Marcus Garvey

Few Americans today remember Marcus Garvey but many may learn about him as they observe Black History Month in February. Garvey personified �Black Power� a half-century before Malcolm X rose to prominence during the 1960s. Garvey and the international movement he started, the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), encouraged blacks to embrace an identity of their own, not one determined by whites and discrimination. He was a controversial figure who encouraged black independence rather than integration.

Though Garvey spent only 11 years in the United States, from 1916 to 1927, his beliefs took on a name of their own, as �Garveyism� laid the foundation for other bold black civic leaders who refused to live as second-class citizens.

Garvey was born in Jamaica in 1887. When he was 14 years old, he dropped out of school to work as a printer. He went on to travel throughout Central America and England, where he took college classes and developed his early political beliefs.

Garvey first visited the United States at the invitation of another famous black pioneer, Booker T. Washington. Washington, however, passed away before Garvey arrived in 1916. Garvey resumed his work as a printer in the New York City borough of Harlem. He began to express his ideology on Harlem street corners, and soon built up enough of a following to embark on a nationwide speaking tour.

Garvey established a New York City chapter of the UNIA (which he had first founded it in Jamaica) and began to promote black equality and independence on a massive scale. He published the UNIA weekly newspaper, The Negro World and chaired conventions with black leaders from all over the world. In an attempt to fulfill two of Garvey�s goals � self-sufficiency and strengthening the bond between blacks and their native continent of Africa � the UNIA incorporated a shipping company, the Black Star Line (BSL), in 1919.

With the BSL, Garvey�s vision of a shipping trade from the U.S. to Africa and the Caribbean was briefly realized. It was also the beginning of his undoing. Ruined by poor finances and corruption, the BSL folded in 1922. The federal government prosecuted Garvey for mail fraud, charging that the BSL failed to meet its promotional claims. Detroit would be the last place in the United States Garvey would walk as a free man. Returning to New York from an event there in 1925, he was arrested at a train station. He spent two years in an Atlanta penitentiary before being deported.

He moved to London, where he died 12 years later, two months shy of his 52nd birthday. He had been so far removed from the public eye that newspapers had already printed his obituary. He was reading one of them when he died.

The UNIA in the United States disintegrated without him, which is one reason he is a lesser-known figure in America today. Yet Garvey is renowned on his home island of Jamaica, the rest of the Caribbean, and Africa, where his vision of an independent and self-governing black society helped bring about the end of European colonialism.

For More on Marcus Garvey (Works Consulted)

Clarke, Dr. John Henrik. �The Impact of Marcus Garvey.� 2000. PBS American Experience. 15 Jan. 2007. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/garvey/sfeature/sf_impact.html

�Marcus Garvey Timeline.� 2000. PBS� American Experience. 15 Jan. 2007. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/garvey/timeline/index.html

Yuen, Anthony. �Marcus Garvey: An Overview.� 2004. The Marcus Garvey and UNIA Papers Project, UCLA. Jan. 15 2007. http://www.isop.ucla.edu/africa/mgpp/intro.asp