Education and Economic Independence – Worrill’s World

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.”

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.

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.