35TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION Super Hero MARCUS GARVEY

Marcus Garvey 

Marcus Mosiah Garvey was born 1887 in St. Ann's Bay, Jamaica. His father, Marcus, was a stonemason and a descendant of the Maroon tribesmen, who 200 years earlier had organized slave revolts and created autonomous societies. The social consciousness of his ancestors must have been passed on to Garvey, who by the age of 20 had organized a printer's strike for higher wages. He was fired but went on to earn a reputation as a radical, a spokesperson for the poor and dispossessed, and an organizer and speaker for the working classes. 

In 1910, Garvey left Jamaica for Costa Rica, where an uncle got him a job on a sugarcane plantation. That didn't last. He settled in an area where West Indians lived and started a newspaper, La Nacion/The Nation, which organized immigrants. Despite harassment from local authorities, he traveled to other Latin American nations. Two years later, he visited Europe and worked on the docks in England. Then he traveled to France, Germany, Italy, and Austria, writing for many newspapers. 

It was not until 1914, when he returned to Jamaica, that Garvey's most important role would materialize. He founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), which he modeled after Booker T. Washington's Tuskegee Institute. It soon became one of the largest independent Black organizations the world had seen. Its message of racial pride and self-reliance struck a chord among Blacks worldwide. 

Inspired by Washington's Up from Slavery, Garvey left Jamaica in 1916 for the United States. He began a lecture tour to organize chapters of the UNIA. In 1918, he started Negro World, a newspaper that reached 50,000 readers and was the first to publish many writers of the Harlem Renaissance. 

Garvey was successful, acquiring restaurants, hotels, and the Black Star Line—the steamship company he procured to link people of African descent worldwide. He bought three ships, naming them after Black leaders, including the Booker T. Washington. He also organized the African Orthodox Church. 

In 1920, he campaigned for $2 million and collected $137,000 in just a few months to organize the first International Convention of the UNIA. It attracted tens of thousands of followers who marched through Harlem honoring their philosopher/prophet. According to historian Lerone Bennett, Jr., Garvey sold stock to his followers and admirers under an arrangement that barred white purchasers. He created the red, black, and green UNIA flag, which would later represent Black liberation. During this same period, he unsuccessfully appealed to the League of Nations to turn over German-held African nations to independent Black rule. 

Garvey had enemies, including J. Edgar Hoover, and, ironically, W.E.B. Du Bois. Du Bois was an integrationist who did not support a separate Black state and repatriation. Du Bois was also opposed to Garvey's association with the Ku Klux Klan, his criticism of "mulatto" leadership, and his belief in Black racial purity. 

In 1923, when his steamship company went bankrupt, Garvey was convicted of mail fraud. He went to jail for two years. His sentence was commuted by President Coolidge before Garvey was deported to Jamaica. Garvey died in London at age 53 without setting foot in Africa.

From Great African Americans.  Copyright, Publications International, Ltd.