Marcus Garvey founded the UNIA and advocated for black pride and self-help. He called for the return of African descendants to Africa, but this movement lost steam due to lack of a settlement. Garvey’s work influenced leaders like Malcolm X, but was criticized by WEB Du Bois. Garvey was convicted of mail fraud and deported to Jamaica, where he died in 1940. He is considered a hero by some and too radical by others, but his voice called for equal civil rights for black citizens.
Marcus Garvey (1887-1940) is a Jamaican national hero, whose work included founding the United Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) and creating an inspirational movement for blacks in the United States and elsewhere to return to their ancestral homeland of ‘Africa. To some, his suggestions and black separatist attitudes were controversial and to others, his movement and ideas were considered heroic.
Garvey was born in Jamaica and cultivated an interest in books early in life. He learned early on that society tended to discriminate against blacks and, in his teens, began working hard for a fair wage for printers when he became a printer’s apprentice. Although Marcus Garvey was born in Jamaica, he has traveled extensively in South America and England. In 1914, he returned to Jamaica, where he began garnering the support of many black Jamaicans, and was able to form the UNIA.
With the UNIA successfully gaining power, Marcus Garvey moved to Harlem USA in 1916 and carried a powerful message to many residents there. He argued that blacks had every right to be proud of their race and did not benefit from living in a racist society. This argument prompted Garvey to negotiate with the government of Liberia to ensure black citizens returning from elsewhere had a way back to Africa. Liberia, however, would not go along with Garvey’s proposals, and the return to Africa movement lost much of its steam because there was no single place for returning African descendants to settle.
While the back to Africa movement saw no results, Marcus Garvey was a powerful and somewhat ahead of his time voice in calling for equal civil rights for black citizens of countries around the world. He was a strong advocate of black self-help, the idea that black people need not rely on a world that discriminates against them, but help each other by founding organizations separate from a white ruling society. This can also be seen as black nationalism, and is sometimes thought of as a conservative, or alternatively very radical viewpoint. Garvey’s work influenced the views of leaders such as Malcolm X later.
Some black leaders of the time, including WEB Du Bois, believed that Marcus Garvey created more problems in trying to get civil rights for blacks. Du Bois took a very different approach, favoring the union of black and white society, and in particular criticized Garvey’s alignment with organizations such as the Ku Klux Klan, which essentially wanted to rid America of blacks with such a ” movement for the return to Africa”.
There was a call for Garvey’s arrest by black citizens of the United States, and he was convicted of mail fraud, although most believe the charges were fabricated. His sentence was commuted after two years and he was deported to Jamaica. He then settled in England in 1935 and lived there until his death in 1940.
For some, Marcus Garvey is an inspiration and a hero. He is almost invested with sainthood by the Rastafarian movement, where some believe he is the reincarnation of John the Baptist. Others find his positions too radical for him. He is, however, an important figure in history, whose voice has cried out that African descendants be considered in their own right, rather than discriminated against, as was often the case in Garvey’s time.
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