Over the centuries, the fight for racial equality has produced many interesting characters and just as many contentious perspectives. One of the most contentious figures was Marcus Garvey, who, unlike many others who fought for equality, did not argue for integration but wanted Black people to move back to Africa and form a unified African state.
Known by many as “Black Moses,” Marcus Garvey was a segregationist who established a considerable following around the world.
Early Life of Marcus Garvey
Marcus Garvey was born on August 17, 1887 into a relatively well-off family in Saint Ann’s Bay, Jamaica. As a teenager, he worked in the print trade and was introduced to trade unionism. When he was still a teenager, he left Jamaica to travel around Central America. In 1914, he moved to London, where he stayed for two years before returning to Jamaica.
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Sign up to our Free Weekly NewsletterUpon his return in 1914, Garvey and a group of friends founded the Universal Negro Improvement and Conservation Association and African Communities League, often shortened to Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA). The purpose of this organization was to promote pride among Black people and to uplift African communities.
Garvey Moves to the United States
In 1916, Marcus Garvey moved to the United States, taking his organization with him, and founded a UNIA branch in Harlem, New York. His first attempt at spreading his views publicly was a disaster. He was heckled, and he fell off the stage. Rather than let this deter him, Garvey continued addressing crowds and quickly gained a considerable following. After speaking in New York, he embarked on a tour throughout the United States and made speeches in 38 states.
After the United States got involved in World War I, Garvey volunteered but was ruled unfit to serve. Despite his attempt to join, he would later oppose African-American involvement in what he and fellow activist Hubert Harrison described as a “white man’s war.”
One of the major facets of Garvey’s philosophy was separatism. He argued for self-reliance from Black sectors of society and held the view that Black people would only be respected if they were economically strong.
To forward the economic goals of UNIA, Garvey founded the Black Star Line in 1919 and the Negro Factories Corporation in 1920. The former was a shipping company designed to facilitate commerce between African communities on both sides of the Atlantic, while the latter was an array of companies intended to sell marketable goods in industrial centers in North America, the West Indies, Central America, and Africa. The companies were aimed at providing economic development for those of African descent and included a chain of grocery stores, a publishing house, a tailor and dressmaking shop, a millinery store, a restaurant, and a steam laundry.
Negro World
One of the most powerful ways in which Garvey and others like him reached their audience was through a newspaper called Negro World. It was published weekly and distributed to UNIA chapters in 40 countries.
An immensely successful newspaper at the time, it reached a circulation of 200,000 copies at its peak. In its pages, articles promoted the arts and African-American culture. Of note were the prominent contributions of and about Black women.
Running throughout the 1920s and into the early 1930s, the publication had such scope and reach that many colonial governments banned its sale and possession for fear that it would embolden Africans in the colonies and stir unrest.
Assassination Attempt
On October 14, 1919, a part-time vendor of the Negro World, George Tyler, entered Marcus Garvey’s offices, demanding an audience. When Garvey came to investigate the disturbance, Tyler shot at him four times with a .38 revolver. One of the bullets grazed Garvey’s scalp, and another two bullets entered his leg.
At this point, Amy Ashwood, leader of the UNIA women’s faction, entered the fray. A scuffle ensued, and Tyler ran off but was caught by the police and taken into custody. The next day, Tyler attempted an escape and jumped through a window, plummeting 30 feet to his death.
The reasons for the attack are speculative, but opinions at the time suggested that Tyler was an investor in Garvey’s Universal Restaurant and had been rebuffed by the UNIA. The popular story was that New York’s white Assistant District Attorney, Edwin Kilroe, had failed to charge Garvey for alleged crimes, and Garvey had recently written a damaging editorial about Kilroe.
According to legend, Tyler said that Kilroe had sent him before opening fire. The veracity of this claim was never verified and is dubious at best.
Marriage and Divorce
Shortly after the assassination attempt, Marcus Garvey proposed to Amy Ashwood. She accepted, and they were married in a Catholic ceremony on Christmas Day of that year.
They went on a two-week honeymoon to Canada and were accompanied by a small retinue of UNIA members. Garvey used this opportunity to address Canadians and made speeches in Montreal and Toronto before returning to Harlem.
The marriage would not last. Amid accusations of infidelity on both sides, Garvey divorced Ashwood in 1922. Ashwood never accepted the divorce. Nevertheless, Garvey would go on to marry Amy Jacques soon after. Jacques was a former roommate of Ashwood, and had been the maid of honor at her wedding.
Marcus Garvey and Amy Jacques had two children, Marcus Mosiah Garvey Jr., born in 1930, and Julius Winston Garvey, born in 1933.
Enemies
Marcus Garvey’s philosophies brought a certain amount of criticism. While UNIA was exclusively made up of Black people, a more popular movement in the United States was the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), which had a foundational commitment to multiracial membership. Leading rights activist W.E.B. du Bois, a member of this organization, referred to Marcus Garvey as “the most dangerous enemy of the Negro race in America.” The reasoning for this was that Garvey and UNIA promoted the idea of racial segregation, which Du Bois argued was supporting the same argument as the Ku Klux Klan.
Those with philosophical differences, however, were not the most dangerous of Marcus Garvey’s enemies. Garvey was a prime target of J. Edgar Hoover, a relatively new addition to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. To Hoover, Garvey was a man whom he perceived to be spurring Black people to take up arms against American society. A young Hoover, working his way up through the upper echelons of the FBI, had considerable power behind him and employed spies and saboteurs in his dealings with Garvey and UNIA.
Garvey’s problems lay mainly with the operations of the Black Star Line. The company was failing, and the ships were in disrepair. Despite this, UNIA officials continued to sell stock, allegedly soliciting by mail. Hoover and others in the FBI determined this to be fraud, and Garvey was arrested and put on trial.
The prosecution was flimsy, but Garvey was nevertheless convicted and sentenced to five years in prison. Lengthy appeals saw him having to wait on a legal system that procrastinated. The Supreme Court refused to review his case, and in 1925, three years after his arrest, he began serving time in the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary.
Two and a half years later, in November 1927, President Calvin Coolidge commuted the sentence, and Garvey was released and deported. He traveled to Switzerland to speak at the League of Nations before returning to Jamaica.
Later Years and Death
After returning to Jamaica, Garvey established the People’s Political Party, which focused on workers’ rights and the poor people in Jamaican society. Back in the United States, UNIA survived, but it did not generate the following it had once enjoyed.
Garvey moved to London in 1935, where he lived until his death on June 10, 1940 from a stroke. Due to wartime issues with transport across the Atlantic, Garvey’s body was buried in London. In 1964, his body was exhumed and repatriated to Jamaica, where it was buried under the Marcus Garvey Memorial in National Heroes Park in Kingston.
Marcus Garvey’s Legacy
In an era before the Civil Rights Movement, Marcus Garvey became a voice for Black people the world over and an icon for Black pride in the decades that followed.
His vision and beliefs influenced many subsequent groups with wildly differing political and religious views. Rastafarians, the Black Panther Party, and the Nation of Islam, among many others, can all claim to have been shaped in part by the philosophy of Garvey.
To this day, he is held in high regard, and his sentiments are still widely discussed and adopted by Africanist Movements. In doing so, his legacy and his name have joined the esteemed ranks of others who fought for Black rights such as Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, Rosa Parks, Ella Baker, Nelson Mandela, and Steve Biko to name just a few.
Like these heroes and heroines, his name will live on for decades and even centuries to come.
