Ethiopia, thou land of our fathers, Thou land where the gods loved to be, As storm cloud at night suddenly gathers Our armies come rushing to thee. We must in the fight be victorious When swords are thrust outward to gleam; For us will the vict'ry be glorious When led by the red, black, and green.
Ideologically, Garvey was a black nationalist.[4] Generally referring to dark-skinned peoples of African descent as "Negroes", he and the UNIA insisted that that term should be capitalized, thus affording dignity and respect to those whom it described.[5] His ideas were influenced by a range of sources. According to Grant, while he was living in London, Garvey displayed "an amazing capacity to absorb political tracts, theories of social engineering, African history and the Western Enlightenment."[6] Garvey was exposed to the ideas about race that were prevalent at the time;[7] his ideas on race were also heavily informed by the writings of Edward Wilmot Blyden[8] and by his work in London with Dusé Mohamed Ali.[9]
During the late 1910s and 1920s, Garvey was also influenced by the ideas of the Irish independence movement, to which he was sympathetic.[10] He saw strong parallels between the subjugation of Ireland and the global subjugation of black people,[11] and identified strongly with the Irish independence leader Éamon de Valera.[12] In 1922, he sent a message to Valera stating that "We believe Ireland should be free even as Africa shall be free for the Negroes of the world. Keep up the fight for a free Ireland."[13]
For Garvey, Ireland's Sinn Féin and the Irish independence movement served as blueprints for his own black nationalist cause.[12] In July 1919 he stated that "the time has come for the Negro race to offer up its martyrs upon the altar of liberty even as the Irish [had] given a long list from Robert Emmet to Roger Casement."[14] He also expressed admiration for the Indian independence movement, which was seeking independence from British rule in India, describing Mahatma Gandhi as "one of the noblest characters of the day".[15]
Race and racial separatism
"Race first" was the adage which was widely used in Garveyism.[16] In Garvey's view, "no race in the world is so just as to give others, for the asking, a square deal in things economic, political and social", but rather each racial group will favor its own interests.[17] Rejecting the "melting pot" notion of much 20th century American nationalism,[18] he thought that European Americans would never willingly grant equality to African Americans, and thus it was inefficient for the latter to ask for it.[19] He was hostile to the efforts of the progressive movement to agitate for social and political rights for African Americans, arguing that this was ineffective and that laws would never change the underlying racial prejudice of European Americans.[20]
He argued that the European-American population of the U.S. would never tolerate the social integration which was being advocated by activists like Du Bois because he believed that campaigns for such integration would lead to anti-black riots and lynchings.[21] He openly conceded that the U.S. was a white man's country and thus, he did not think that African Americans should expect equal treatment within it. Thus, he opposed attempts to socially and economically integrate the different races which lived within the country.[22] Garveyism promoted the view that whites had no duty to help blacks achieve racial equality, maintaining the view that the latter needed to advance themselves on their own initiative.[23] He advocated racial separatism,[24] but he did not believe in black supremacy.[25] He also rallied against Eurocentric beauty standards among blacks, seeing them as impediments to black self-respect.[22]
[African Americans should] stop making[...] noise about social equality, giving the White people the idea that we are hankering after their company, and get down to business and build up a strong race, industrially, commercially, educationally and politically, everything social will come afterwards.
In the U.S., ideas about the need for black racial purity became central to Garvey's thought.[7] He vehemently denounced miscegenation,[21] believing that mixed-race individuals were "torn by dual allegiances" and they would often ally themselves "with the more powerful race," thus, they would become "traitors to the [black] race".[26] Garvey argued that mixed-race people would be bred out of existence.[27] Cronon believed that Garvey exhibited "antipathy and distrust of anybody but the darkest-skinned Negroes";[28] the hostility towards black people whose African blood was not considered "pure" was a sentiment which Garvey shared with Blyden.[29]
This view caused great friction between Garvey and Du Bois,[30] with the former accusing Du Bois and the NAACP of promoting "amalgamation or general miscegenation".[31] He rallied against what he called the "race destroying doctrine" of those African Americans who were promulgating racial integration in the U.S., instead, he maintained the view that his UNIA stood for "the pride and purity of race. We believe that the white race should uphold its racial pride and perpetuate itself, and we also believe that the black race should do likewise. We believe that there is room enough in the world for the various race groups to grow and develop by themselves without seeking to destroy the Creator's plan by the constant introduction of mongrel types."[22] Arguing that Garvey "imitated white supremacist ideas at random", the scholar John L. Graves commented that "racism permeated nearly every iota of his ideology," with Garveyism representing "a gospel of hate for whites".[32]
Garvey's belief in racial separatism, his advocacy of the migration of African Americans to Africa, and his opposition to miscegenation endeared him to the KKK, which supported many of the same policies.[33][21] Garvey was willing to collaborate with the KKK in order to achieve his aims, and it was willing to work with him because his approach effectively acknowledged its belief that the U.S. should only be a country for white people and campaigns for advanced rights for African Americans who are living within the U.S. should be abandoned.[34] Garvey called for collaboration between black and white separatists, stating that they shared common goals: "the purification of the races, their autonomous separation and the unbridled freedom of self-development and self-expression. Those who are against this are enemies of both races, and rebels against morality, nature and God."[35] In his view, the KKK and other far-right white groups were "better friends" of black people "than all other groups of hypocritical whites put together" because they were honest about their desires and intentions.[20]
Garvey was a Pan-Africanist,[36] and an African nationalist.[37] In Jamaica, he and his supporters were heavily influenced by the pan-Africanist teachings of Dr Love and Alexander Bedward.[38] In the wake of the First World War, Garvey called for the formation of "a United Africa for the Africans of the World".[39] The UNIA promoted the view that Africa was the natural homeland of the African diaspora.[40] While he was imprisoned, he penned an editorial for the Negro World titled "African Fundamentalism", in which he called for "the founding of a racial empire whose only natural, spiritual and political aims shall be God and Africa, at home and abroad."[41]
Garvey supported the Back-to-Africa movement, which had been influenced by Edward Wilmot Blyden, who migrated to Liberia in 1850.[42] However, Garvey did not believe that all African Americans should migrate to Africa. Instead, he believed that an elite group, namely those African Americans who were of the purest African blood, should do so. The rest of the African-American population, he believed, should remain in the United States, where it would become extinct within fifty years.[34]
A proponent of the Back-to-Africa movement, Garvey called for a vanguard of educated and skilled African Americans to travel to West Africa, a journey which would be facilitated by his Black Star Line.[43] Garvey stated that "The majority of us may remain here, but we must send our scientists, our mechanics and our artisans and let them build railroads, let them build the great educational and other institutions necessary", after which other members of the African diaspora could join them.[43] He was aware that the majority of African Americans would not want to move to Africa until it had the more modern comforts that they had become accustomed to in the U.S.[43] Through the UNIA, he discussed plans for a migration to Liberia, but these plans came to nothing and his hope to move African Americans to West Africa ultimately failed.[44]
Wheresoever I go, whether it is England, France or Germany, I am told, "This is a white man's country." Wheresoever I travel throughout the United States of America, I am made to understand that I am a "nigger". If the Englishman claims England as his native habitat, and the Frenchman claims France, the time has come for 400 million Negroes to claim Africa as their native land... If you believe that the Negro should have a place in the sun; if you believe that Africa should be one vast empire, controlled by the Negro, then arise.
In the 1920s, Garvey referred to his desire for a "big black republic" in Africa.[46] Garvey's envisioned Africa was to be a one-party state in which the president could have "absolute authority" to appoint "all of his lieutenants from cabinet ministers, governors of States and Territories, administrators and judges to minor offices".[27] According to the scholar of African-American studies Wilson S. Moses, the future African state which Garvey envisioned was "authoritarian, elitist, collectivist, racist, and capitalistic",[27] suggesting that it would have resembled the later Haitian government of François Duvalier.[47] Garvey told the historian J. A. Rogers that he and his followers were "the first fascists", adding that "Mussolini copied Fascism from me, but the Negro reactionaries sabotaged it".[48]
Garvey never visited Africa himself,[49] and he did not speak any African language.[50] He knew very little about the continent's varied customs, languages, religions, and traditional social structures,[51] and his critics frequently believed that his views of the continent were based on romanticism and ignorance.[52] It has been suggested that the European colonial authorities would not have given Garvey permission to visit colonies where he would be calling for decolonization.[42]
For instance, the Jamaican writer and poet Claude McKay noted that Garvey "talks of Africa as if it were a little island in the Caribbean Sea."[52] Garvey believed in negative stereotypes about Africa which portrayed it as a backward continent that was in need of the civilizing influence of Western, Christian states.[53] Among his stated aims, he wanted "to assist in civilizing the backward tribes of Africa" and he also wanted "to promote a conscientious Christian worship among" them.[53] His belief that Africans would ultimately be liberated by the efforts of the African diaspora which was living outside the continent has been considered condescending.[54]
Moses stated that instead of being based on respect for indigenous African cultures, Garvey's views of an ideal united Africa were based on an "imperial model" of the kind which was promoted by western powers.[55] When he extolled the glories of Africa, Garvey cited the ancient Egyptians and Ethiopians who had built empires and monumental architectural structures, which he cited as evidence of civilization, rather than the smaller-scale societies which lived on other parts of the continent.[56] In doing so, he followed the lead of white academics of that era, who were similarly ignorant of most of African history and who focused nearly exclusively on ancient Egypt. Moses thought that Garvey "had more affinity for the pomp and tinsel of European imperialism than he did for black African tribal life".[56] Similarly, the writer Richard Hart noted that Garvey was "much attracted by the glamour of the British nobility", an attraction which was reflected when he honored prominent supporters by giving them such British-derived titles as "Lords", "Ladies", and "Knights".[57] Garvey's head was not turned, however, by the scholarly authority of Harvard University professor George Reisner whose opinion Garvey challenged on the pages of The Negro World.[9]
Economic views
We must prepare now by organizing ourselves all over the world, by building businesses, stores and factories to sustain our people and free ourselves.
Garvey believed in economic independence for the African diaspora and through the UNIA, he attempted to achieve it by forming ventures like the Black Star Line and the Negro Factories Corporation.[59] In Garvey's opinion, "without commerce and industry, a people perish economically. The Negro is perishing because he has no economic system".[25] In his view, European-American employers would always favor European-American employees, so to gain more security, African Americans needed to form their own businesses.[35] In his words, "the Negro[...] must become independent of white capital and white employers if he wants salvation."[60] He believed that financial independence for the African-American community would ensure greater protection from discrimination,[25] and provide the foundation for social justice.[61]
Economically, Garvey supported capitalism,[62] stating that "capitalism is necessary to the progress of the world, and those who unreasonably and wantonly oppose it or fight against it are enemies of human advancement."[27] In the U.S., Garvey promoted a capitalistic ethos for the economic development of the African-American community,[63] advocating black capitalism.[64] His emphasis on capitalist ventures meant, according to Grant, that Garvey "was making a straight pitch to the petit-bourgeois capitalist instinct of the majority of black folk."[65]
He admired Booker T. Washington's economic endeavours but criticized his focus on individualism: Garvey believed that African-American interests would best be advanced if businesses included collective decision-making and group profit-sharing.[63] His advocacy of capitalistic wealth distribution was a more equitable view of capitalism than the view of capitalism which was then prevalent in the U.S.;[66] he believed that some restrictions should be imposed on individuals and businesses in order to prevent them from acquiring too much wealth, in his view, no individual should be allowed to control more than one million dollars and no company should be allowed to control more than five million dollars.[27] While he was living in Harlem, he envisioned the formation of a global network of black people who would trade among themselves, believing that his Black Star Line would contribute to the achievement of this aim.[67]
There is no evidence to support the view that Garvey was ever sympathetic to socialism.[68] While he was living in the U.S., he strongly opposed attempts to recruit African Americans into the trade union movement by socialist and communist groups,[69] and he urged African Americans not to support the Communist Party.[70] This led to heavy scrutiny from communist group leaders and figureheads such as Grace Campbell, among others. He believed that the communist movement did not serve the interests of African Americans because it was a white person's creation.[70] He stated that communism was "a dangerous theory of economic or political reformation because it seeks to put government in the hands of an ignorant white mass who have not been able to destroy their natural prejudices towards Negroes and other non-white people. While it may be a good thing for them, it will be a bad thing for the Negroes who will fall under the government of the most ignorant, prejudiced class of the white race."[70] In response, the Communist International characterised Garveyism as a reactionary bourgeois philosophy.[35]
Black Christianity
Whilst our God has no color, yet it is human to see everything through one's own spectacles, and since the white people have seen their God through white spectacles, we have only now started out (late though it be) to see our God through our own spectacles.
Grant noted that "Garveyism would always remain a secular movement with a strong under-tow of religion".[72] Garvey envisioned a form of Christianity which would specifically be designed for black African people,[57] a sort of black religion.[56] Reflecting his own view of religion, he wanted this black-centric Christianity to be as close to Catholicism as possible.[71]
Even so, he attended the foundation ceremony of the African Orthodox Church in Chicago in 1921.[73] According to Graves, this Church preached "the orthodox Christian tradition with emphasis on racism",[74] and Cronon suggested that Garvey promoted "racist ideas about religion".[75]
Garvey emphasised the idea of black people worshipping a God who was also depicted as black.[71] In his words, "If the white man has the idea of a white God, let him worship his God as he desires. Since the white people have seen their God through white spectacles, we have only now started out to see our God through our own spectacles[...] we shall worship Him through the spectacles of Ethiopia."[30] He called for black people to worship images of Jesus of Nazareth and the Virgin Mary that depicted these figures as black Africans.[57] In doing so, he did not make use of pre-existing forms of black-dominated religions. Garvey had little experience with them, because he had attended a white-run Wesleyan congregation when he was a child, and later, he converted to Catholicism.[76]
Marcus Mosiah Garvey Jr. was a Jamaican political activist. He was the founder and first President-General of the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League, through which he declared himself Provisional President of Africa. Ideologically a black nationalist and Pan-Africanist, his ideas came to be known as Garveyism.
The Pan-African flag is a tri-color flag consisting of three equal horizontal bands of red, black, and green. The Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League (UNIA-ACL) formally adopted it on August 13, 1920, in Article 39 of the Declaration of the Rights of the Negro Peoples of the World, during its month-long convention at Madison Square Garden in New York City. Variations of the flag can and have been used in various countries and territories in the Americas to represent Garveyist ideologies.
The Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League (UNIA-ACL) is a black nationalist fraternal organization founded by Marcus Garvey, a Jamaican immigrant to the United States, and his then-wife Amy Ashwood Garvey. The Pan-African organization enjoyed its greatest strength in the 1920s, and was influential prior to Garvey's deportation to Jamaica in 1927. After that its prestige and influence declined, but it had a strong influence on African-American history and development. The UNIA was said to be "unquestionably, the most influential anticolonial organization in Jamaica prior to 1938," according to Honor Ford-Smith.
Black separatism is a separatist political movement that seeks separate economic and cultural development for those of African descent in societies, particularly in the United States. Black separatism stems from the idea of racial solidarity, and it also implies that black people should organize themselves on the basis of their common skin color, their race, culture, and African heritage. There were a total of 255 black separatist groups recorded in the United States as of 2019.
Carter Godwin Woodson was an American historian, author, journalist, and the founder of the Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH). He was one of the first scholars to study the history of the African diaspora, including African-American history. A founder of The Journal of Negro History in 1916, Woodson has been called the "father of black history." In February 1926, he launched the celebration of "Negro History Week," the precursor of Black History Month. Woodson was an important figure to the movement of Afrocentrism, due to his perspective of placing people of African descent at the center of the study of history and the human experience.
Negro World was the newspaper of the Marcus Garvey's Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League (UNIA). Founded by Garvey and Amy Ashwood Garvey, the newspaper was published weekly in Harlem, and distributed internationally to the UNIA's chapters in more than forty countries. Distributed weekly, at its peak, the Negro World reached a circulation of 200,000.
Hubert Henry Harrison was a West Indian-American writer, orator, educator, critic, race and class conscious political activist, and radical internationalist based in Harlem, New York. He was described by activist A. Philip Randolph as "the father of Harlem radicalism" and by the historian Joel Augustus Rogers as "the foremost Afro-American intellect of his time." John G. Jackson of American Atheists described him as "The Black Socrates".
Henrietta Vinton Davis was an elocutionist, dramatist, and impersonator. In addition to being "the premier actress of all nineteenth-century black performers on the dramatic stage", Davis was proclaimed by Marcus Garvey to be the "greatest woman of the Negro race today".
Amy Euphemia Jacques Garvey was a Jamaican-born journalist and activist. She was the second wife of Marcus Garvey. She was one of the pioneering female Black journalists and publishers of the 20th century.
The African Blood Brotherhood for African Liberation and Redemption (ABB) was a U.S. black liberation organization established in 1919 in New York City by journalist Cyril Briggs. The group was established as a propaganda organization built on the model of the secret society. The group's socialist orientation caught the attention of the fledgling American communist movement and the ABB soon evolved into a propaganda arm of the Communist Party of America. The group was terminated in the early 1920s.
Negro Factories Corporation was one of the business ventures of the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League recognized by 125 countries worldwide with its own Constitution and flag. The UNIA-ACL is a black nationalist fraternal organization founded in 1919 by Marcus Garvey, a North American Jamaican-born activist in New York. It eventually had chapters on three continents and in the Caribbean.
Cyril Valentine Briggs was an African-Caribbean American writer and communist political activist. Briggs founded the African Blood Brotherhood (ABB), a small but historically important radical organization dedicated to advancing the cause of Pan-Africanism. He founded and edited its publication, The Crusader, a seminal New York magazine of the New Negro Movement of the 1920s.
William Wellington Wellwood Grant OD was a Jamaican labour activist. He was known as "St. William Grant", "St." presumably meaning "Sergeant" in reference to his military or UNIA service.
Emory J. Tolbert (1946-2022) was an American historian, educator, and activist. His scholarship centers on Marcus Garvey and Garveyism, as well as wider aspects of African American history.
Jean Didier Elizier Cadet was a Haitian Vodou priest who, in 1919 attended the Paris Peace Conference and First Pan African Congress on behalf of the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA).
Carlos A. Cooks was a politician from Dominican Republic.
Earnest Sevier Cox was an American Methodist preacher, political activist and white supremacist. He is best known for his political campaigning for stricter segregation between blacks and whites in the United States through tougher anti-miscegenation laws, for his advocacy for "repatriation" of African Americans to Africa, and for his book White America. He is also noted for having mediated collaboration between white southern segregationists and African American separatist organizations such as UNIA and the Peace Movement of Ethiopia to advocate for repatriation legislation, and for having been a personal friend of black racial separatist Marcus Garvey.
Wilfred Adolphus Domingo was a Jamaican activist and journalist who became the youngest editor of Marcus Garvey's newspaper, the Negro World. As an activist and writer, Domingo travelled to the United States advocating for Jamaican sovereignty as a leader of the African Blood Brotherhood and the Harlem branch of the Socialist Party.
Mittie Maude Lena Gordon was an American black nationalist who established the Peace Movement of Ethiopia. The organization advocated black emigration to West Africa in response to racial discrimination and white supremacy.
Harold Herbert Potter was the first Canadian-born Black sociologist hired by a Canadian post-secondary institution when he was appointed lecturer in Sociology at Sir George Williams College in 1947.
References
↑ Getachew, Adom (November 2021). "A 'Common Spectacle' of the Race: Garveyism's Visual Politics of Founding". American Political Science Review. 115 (4): 1197–1209. doi:10.1017/S0003055421000484. S2CID236308610.
↑ Trembanis, Sarah (2001). Strange Bedfellows: Eugenicists, White Supremacists, And Marcus Garvey In Virginia, 1922-1927 (Thesis). doi:10.21220/s2-eg2s-rc14.
Chapman, Thandeka K. (2004). "Foundations of Multicultural Education: Marcus Garvey and the United Negro Improvement Association". The Journal of Negro Education. 73 (4): 424–434. doi:10.2307/4129626. JSTOR4129626.
Fergus, Claudius (2010). "From Prophecy to Policy: Marcus Garvey and the Evolution of Pan-African Citizenship". The Global South. 4 (2): 29–48. doi:10.2979/globalsouth.4.2.29. S2CID144306818.
Grant, Otis B. (2003). "Social Justice versus Social Equality: The Capitalistic Jurisprudence of Marcus Garvey". Journal of Black Studies. 33 (4): 490–498. doi:10.1177/0021934702250031. S2CID144710693.
Grant, Colin (2008). Negro with a Hat: The Rise and Fall of Marcus Garvey. London: Jonathan Cape. ISBN978-0-09-950145-9.
Graves, John L. (1962). "The Social Ideas of Marcus Garvey". The Journal of Negro Education. 31 (1): 65–74. doi:10.2307/2294548. JSTOR2294548.
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