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The Marcus Garvey and UNIA Papers Project A UCLA African Studies Center Projects Extracts
The Marcus Garvey and UNIA Papers Project A UCLA African Studies Center Projects Extracts
August, 2010
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The Marcus Garvey and Universal Negro Improvement Association Papers Project
A Research Project of the James S. Coleman African Studies Center
Introduction
Introduction
Introduction American Series African Series Caribbean Series Marcus Garvey: Life & Lessons Photo Gallery Sound Library Project Information Ordering Information
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Tuskegee-type industrial training school. In 1916 he came to America at Booker T. Washington's invitation, but arrived just after Washington died. Garvey arrived in America at the dawn of the "New Negro" era. Black discontent, punctuated by East St. Louis's bloody race riots in 1917 and intensified by postwar disillusionment, peaked in 1919's Red Summer. Shortly after arriving, Garvey embarked upon a period of travel and lecturing. When he settled in New York City, he organized a chapter of the UNIA, which he had earlier founded in Jamaica as a fraternal organization. Drawing on a gift for oratory, he melded Jamaican peasant aspirations for economic and cultural independence with the American gospel of success to create a new gospel of racial pride. "Garveyism" eventually evolved into a religion of success, inspiring millions of black people worldwide who sought relief from racism and colonialism. To enrich and strengthen his movement, Garvey envisioned a great shipping line to foster black trade, to transport passengers between America, the Caribbean, and Africa, and to serve as a symbol of black grandeur and enterprise. The UNIA incorporated the Black Star Line in 1919. The line's flagship, the S.S. Yarmouth, made its maiden voyage in November and two other ships joined the line in 1920. The Black Star Line became a powerful recruiting tool for the UNIA, but it was ultimately sunk by expensive repairs, discontented crews, and top-level mismanagement and corruption. By 1920 the UNIA had hundreds of chapters worldwide; it hosted elaborate international conventions and published the Negro World, a widely disseminated weekly that was soon banned in many parts of Africa and the Caribbean. Over the next few years, however, the movement began to unravel under the strains of internal dissension, opposition from black critics, and government harassment. In 1922 the federal government indicted Garvey on mail fraud charges stemming from Black Star Line promotional claims and he suspended all BSL operations. (Two years later, the UNIA created another line, the Black Cross Navigation and Trading Co., but it, too, failed.) Garvey was sentenced to prison. The government later commuted his sentence, only to deport him back to Jamaica in November 1927. He never returned to America. In Jamaica Garvey reconstituted the UNIA and held conventions there and in Canada, but the heart of his movement stumbled on in America without him. While he dabbled in local politics, he remained a keen observer of world events, writing voluminously in his own papers. His final move was to London, in 1935. He settled there shortly before Fascist Italy invaded Ethiopia and his public criticisms of Haile Selassie's behavior after the invasion alienated many of his own remaining followers. In his last years he slid into such obscurity that he suffered the final indignity of reading his own obituaries a month before his 10 June 1940 death.
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Rangel of New York has noted that "Garvey was one of the first to say that instead of blackness being a stigma, it should be a source of pride" (New York Times, 5 April 1987). Black expectations aroused by participation in World War I were dashed by the racial violence of the wartime and postwar years, and the disappointment evident in many black communities throughout the U.S., Africa, and the Caribbean allowed Garvey to draw dozens of local leaders to his side. Their ideas were not always strictly compatible with Garvey's, but their sympathy with his themes of "African redemption" and black self-support was instrumental in gathering support for the movement from a vast cross-section of African-American society. Similarly, Garvey's message was adopted by a broad cross-section of educated and semi-literate Africans and West Indians hungry for alternatives to white rule and oppression. The post--World War I years were thus a time when a growing number of Africans and West Indians were ready for change. In most colonial territories, Africans, like African Americans, were disappointed when expected postwar changes failed to materialize. The Garveyist message was spread by sailors, migrant laborers, and travelling UNIA agents, as well as by copies of its newspaper, the Negro World, passed from hand to hand. In the Caribbean, what has been termed the "Garvey phenomenon" resulted from an encounter between the highly developed tradition of racial consciousness in the African-American community, and the West Indian aspiration toward independence. It was the Caribbean ideal of self-government that provided Garvey with his vocabulary of racial independence. Moreover, Garvey combined the social and political aspirations of the Caribbean people with the popular American gospel of success, which he converted in turn into his gospel of racial pride. Garveyism thus appeared in the Caribbean as a doctrine proposing solutions to the twin problems of racial subordination and colonial domination. By the early 1920s the UNIA could count branches in almost every Caribbean, circumCaribbean, and sub-Saharan African country. The Negro World was read by thousands of eager followers across the African continent and throughout the Caribbean archipelago. Though Caribbean and African Garveyism may not have coalesced into a single movement, its diverse followers adapted the larger framework to fit their own local needs and cultures. It is precisely this that makes Garvey and the UNIA so relevant in the study of the process of decolonization in Africa and the Caribbean. As if in confirmation of the success with which Garveyism implanted itself in various social settings, when Garvey himself proposed to visit Africa and the Caribbean in 1923, nervous European colonial governors joined in recommending that his entry into their territories be banned. Many modern Caribbean nationalist leaders have acknowledged the importance of Garveyism in their own careers, including T. Albert Marryshow of Grenada; Alexander Bustamante, St. William Grant, J. A. G. Smith, and Norman Washington Manley of Jamaica; and Captain Arthur Cipriani, Uriah Butler, George Padmore, and C. L. R. James of Trinidad. Before the Garvey and UNIA Papers project was established, the only attempt to edit Garvey's speeches and writings was the Philosophy & Opinions of Marcus Garvey, a propagandistic apologia compiled in two successive volumes in the early 1920s by his second wife, Amy Jacques Garvey. As Lawrence Levine notes, "It is always unwise to rely too exclusively upon a
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collection edited by the subject, especially in the light of recent indications that the Garveys altered a number of speeches and articles to conform with his later views" (Levine, op. cit.). While the Philosophy & Opinions volumes served to plead Garvey's legal case, they also created a politically distorted picture of the UNIA, an image that for a long time severely handicapped research. In this context, the Marcus Garvey and UNIA Papers provides a full, objective account of the movement and its leader, as it chronicles how the movement achieved a global dimension by awakening the political consciousness of African and Caribbean peoples to the goals of racial self-determination and national independence.
grower
Born: 17 August 1887, at St. Ann's Bay, north coast of Jamaica Died: 10 June 1940, London, England Buried: Marcus Garvey Memorial, National Heroes' Park, Kingston, Jamaica Citizenship:
British colonial subject applied for American citizenship
in 1921
Education:
Standard
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Employment:
printer journalist publisher
Marriages:
Amy Ashwood
(1897--1969), co-founder of the UNIA in Jamaica, journalist, feminist, playwright, business manager of UNIA offices in Harlem, 1919 (married to Garvey 1919-1922) Amy Jacques (1896--1973), legal assistant in Jamaica before migrating to U.S., where she became business manager and personal secretary to Garvey in 1920, associate editor of the Negro World 1924--1927, and Garvey's unofficial representative during his incarceration in 1925--1927, becomes main propagandist of the Garvey movement with Philosophy and Opinions, published in 2 volumes, 1923, 1925 (married to Garvey 1922-1940) Children:
Marcus Garvey Jr. (1931--) Julius Winston Garvey (1933--) both by Amy Jacques; both born
Countries of residence:
Jamaica, 1887--1910 Panama, 1910 Costa Rica, 1911 Jamaica, 1912 England, 1912--1914 Jamaica, 1914--1916 United States, 1916--1927 Jamaica, 1927--1935 United Kingdom, 1935--1940
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announces Liberian Colonization Plan, 1920 sends first delegation to Monrovia, Liberia, 1921 makes organizational tour of Caribbean and Central America, 1921 arrested and indicted on Mail Fraud Charges, 1922 meets with Acting Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, causing backlash
of opposition from other black leaders, 1922 second UNIA delegation sent to Liberia, 1923 starts Black Cross Navigation and Trading Co. to replace defunct Black Star Line; UNIA purchases Smallwood-Corey School ("Liberty University") in Claremont, Virginia tours Europe, 1928 becomes proprietor of Edelweiss Park, a social center for blacks in Kingston tries to establish political career in Jamaica begins publishing the Blackman, 1929 begins publishing the New Jamaican begins publishing the Black Man, 1933 bankrupt, announces move to London, 1934 teaches School of Arican Philosophy to UNIA leaders in Toronto, 1937 cerebral hemorrhage, January 1940 dies 10 June 1940 James Stewart elected UNIA president, August 1940 headquarters of UNIA moved to Cleveland, Ohio Mail Fraud Trial:
Begins May 1923 convicted June 1923 appeal denied February 1925
Imprisonment: February 1925--November 1927, federal penitentiary, Atlanta, Georgia Deportation: December 1927
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