ORIGINALLY POSTED IN 2006 AS PART OF "THE BLACK FIST: BEST & BRIGHTEST EVERYDAY BLACK HISTORY SERIES". THIS IS OUR YEARLY RE-POST CELEBRATING THE EARTHDAY AND LEGACY OF THE MOST HONORABLE MARCUS MOSIAH GARVEY. AS WE DO EVERY AUGUST AROUND THE TIME OF BRO. GARVEY'S EARTHDAY/BIRTHDAY (AUGUST 17, 1887.), WE'D LIKE TO TAKE THIS TIME TO REFLECT UPON BRO. GARVEY'S LIFE AND WHAT HE MEANT TO THE BLACK NATION. HAPPY EARTHDAY MARCUS GARVEY! GNX
I commit my body, mind and spirit to the protection, defense and security of the Red, Black and Green.
I dedicate my life to the redemption of Mother Africa and the Liberation of her scattered children.
I accept for myself and my descendants the teachings of Universal African Nationalism.
A promise that our children will be instilled with the purpose and knowledge of themselves as African people in order that the cause of our struggle will neither falter nor fail until Black people are free and united through.....
One God, One Aim, and One Destiny.
Written By The Most Honorable Marcus Mosiah Garvey.
In this sixth installment of "The Black Fist: Best & Brightest Everyday Black History Series." We will be visiting a remarkable revolutionary brother who was way ahead of his time, The Most Honorable Marcus Mosiah Garvey. This Black man was indeed an enterprising black entrepreneur and a 100% black nationalist in every sense of the word. Marcus Garvey suffered through racial indignities and he also had to deal with snitches, traitors and Governmental agents.
Sounds alot like today, huh?
Sit back and educate -or- re-educate yourselves on the lifeworks of this extraordinary black militant soldier. General Nikki X likes to call this one....."One God, One Aim, One Destiny!"
MARCUS GARVEY (1887-1940)
Marcus Mosiah Garvey was born August 17, 1887. He was a publisher, journalist, entrepreneur, crusader for black nationalism, and founder of the UNIA-ACL. He was born in Jamaica. Garvey is best remembered as a champion of the "Back-To-Africa" movement, which was interpreted as encouraging people of African ancestry to return to their ancestral homeland. He is also recognized as the most important prophet of the "Back-to-Africa" Rastafarian movement. Garvey said he wanted those of African ancestry to "redeem" Africa, and for the European colonial powers to leave it. Although Garvey was raised Methodist, he became a Roman Catholic.
PUBLISHING ACTIVITIES
Garvey's journalist experience begun with a newspaper called The Watchman which he started in 1910. This newspaper was short-lived and was succeeded by others, also short-lived, which Garvey published during his early Central American travels. They were: POOP, Costa Rica; La Prensa, Colon, Panama; and The Bluefields Messender, Costa Rica.
Garvey was also associated with other publications The African Times and Orient Review, The Daily Negro Times, Harlem, 1922-1924; The Blackman, Kingston, Jamaica, 1929-1931; The Black Man Magazine, which started in Kingston in 1933 and continued in England until 1939.
FOUNDING OF THE UNIA-ACL
Garvey returned to Jamaica in 1914. Convinced that uniting blacks was the only way to improve their condition, Garvey launched the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League (UNIA), becoming president. The association sought to unite "all the people of African ancestry of the world into one great body to establish a country and Government absolutely their own." A weekly newspaper, the Negro World, was produced by Garvey to discuss issues related to the UNIA.
After corresponding with Booker T. Washington, Garvey went to the United States of America in 1916 to give a lecture tour. By 1920 the association had over 1,100 branches in more than 40 countries.
Garvey advanced several ideas designed to promote social, political and economic freedom for blacks, including launching the Black Star Line Steamship Corporation and its successor company the Black Cross Navigation and Trading Company. However, the line failed owing to mismanagement and fraud. Another venture was the Negro Factories Corporation, which sought to, "build and operate factories in the big industrial centres of the United States, Central America, the West Indies and Africa to manufacture every marketable commodity." A chain of grocery stores, a restaurant, a steam laundry, a tailor and dressmaking shop, a millinery store and a publishing house, were also started.
Convinced that blacks should have a permanent homeland in Africa, Garvey's movement sought to develop Liberia. In response to suggestions he wanted to take all Americans of African ancestry back to Africa he said, "I have no desire to take all black people back to Africa, there are blacks who are no good here and will likewise be no good there." He further reasoned, "our success educationally, industrially and politically is based upon the protection of a nation founded by ourselves. And the nation can be nowhere else but Africa." The Liberia program, launched in 1920, was intended to build colleges, universities, industrial plants and railroads as part of an industrial base from which to operate, but abandoned in the mid 1920s after much opposition from European powers with interest in Liberia.
Garvey was not a believer in black supremacy, deriving much of his program from Progressive Era notions of "race improvement" and expressing his admiration for the accomplishments and heroes of western civilization. He also held largely left-wing political views in these years, expressing considerable enthusiasm for Russian Revolution.
CHARGED WITH MAIL FRAUD
After the FBI investigation, a charge of mail fraud was brought against Garvey for selling stock in the Black Star Line enterprise, when it was revealed that, contrary to representations, the corporation did not possess the ship in the company's stock brochure (or indeed, any other ship). The promoters of the enterprise were found guilty of using the mail service to sell stock in an undercapitlized corporation by means of misrepresentation of its existing assets. Garvey supporters called the trial fraudulent. Garvey was convicted and sentenced to a 5 year term, and imprisoned in the Atlanta Federal Prison in 1925. To this day, efforts on the part of his supporters to exonerate him from the charges continue. His sentence was eventually commuted by President Calvin Coolidge, and on his release in November 1927 Garvey was deported from New Orleans to Jamaica, where a large crowd met him at Orrett's wharf in Kingston. A huge procession and band marched to the UNIA headquarters.
OTHER CONTROVERSIES
Around 1921 Marcus Garvey's nationalism and life history led him to proclaim a belief in "racial purity." He admired the efforts toward independence of whites in Ireland, so it was not a racist idea in the traditional sense. Instead he feared encouragement of miscegenation would disadvantage those who did not or were not mixed. Still this lead to a controversial praise of Warren G. Harding's speech against miscegenation and discussion that races might be better off separate with largely separate destinies. For not entirely unrelated reasons he had an antagonism toward W.E.B. Du Bois. Previously Du Bois had expressed hostility to the Black Star Line idea and other ideas. Hence Garvey began to suspect DuBois was prejudiced towards him a Caribean of darker skin tone. By the late 1920s this antagonism turned to antipathy. Du Bois called Garvey "a lunatic or a traitor." Garvey shot back saying Du Bois was "a little Dutch, a little French, a little Negro...a mulatto...a monstrosity." This led Garvey to an acrimonious relationship with the NAACP. Somewhat ironically Du Bois would nevertheless be a strong supporter of Pan-Africanism.
LATER YEARS
He travelled to Geneva in 1928 where he presented the "Petition of the Negro Race" to the League of Nations. The petition outlined the abuse of Africans arould the world.
In September 1929, Garvey founded the People's Political Party (PPP), Jamaica's first modern political party, mostly centered around worker's rights, education and aid to the poor.
Garvey was elected Councillor for the Allman Town division of the Kingston and St. Andrew Corporation (KSAC) in 1929. He lost his seat, however, because of his absence from council meetings while serving a prison sentence for contempt of court. In 1930 he was re-elected, unopposed, along with 2 other PPP candidates; he agitated for the adoption of some of the points in the PPP's manifesto.
In April 1931, Garvey launched the Edelweiss Amusement Company, which Garvey used to help artist make a living from their work, including putting on plays. Several Jamaican entertainers who went on to become popular locally, received their exposure there. These included Kidd Harold, Ernest Cupidon, Bim & Bam and Ranny Williams.
Garvey left Jamiaca for London in 1935. He lived and worked there until his death in 1940. During these last 5 years in London, he remained active, keeping in touch with events in Ethiopia (then Abyssinia) where war was being waged, and also with events in the West Indies. In 1938, he gave eveidence before the West Indian Royal Commission on conditions in the West Indies. In that year also, he set up a School of African Philosophy to train the leadership of the UNIA. He continued to work on the magazine The Black Man.
Garvey's political views in his later years were increasingly right-wing. In 1937, a group of his American supporters who called themselves the Peace Movement of Ethiopia openly collaborated with Mississippi Senator Theodore Bilbo in the promotion of a repatriation scheme introduced in the U.S. Congress under the name "Greater Liberia Act." Garvey also expressed considerable sympathy for facism and spectulated about its positive application in Africa. However, shortly before his death Garvey expressed his solidarity with Britain during The Blitz.
Due to difficulties in travel resulting from World War II, after his death on June 10, 1940, he was interred in the Kensal Green Cemetery, London. In November 1964, the Government of Jamaica had his remains brought to Jamaica and ceremoniously reinterred at shine dedicated to him in National Heroes Park (Garvey having been proclaimed Jamaica's first National Hero).
INFLUENCE
Worldwide, Garvey's memory has been kept alive in many ways, including: schools, colleges, highways and buildings in Africa, Europe, the Caribean and the USA have been named after him: the UNIA's red, black and green flag has been adopted as the Black Liberation Flag; and, a bust of Garvey was unveiled at the organization of American States' Hall of Heroes, in Washington, DC in 1980.
Ralph Ellison used Garvey as the basis for Ras the Exhorter, the West Indian black nationalist demagogue in his Invisible Man.
GARVEY AND RASTAFARI
Rastafari consider Garvey to be a religious prophet and more specifically the reincarnation of John the Baptist. This was partly because Garvey said in the 1920s, "Look to Africa, for there will be a king crowned" which they then took as prophecy about the crowning of Haile Selassie. The rasta founders were a part of Garvey's Back-To-Afica movement in Jamaica, and in its doctrines the Rastafarian movement shaped Rastafarianism; therefore, he is a popular theme in much reggae music, especially that of Burning Spear.
Marcus Garvey married Amy Jacque-Garvey, and she carried on his legacy until her death in the early 1970s.
Well there you have it once again folks! Another extraordinary black man doing what only the black man can do by nature, and that's build, create, revolutionize and lead. The Honorable Marcus Mosiah Garvey will always be remembered and honored by The Black Fist Organization for his contribution to black humanity and for giving us the Red, Black and Green flag along with his legendary document entitled: One God, One Aim, One Destiny.
I taught my son that particular poem at the age of 4. And today at age 19, he can recite it word for word with pride and his head held high! I also have a picture of him holding the Red, Black and Green flag at the age of 4. What pride it is to know you are raising a son in the footsteps of one of the greatest black men the black race as a whole could've ever been graced with.
Check out the home DVD version at http://www.pbs.org/ of the PBS documentary Marcus Garvey: Look For Me in The Whirlwind. It is a fascinating start for anyone who wants to learn more about Marcus Garvey or a great start for anyone who knows nothing about this revolutionary black man at all.
Did you know that Marcus Garvey was also a songwriter and composer? When he was imprisoned on that phony mail fraud charge, he wrote a song called: "Keep Cool". An ex-general in The Black Fist and I used to laugh and trip out because of the chorus of the song, it was funny but oh so real. I wonder if he sang that song during his recent incareration...? It went a little something like this: When they throw you in the flame and you know you're not to blame...Keep Cool!
I wonder if the ex-general remembers how we read The Philosophies & Opinions of Marcus Garvey together with a mission to instill those fundamental principles into the everyday interworkings of The Black Fist, as a whole? I am currently in the process of reading (for the 3rd time) The Life and Times of Amy Jacque-Garvey.
Because it is true behind every strong man there is a strong woman. And so very true in Sister Amy's case, She was Marcus Garvey's second wife, and they say the second times the charm. That sister was strong, fierce, independant and bold in her own right. And she is to always be remembered right alongside....The Honorable Marcus Mosiah Garvey.
And in conclusion of this sixth installment, I'd like to remind you the reader of what I stated in the third or fourth installment.....It seems like some of our most heaviest, strongest, boldest, hard-hitting and revolutionary Black brothers and Black sister were born in or set it off (Nat Turner) in the month of August. Marcus Garvey was born in August...and so was I!
I always seem to noticed things like that, do you?
STAY TUNED FOR OUR SEVENTH INSTALLMENT, COMIN' BLACK ATCHA SOON. RIGHT HERE ON THE "ONLY OFFICIAL WEBSITE OF THE BLACK FIST,".....THE BLACK FIST BLOG!
UP, UP, YOU MIGHTY RACE!
BLACK FIST, BLACK POWER, BLACK NATION!!!
Here is a classic speech by The Most Honorable Marcus Mosiah Garvey. Hear the man himself in his own words. This speech is shown in its entirety. 17 uncut minutes.
Enjoy!
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