Back to Africa Movement of Marcus Garvey

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Marcus Mosiah Garvey (1887-1940) was the leader of the Universal Negro Improvement Association and the first African-American leader in American history to organize masses of people in a political movement (UCLA 1). Marcus Garvey is one of the most contradictory and enigmatic figures in American history (PBS 1). He was contradictory because he had two sides to his personality: while being a visionary he was also manipulative and being a brilliant orator he was also a proud autocrat. He is well remembered for his strong advocacy of the liberation of African Americans. Though he supported self-help and unity among African Americans he was willing to work along with Ku Klux Klan. While inspiring African Americans to invest their money in his financial enterprises it was sad to note that he lost their money through his mismanaged schemes (PBS 1). Marcus Garvey is best remembered for setting up an international organization for the African diaspora and instilling in hundreds of thousands of black men and women a sense of racial pride through elaborate ceremonies, uniforms, parades, and titles (Berry and Blassingame 409). Garvey’s ideas were revolutionary to the new generation of African Americans, West Indians, and Africans during his period.

Garvey was born in Jamaica in 1887 and was the grandson of an African slave. He worked for some time in London as a printer during which time he learned about the exploitation and immense potential of Africa. On being inspired by Booker T. Washington’s “Up from Slavery” he wrote to the Tuskegean and was invited to come to the United States. However, Washington died before Garvey arrived in America in 1916. Garvey soon began the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) and this proved to be the initial base for bringing together the West Indian immigrants in Harlem (Berry and Blassingame 409). According to him, Africa was the ancestral home and spiritual base for all people of African descent and it was the place to which all Africans must return.

His political goal was to take Africa back from European domination and build a free and United Black Africa. Garvey often stated feelings of confraternity with the causes of various other immigrant groups such as the Jews and the Irish with their Zionist and Irish movements respectively (New York Globe and Advertiser, 3 August 1920) (UCLA 1). He confessed that watching them inspired him to believe that this would be “a favorable time to see the Negro’s interest through” (NW, 6 March 1920) (UCLA 1). As a result of these inspired thoughts, Garvey advocated the Back-to-Africa Movement and organized a shipping company called the Black Star Line which was part of his program to conduct international trade between black Africans and the rest of the world in order to “uplift the race” and eventually return to Africa (UCLA 1). He urged blacks to support black businesses, and the UNIA itself organized a chain of groceries, restaurants, laundries, a hotel, a factory to make black dolls, and a printing plant (Berry and Blassingame 410).

Many black people invested their hard-earned money in UNIA’s Black Star Steamship Line which aimed at proving a sea route linking the United States, the West Indies, and Africa. Garvey was a charismatic leader who commanded the following of over 1 million to four million blacks. He inspired a militant stance. During their annual conventions, thousands of delegates from all over the United States, the Caribbean, Central America, and Africa marched up and down the streets of Harlem with their banners, uniforms, and colorfully decorated cars (UCLA 1). In the parades, large numbers of black people in blue and red uniforms and Black Cross Nurses in white attire marched proudly waving the black, green, and red association flag: black for the skin, green for the hopes, and red for the blood (Berry and Blassingame 410).

They sang the UNIA anthem, “Ethiopia, the Land of Our Fathers.” Garvey traveled throughout the United States spreading his messages and meeting with African-American leaders. The U.N.I.A. grew quickly and by 1919 there were over 30 branches throughout the United States, the Caribbean, Latin America, and Africa. Garvey claimed over a million people had joined his organization in 3 years (UCLA 1). Realizing the important role played by religion among the masses, Garvey founded the Negro Orthodox Church, with a black bishop. Through the Church, Garvey spread the teachings that God and Christ were black (Berry and Blassingame 410).

Garvey named himself as the provisional President of Africa in 1922, and in this authority, he filed a petition to the League of Nations to return former German colonies in Africa to the UNIA. This action of Garvey was ridiculed by South Africa’s African Political Organization that commented: “the newly-created position of Provisional President of Africa [was] an empty honor which no man in the history of the world has ever held, and no sane man is likely to aspire after” (NW, 28 January 1922) (UCLA 1). Garvey took a very aggressive approach as a leader. He had a chief lieutenant, Hubert Harrison, who instigated the blacks to rise against discrimination and mob violence, demanding eye for an eye in their struggles: “If white men are to kill unoffending Negroes, Negroes must kill white men in defense of their lives and property” (Berry and Blassingame 410).

After a lot of study on African history and culture, Garvey launched the Universal Negro Improvement Association with the goal of unifying “all the Negro peoples of the world into one great body and to establish a country and government absolutely on their own”. The motto of the U.N.I.A. was “One God! One Aim! One Destiny”. The Negro World was the U.N.I.A. weekly newspaper founded in 1918 as a medium to glorify African history and heroes (UCLA 1). UNIA, Garvey’s movement was spread over three countries: the United States, Africa, and West Indies. Four branches of the UNIA were established by South African blacks in 1921. They nurtured the hope that the Garvey movement would help the American blacks to liberate South Africa from the oppression of the dominant white minority in South Africa. Because of this attitude among the blacks, the circulation of Garvey Negro World, and reprinting of Garvey’s speeches met with some resistance in Africa in the 1930s.

Garveyism attracted people from as far as West Africa such as President Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana. In 1958 he appreciated Afro-Americans such as Marcus Garvey and W. E. B. Du Bois for their contributions towards the cause of African freedom and African national and racial equality. Nigeria too came under the influence of Garveyism and a branch of the UNIA was formed in Lagos, Nigeria, in 1920. Nigerians also bought the stock of the Black Star.

Garvey was perceived as a threat by the colonial powers in Africa. This is because of his wide influence and popularity. Popular leaders like Jomo Kenyatta of Kenya, like Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, were influenced by his ideas. Though UNIA had no branches in French colonies, some of the French West Africans attended its meetings and one of them even tried to liberate his country in 1925. The threat by Garveyism was perceived to be so huge that the colonial administrators in Senegal, Gambia, and Sierra Leone passed laws to restrict the immigration of American blacks. The British banned the circulation of Garvey Negro World and denied Garvey a visa in 1923 when he desired to tour British-controlled areas in Africa (Berry and Blassingame 411).

One of the main features of Garveyism was that it accentuated the identity of black people all over the world and Hodge Kirnon says that it is this quality of internationalism that essentially defined the New Negro mood (Kirnon 7) (cited in UCLA 1). Michael Gold in an article in 1920 referred to him as the “Moses of the Negro Race” (Gold on 22 August 1920 Sunday supplement of the New York World) (UCLA 1). South African writer concurred with Michael Gold when he wrote that “after all is said and done, Africans have the same confidence in Marcus Garvey which the Israelites had in Moses” (NW, 9 February 1929) (UCLA 1)

Garvey criticized the light-skinned integrationists and middle- and upper-class blacks active in the NAACP for being ashamed of their ancestry. This caused him to face opposition from established black American leaders such as W. E. B. Du Bois and A. Philip Randolph. On charges of irregularities in the management of Black Star Steamship Line Garvey was jailed and then deported on charges of using the mail to defraud. This lead to the collapse of the Black Star Line. However, the U.N.I.A. still survives today and Garvey left a legacy of racial pride and identification with a glorious African heritage for African Americans. Today, the name Garvey is recognized as a discrete social phenomenon organized under the banner of the UNIA and African Communities League (ACL) during an era of black renaissance, in which Garveyism stood for the concept of black racial pride.

Jamaica’s reggae music exhibits respect and fondness for Garvey. A song by Steel Pulse titled “Rally Round” goes “Marcus say, Marcus say, red for the blood that flowed like a river Marcus say, Marcus, say, green for the land, Africa Marcus say, Marcus say, yellow for the gold that they stole Marcus say, Marcus, say, black for the people they looted from…” (UCLA 1). There are many more similar songs standing testimony to the fact that Garvey is continuing to inspire generations today.

On the personal front, Garvey was essentially a man who symbolized the contradictions of his age. Different critics perceived him differently. Veteran black journalist John E. Bruce wrote thus of the young Garvey in 1916: “A little sawed-off and hammered down Black Man, with determination written all over his face, and an engaging smile that caught you and compelled you to listen to his story”. Six months before Garvey was to be deported from America, Kelly Miller, the African-American educator and author, in 1927, reflected upon the Garvey phenomenon: “Marcus Garvey came to the U.S. less than ten years ago, unheralded, unfriended, without acquaintance, relationship, or means of livelihood. This Jamaican immigrant was thirty years old, partially educated, and 100 percent black. He possessed neither comeliness of appearance nor attractive physical personality….

And yet this ungainly youth by sheer indomitability of will projected propaganda and commanded a following, within the brief space of a decade, which made the whole nation mark him and write his speeches in their books” (Miller 492). Garvey was aware of the spectacular nature of his own rise to stardom as he questioned an audience in 1921 “how comes this New Negro? How comes this stunning awakening?” (NW, 18 June 1921) (UCLA 1). By the middle of the decade, William H. Ferris claimed “The New Negro is Garvey’s own Child, whose mother is the UNIA” (Spokesman 1, no. 4 (March 1925): 4). But there were also Garvey’s detractors who viewed him as a mad person. “We may seriously ask, is not Marcus Garvey a paranoiac?” enquired the NAACP’s Robert Bagnall in his 1923 article “The Madness of Marcus Garvey” (Bagnall 638). W. E. B. Du Bois diagnosed Garvey as one suffering from “very serious defects of temperament and training” (Bois 58). Garvey described himself in an eccentric manner: “My garb is Scotch, my name is Irish, my blood is African, and my training is half American and half English, and I think that with that tradition I can take care of myself.” (Daily Gleaner, 19 January 1935) (cited in UCLA 1).

Garvey’s ideology was based on contradictory conceptions. On one hand, he confessed that his mind was “purely Negro” and on another hand, he lamented the fact that “the average Negro doesn’t know much about the thought of the serious white man.” (BM, 1938: 3). He put forth the concept of the New Negro on a foundation of intellectual tradition and also including new racial imperatives. Garvey felt that it was important for the black community to develop intellectual freedom in order to survive in the world (UCLA 1).

Garvey had a strong belief in the success ethic, and his speeches reflected the same. Speaking in Halifax, Nova Scotia, in 1937, Garvey declared: “There are two classes of men in the world, those who succeed and those who do not succeed” (BM, 1938: 8). Garvey talked of positive thinking and rejected class analysis theories held during his period. Garvey questioned powerfully “Why should not Africa give to the world its black Rockefeller, Carnegie, Schwab, and Henry Ford?” (NW, 1926: 6) (UCLA 1). He inspired audiences by declaring that there is no force like success. However, his notion of success was one that merged personal success with racial uplift (UCLA 1). Garvey perceived that the success of an individual should contribute towards the progress of the race. He offered a doctrine of collective self-help and racial independence through competitive economic development when he said: “Don’t expect others to pave the way for us towards it with a pathway of roses, go at what we want with a will and then we will be able to successfully out-do our rivals” ( Negro World 21 February 1931) (UCLA 1).

Garvey also felt that only by achieving higher economic status black people can directly get opportunities and individual rights. This view created a universal sense of business consciousness among black people all over the world. Garvey’s philosophy was one that included elements of self-mastery, determination, willpower, and some elements of New Thought. Garvey advised that “the African at home must gather a new thought. He must not only be satisfied to be a worker but he must primarily be a figure” (BM 3 (July 1938): 5 ). This New Thought philosophy provided the framework for UNIA functions and literature. True to the popular culture of the Progressive period, Garvey placed a strong emphasis on boosterism and admired “the white man’s spirit for the boosts for race and nation.” (National Archives, RG 165, file 10218-418-18). Garvey’s writings and speeches are proof of his excellent schooling and his creativity. The dialogues created for the Black Man in the mid-1930s, were in the Platonic form of a didactic conversation between teacher and student, with its progression of the statement, discussion, and debate, leading to the transfer and growth of knowledge. Garvey wrote a religious manifesto titled “African Fundamentalism” as a manifesto of black racial pride and unity.

It was first published as an editorial in the Negro World of 6 June 1925. Garvey’s use of the term fundamentalism aimed at reviving the basic, fundamental beliefs in black aptitude and greatness that he saw exemplified in ancient African civilization. At the same time, the term indicated the development of an original “Negro idealism”, based on religion. Thus, African Fundamentalism according to Garvey was both a theological doctrine and a conservative geopolitical movement. “Governing the Ideal State” was written by Garvey in Atlanta Federal Penitentiary in 1925 and in this, he elaborated on the American political system at large and on the widespread corruption among government officials and leaders in the era of the Teapot Dome scandal. Like Plato and Greeks, Garvey shared a strong belief in the notion of historical decline from a golden age. Garvey believed civilizations were subject to an inevitable cyclical process of degeneration and regeneration.

He asked “Would Caesar have believed that the country he was invading in 55 B.C. would be the seat of the greatest Empire of the World? Had it been suggested to him would he not have laughed at it as a huge joke? Yet it has come true” (Garvey 160). This showed how Garvey equated history with empire-building and decline. In “Governing the Ideal State,” Garvey called for an archaic state ruled over by an “absolute authority” like Aristotle’s “absolute kingship” (UCLA 1). This essay was written from prison and has an autobiographical quality. Garvey was the epitome of the extreme authoritarianism of the supreme leader who appoints subordinate officials and exercises absolute authority over them. He impeached or expelled UNIA officers who disagreed with his policies or digressed from his vision of the organization’s goals. He also outlined draconian consequences for fraud and mismanagement. He described the absolute leader as a man without friends probably reflecting on his own loneliness (UCLA 1).

During his imprisonment in Atlanta, he studied deeply philosophy and poetry. After his release, he continued to write for Blackman and New Jamaican articles revolving around the theme of racial uplift. He began publishing the Black Man magazine in Kingston in 1933, and when he relocated the headquarters of the movement to London in 1935, he also transferred the publication of the monthly magazine. Garvey set up a school in Toronto to train individuals in his racial philosophy after he was deported from the United States called the School of African Philosophy.

Garvey’s life and the Back to Africa movement reflect the intellectual and political currents of the period in the light of the revival of black consciousness. He was a charismatic leader who captured the popular imagination in a huge way and successfully helped in moving the mass of black people to a new positive outlook. In the words of Brawley (177) “the grandiose schemes of Marcus Garvey gave to the race a consciousness such as it had never possessed before”. This then was the ultimate legacy left behind by Marcus Garvey.

Works Cited

Bagnall, Robert (1923). “The Madness of Marcus Garvey”. Messenger. Volume 5. March 1923. Page 638.

Berry, Frances Mary and Blassingame, W. John (1982). Long Memory: The Black Experience in America. Oxford University Press. New York. 1982.

BM, 1938: 5.

BM, 1938: 13.

Bois, Du W. E. B.(1920). “Marcus Garvey”. Crisis. December 1920. Pages: 58–60.

Brawley, Benjamin (1927). “The Negro Literary Renaissance”. Southern Workman. Volume 56, April 1927. Page 177.

Daily Gleaner, 1935.

Garvey, Marcus (1913). “The British West Indies in the Mirror of Civilization”. African Times and Orient Review. October 1913. Page 160.

Kirnon, Hodge. “The New Negro and His Will to Manhood and Achievement”. Promoter.August 1920. Page 7.

Miller, Kelly (1927). After Marcus Garvey—What? Contemporary Review, 1927. Page 492.

National Archives, RG 165, file 10218-418-18.

Negro World, 1921.

New York Globe and Advertiser, 1920.

NW, 1929.

Spokesman 1, no. 4 (1925): 4.

UCLA (2008). Marcus Garvey: Life & Lessons. UCLA International Institute: African Studies Center. Web.

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Back to Africa Movement of Marcus Garvey

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