legacy of Marcus
Garvey.
Marcus
Garvey was born August 17, 1887 in St. Ann�s Bay, Jamaica
to Marcus and Sarah Garvey. Marcus Sr., his father, was
a descendent of the Maroons. The Maroons were Africans who
managed to escape slavery when they reached western shores
by jumping from slave ships, or by fleeing slave plantations
and establishing well fortified communities deep in the
Jamaican interior. Garvey�s mother, Sarah was said to be
of extraordinary beauty and possessed a gentle personality.
She was also said to have been a deeply religious person.
 Garvey
left school at the age of 14 and became an apprentice printer
in Kingston. He worked for a private company and eventually
became a foreman. At the age of 20, in 1907, although he
was a member of management, Garvey led a newly formed printer�s
union strike. The company promised Garvey big rewards and
benefits if he would discontinue his union organizing. Garvey
refused, was fired, and �blacklisted� by the private printing
companies of Kingston. This experience intensified Garvey�s
political curiosity concerning the condition of African
people. It was at this point in 1909, that he formed the
National Club and its publication Our Own. From this point
forward, Garvey decided to devote his life to the uplifting
of the African race. He published his first newspaper, The
Watchman, which gave him an opportunity to express his
emerging political views on the plight of African people.
While
unable to gain support for his organization, Garvey began
to travel. He spent time in Costa Rica, Ecuador, Nicaragua,
Honduras, Columbia, and Venezuela. These travels gave Garvey
an opportunity to observe, that whenever African people
and whites were in close proximity, African people were
on the bottom.
Garvey
continued to travel and in 1911 he went to London. He was
able to test out his public speaking ability on the condition
of African people worldwide at the famous Hyde Park Speaker�s
Corner. While in London, Garvey met the editor of the African
Times and Orient Review, Duse Mohammed Ali. Ali,
an Egyptian scholar, introduced Garvey to many ideas that
played an important role in his future thinking.
 This
background gave Garvey the tools he needed to become one
of our true twentieth century freedom fighters. Garvey arrived
in Harlem, New York on March 16, 1916. By 1919, Garvey was
established as the President General of the UNIA/ACL, which
had a membership of over three million people with more
than 300 branches throughout the African World Community.
Perhaps
Garvey�s greatest contribution to the uplifting of our people
was his ability to find a formula for organizing African
people around the African principle: the greatest good for
the greatest number. This was reflected in the First International
Convention of Negro Peoples of the World in Madison Square
Garden, in New York in 1920. Over twenty-five thousand African
people from all over the world witnessed the selection of
Red, Black and Green as the colors of the Provisional Government.
In this context, Garvey and the UNIA/ACL had established
an economic arm, the Negro Factories Corporation, with cooperative
stores, restaurants, steam laundry shops, tailor shops,
dressmaking shops, millinery stores, a doll factory to manufacture
African dolls, and a publishing house. Garvey also formed
a Steamship Corporation. The goals and objectives of the
UNIA had now become clear to the world. As Shawna Maglangbayan
points out, ��the Garvey movement and UNIA had become a
threat to the white world,�
With
the cooperation of anti-Garvey, �Negro leaders,� Garvey
was eventually charged and convicted of mail fraud for selling
stock in the African Star Lines. On February 8, 1925, Marcus
Garvey was arrested and convicted for mail fraud and imprisoned
in Atlanta, Georgia. With a great movement of support by
his followers, Garvey was released from prison in 1927.
Immediately following his release he was deported from the
United States and was sent back to Jamaica to continue his
work. He continued to travel and while in London, on June
10, 1940, Garvey lapsed into a coma and made his transition
into eternity.
The
Garvey Movement was one of the greatest mass movements of
African people in the world. Although the external and internal
forces and enemies of Garvey caused his demise, the ideas
of Garvey and the UNIA/ACL are still alive. We need to revitalize
and resurrect the spirit of Marcus Mosiah Garvey at every
opportunity. One special way to honor the memory of Marcus
Garvey is for you to proudly display your Red, Black and
Green Flag on his birthday, August 17th, in remembrance.
The spirit of the Honorable Marcus Mosiah Garvey�s is needed
now, more than ever before.
A
Luta Continua / The Struggle Continues!
BlackCommentator.com Columnist, Conrad W. Worrill, PhD, is the National
Chairman of the National Black United Front (NBUF). Click here
to contact Dr. Worrill. |
Jul 29, 2010 - Issue 386
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