MARCUS GARVEY
Marcus Mosiah Garvey, one of the greatest leaders African people have produced, was born August 17, 1887 in St. Ann's Bay, Jamaica, and spent his entire life in the service of his people--African people. He was bold; he was uncompromising and he was one of the most powerful orators on record. He could literally bring his audiences to a state of mass hysteria.
Ironically, his first major break in speaking in Harlem came by way of A. Phillip Randolph, who sponsored a speaking series. Young Garvey was so nervous, that he forgot his text, sweated profusely and, when he began to be boo'd, accidentally fell of the stage into the audience.
From this experience, Marcus began to study and emulate the great speakers of the day, White and Black alike. He would practice in the mirror and practice their gesticulations and movements, until he had honed and perfected his craft.
Garvey emphasized racial pride. His goal was nothing less that the total and complete redemption and liberation of African people around the planet. His dream was the galvanization of Black people into an unrelenting steamroller that could never be defeated. I consider myself, along with many others, as one of Garvey's children.
As a young man of fourteen, Garvey left school and worked as a printer's apprentice. He participated in Jamaica's earliest nationalist organizations, traveled throughout Central America, and spent time in London, England, where he worked with the Sudanese-Egyptian nationalist Duse Mohamed Ali. In 1916 Garvey was invited by Booker T. Washington to come to the United States in the hopes of establishing an industrial training school, but arrived just after Washington died. In March 1916, shortly after landing in America, Garvey embarked upon an extended period of travel. When he finally settled down, he organized a chapter of the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League. The UNIA & ACL had been formed in Jamaica in 1914. Its motto was "One God, One Aim, One Destiny," and pledged itself to the redemption of Africa and the uplift of Black people everywhere. It aimed at race pride, self-reliance and economic independence.
Within a few years Garvey had become the best-known and most dynamic African leader in the Western Hemisphere and perhaps the entire world. In 1919 Mr. Garvey created an international shipping company called the Black Star Line. By 1920 the UNIA had hundreds of divisions. It hosted elaborate international conventions and published a weekly newspaper entitled the Negro World.
No other organization in modern times has had the prestige and the impact as the UNIA & ACL. During the 1920s UNIA divisions existed throughout North, South and Central America, the Caribbean, Africa, Europe and Australia.
Garvey's organziation was dogged by mis-steps and constant financial crisis. Many of the problems stemmed from Garvey's insular world, where he, and he alone made all of the major decisions concerning the organization. There can be no doubt as to his genius as an organizer, yet, his downfall was in trusting and showing favoritism and loyalty to those in his inner circle, rather than seeking out much needed advice from experts.
The U.S. government was also key in bringing down Garvey. They investigated him, generated false communications emanating from his office and eventually convicted him of mail fraud on the basis of a government doctored photograph on a brochure that the government said represented fraud. A single $5 donation sent through the mail, was responsible for Garvey's imprisonment and eventual deportation from the United States.
Garvey, a great and strong man, due to his isolative tendencies and refusal to delegate responsibilities, soon fell into depression and ill health, and spent his last years in relative seclusion