A BLACK HISTORY MONTH MOMENT:
Who Was Marcus Garvey?
Born in Jamaica, Marcus Garvey was a veteran newspaperman who came to New York City in March of 1916 to establish his ambitious Universal Negro Improvement Association in Harlem. The First World War was just beginning when Garvey started his campaign to unite the millions of free black people scattered around the world by slavery into a socio-economic force to “redeem” a then-colonized African continent. Understandably, his goal of a free and dynamic Pan-African nation in continental Africa frightened European nations with colonies there. Garvey and his followers even published the U.N.I.A. newspaper, The Negro World, with English, Spanish, and French articles, then got copies globally distributed in countries where it was officially banned.
Future FBI head J. Edgar Hoover made his reputation by arresting, prosecuting and jailing Garvey on trumped up mail-fraud charges. Garvey wrote for his newspaper while imprisoned in a federal penitentiary for two years. President Calvin Coolidge eventually agreed to “pardon” Garvey by deporting him back to Jamaica in December of 1927. Although Garvey died only twelve years later, suffering a stroke while trying to revive the U.N.I.A. in London, his writings and ideas [published in book form in the 1920s by his wife, Amy Jacques Garvey, inspired black liberation movements in Kenya, Ghana, and throughout the Caribbean.