A statue of Garvey now stands in Saint Ann's Bay, the town where he was born
Marcus Mosiah Garvey was born on 17 August 1887 in Saint Ann's Bay, a town in the Colony of Jamaica.[1] In the context of colonial Jamaican society, which had a colourist social hierarchy, Garvey was considered at the lowest end, being a black child who believed he was of full African ancestry;[2] later genetic research nevertheless revealed that he had some Iberian ancestors.[3] Garvey's paternal great-grandfather had been born into slavery prior to its abolition in the British Empire.[4] His surname, which was of Irish origin, had been inherited from his family's former owners.[4]
His father, Malchus Garvey, was a stonemason;[5] his mother, Sarah Richards, was a domestic servant and the daughter of peasant farmers.[6] Malchus had had two previous partners before Sarah, siring six children between them.[7] Sarah bore him four additional children, of whom Marcus was the youngest, although two died in infancy.[7] Because of his profession, Malchus' family were wealthier than many of their peasant neighbours;[8] they were petty bourgeoise.[9] Malchus was however reckless with his money and over the course of his life lost most of the land he owned to meet payments.[10] Malchus had a book collection and was self-educated;[11] he also served as an occasional layman at a local Wesleyan church.[12] Malchus was an intolerant and punitive father and husband;[13] he never had a close relationship with his son.[14]
Up to the age of 14, Garvey attended a local church school; further education was unaffordable for the family.[15] When not in school, Garvey worked on his maternal uncle's tenant farm.[16] He had friends, with whom he once broke the windows of a church, resulting in his arrest.[17] Some of his friends were white, although he found that as they grew older they distanced themselves from him;[18] he later recalled that a close childhood friend was a white girl: "We were two innocent fools who never dreamed of a race feeling and problem."[9] In 1901, Marcus was apprenticed to his godfather, a local printer.[19] In 1904, the printer opened another branch at Port Maria, where Garvey began to work, traveling from Saint Ann's Bay each morning.
In 1905 he moved to Kingston, where he boarded in Smith Village, a working-class neighbourhood.[20] In the city, he secured work with the printing division of the P.A. Benjamin Manufacturing Company. He rose quickly through the company ranks, becoming their first Afro-Jamaican foreman.[21] His sister and mother, by this point estranged from his father, moved to join him in the city.[22] In January 1907, Kingston was hit by an earthquake that reduced much of the city to rubble.[23] He, his mother, and his sister were left to sleep in the open for several months.[24] In March 1908, his mother died.[22] While in Kingston, Garvey converted to Roman Catholicism.[25]
Garvey became a trade unionist and took a leading role in the November 1908 print workers' strike. The strike was broken several weeks later and Garvey was sacked.[26] Henceforth branded a troublemaker, Garvey was unable to find work in the private sector.[27] He then found temporary employment with a government printer.[28] As a result of these experiences, Garvey became increasingly angry at the inequalities present in Jamaican society.[29]
Garvey involved himself with the National Club, Jamaica's first nationalist organization, becoming its first assistant secretary in April 1910.[30] The group campaigned to remove the British Governor of Jamaica, Sydney Olivier, from office, and to end the migration of Indian "coolies", or indentured workers, to Jamaica, as they were seen as a source of economic competition by the established population.[31] With fellow Club member Wilfred Domingo he published a pamphlet expressing the group's ideas, The Struggling Mass.[31] In early 1910, Garvey began publishing a magazine, Garvey's Watchman—its name a reference to George William Gordon's The Watchman—although it only lasted three issues.[32] He claimed it had a circulation of 3000, although this was likely an exaggeration.[33] Garvey also enrolled in elocution lessons with the radical journalist Robert J. Love, whom Garvey came to regard as a mentor.[34] With his enhanced skill at speaking in a Standard English manner, he entered several public speaking competitions
Forming UNIA: 1914–1916
Garvey arrived back in Jamaica in July 1914.[65] There, he saw his article for Tourist republished in The Gleaner.[66] He began earning money selling greeting and condolence cards which he had imported from Britain, before later switching to selling tombstones.[67]
Also in July 1914, Garvey launched the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League, commonly abbreviated as UNIA.[68] Adopting the motto of "One Aim. One God. One Destiny",[69] it declared its commitment to "establish a brotherhood among the black race, to promote a spirit of race pride, to reclaim the fallen and to assist in civilising the backward tribes of Africa."[70] Initially, it had only few members.[71] Many Jamaicans were critical of the group's prominent use of the term "Negro", a term which was often employed as an insult:[70] Garvey, however, embraced the term in reference to black people of African descent.[72]
Garvey became UNIA's president and travelling commissioner;[73] it was initially based out of his hotel room in Orange Street, Kingston.[66] It portrayed itself not as a political organization but as a charitable club,[74] focused on work to help the poor and to ultimately establish a vocational training college modelled on Washington's Tuskegee Institute in Alabama.[75] Garvey wrote to Washington and received a brief, if encouraging reply; Washington died shortly after.[76] UNIA officially expressed its loyalty to the British Empire, King George V, and the British effort in the ongoing First World War.[77] In April 1915 Brigadier General L. S. Blackden lectured to the group on the war effort;[78] Garvey endorsed Blackden's calls for more Jamaicans to sign up to fight for the Empire on the Western Front.[78] The group also sponsored musical and literary evenings as well as a February 1915 elocution contest, at which Garvey took first prize.[79]
In August 1914, Garvey attended a meeting of the Queen Street Baptist Literary and Debating Society, where he met Amy Ashwood, recently graduated from the Westwood Training College for Women.[80] She joined UNIA and rented a better premises for them to use as their headquarters, secured using her father's credit.[81] She and Garvey embarked on a relationship, which was opposed by her parents. In 1915 they secretly became engaged.[67] When she suspended the engagement, he threatened to commit suicide, at which she resumed it.[82]
I was openly hated and persecuted by some of these colored men of the island who did not want to be classified as Negroes but as white.
— Garvey, on how he was received in Jamaica[83]
Garvey attracted financial contributions from many prominent patrons, including the Mayor of Kingston and the Governor of Jamaica, William Manning.[84] By appealing directly to Jamaica's white elite, Garvey had skipped the brown middle-classes, comprising those who were classified as mulattos, quadroons, and octoroons. They were generally hostile to Garvey, regarding him as a pretentious social climber and being annoyed at his claim to be part of the "cultured class" of Jamaican society.[85] Many also felt that he was unnecessarily derogatory when describing black Jamaicans, with letters of complaint being sent into the Daily Chronicle after it published one of Garvey's speeches in which he referred to many of his people as "uncouth and vulgar".[86] One complainant, a Dr Leo Pink, related that "the Jamaican Negro can not be reformed by abuse".[64] After unsubstantiated allegations began circling that Garvey was diverting UNIA funds to pay for his own personal expenses, the group's support began to decline.[87] He became increasingly aware of how UNIA had failed to thrive in Jamaica and decided to migrate to the United States, sailing there aboard the SS Tallac in March 1916
H.E. The Right Honourable Marcus Mosiah Garvey Jr. ONH (17 August 1887 – 10 June 1940) was a Jamaican political activist, publisher, journalist, entrepreneur, and orator. He was the founder and first President-General of the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League (UNIA-ACL, commonly known as UNIA), through which he declared himself Provisional President of Africa. Ideologically a black nationalist and Pan-Africanist, his ideas came to be known as Garveyism.
Garvey was born to a moderately prosperous Afro-Jamaican family in Saint Ann's Bay, Colony of Jamaica and apprenticed into the print trade as a teenager. Working in Kingston, he became involved in trade unionism before living briefly in Costa Rica, Panama, and England. Returning to Jamaica, he founded UNIA in 1914. In 1916, he moved to the United States and established a UNIA branch in New York City's Harlem district. Emphasising unity between Africans and the African diaspora, he campaigned for an end to European colonial rule across Africa and the political unification of the continent. He envisioned a unified Africa as a one-party state, governed by himself, that would enact laws to ensure black racial purity. Although he never visited the continent, he was committed to the Back-to-Africa movement, arguing that many African-Americans should migrate there. Garveyist ideas became increasingly popular and UNIA grew in membership. However, his black separatist views—and his collaboration with white racists such as the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) to advance their shared interest in racial separatism—divided Garvey from other prominent African-American civil rights activists such as W. E. B. Du Bois who promoted racial integration.
Committed to the belief that African-Americans needed to secure financial independence from white-dominant society, Garvey launched various businesses in the U.S., including the Negro Factories Corporation and Negro World newspaper. In 1919, he became President of the Black Star Line shipping and passenger company, designed to forge a link between North America and Africa and facilitate African-American migration to Liberia. In 1923 Garvey was convicted of mail fraud for selling the company's stock and imprisoned in the United States Penitentiary Atlanta for nearly two years. Many commentators have argued that the trial was politically motivated; Garvey blamed Jewish people, claiming that they were prejudiced against him because of his links to the KKK. Deported to Jamaica in 1927, where he settled in Kingston with his wife Amy Jacques, Garvey continued his activism and established the People's Political Party in 1929, briefly serving as a city councillor. With UNIA in increasing financial difficulty, in 1935 he relocated to London, where his anti-socialist stance distanced him from many of the city's black activists. He died there in 1940, although in 1964 his body was returned to Jamaica for reburial in Kingston's National Heroes Park.
Garvey was a controversial figure. Many in the African diasporic community regarded him as a pretentious demagogue and were highly critical of his collaboration with white supremacists, his violent rhetoric, and his prejudice against mixed-race people and Jews. He nevertheless received praise for encouraging a sense of pride and self-worth among Africans and the African diaspora amid widespread poverty, discrimination, and colonialism. He is seen as a national hero in Jamaica, and his ideas exerted a considerable influence on such movements as Rastafari, the Nation of Islam, and the Black Power Movement.
Travels abroad: 1910–1914
Economic hardship in Jamaica led to growing emigration from the island.[36] In mid-1910, Garvey travelled to Costa Rica, where an uncle had secured him employment as a timekeeper on a large banana plantation in the Limón Province owned by the United Fruit Company (UFC).[37] Shortly after his arrival, the area experienced strikes and unrest in opposition to the UFC's attempts to cut its workers' wages.[38] Although as a timekeeper he was responsible for overseeing the manual workers, he became increasingly angered at how they were treated.[39] In the spring of 1911 be launched a bilingual newspaper, Nation/La Nación, which criticised the actions of the UFC and upset many of the dominant strata of Costa Rican society in Limón.[40] His coverage of a local fire, in which he questioned the motives of the fire brigade, resulted in him being brought in for police questioning.[41] After his printing press broke, he was unable to replace the faulty part and terminated the newspaper.[42]
In London, Garvey spent time in the Reading Room of the British Museum
Garvey then travelled through Central America, undertaking casual work as he made his way through Honduras, Ecuador, Colombia, and Venezuela.[43] While in the port of Colón in Panama, he set up a new newspaper, La Prensa ("The Press").[44] In 1911, he became seriously ill with a bacterial infection and decided to return to Kingston.[45] He then decided to travel to London, the administrative centre of the British Empire, in the hope of advancing his informal education. In the spring of 1912 he sailed to England.[46] Renting a room along Borough High Street in South London,[47] he visited the House of Commons, where he was impressed by the politician David Lloyd George.[47] He also visited Speakers' Corner in Hyde Park and began speaking there.[48] There were only a few thousand black people in London at the time, and they were often viewed as exotic; most worked as labourers.[49] Garvey initially gained piecemeal work labouring in the city's docks.[50] In August 1912, his sister Indiana joined him in London, where she worked as a domestic servant.[51]
In early 1913 he was employed as a messenger and handyman for the African Times and Orient Review, a magazine based in Fleet Street that was edited by Dusé Mohamed Ali.[52] The magazine advocated Ethiopianism and home rule for British-occupied Egypt.[53] In 1914, Mohamed Ali began employing Garvey's services as a writer for the magazine.[54] He also took several evening classes in law at Birkbeck College in Bloomsbury.[55] Garvey planned a tour of Europe, spending time in Glasgow, Paris, Monte Carlo, Boulogne, and Madrid.[56] During the trip, he was briefly engaged to a Spanish-Irish heiress.[57] Back in London, he wrote an article on Jamaica for the Tourist magazine,[58] and spent time reading in the library of the British Museum. There he discovered Up from Slavery, a book by the African-American entrepreneur and activist Booker T. Washington.[59] Washington's book heavily influenced him.[60] Now almost financially destitute and deciding to return to Jamaica, he unsuccessfully asked both the Colonial Office and the Anti-Slavery and Aborigines' Protection Society to pay for his journey.[61] After managing to save the funds for a fare, he boarded the SS Trent in June 1914 for a three-week journey across the Atlantic.[62] En route home, Garvey talked with an Afro-Caribbean missionary who had spent time in Basutoland and taken a Basuto wife. Discovering more about colonial Africa from this man, Garvey began to envision a movement that would politically unify black people of African descent across the world
To the United States: 1916–1918
Arriving in the United States, Garvey initially lodged with a Jamaican expatriate family living in Harlem, a largely black area of New York City.[90] He began lecturing in the city, hoping to make a career as a public speaker, although at his first public speech was heckled and fell off the stage.[91] From New York City, he embarked on a U.S. speaking tour, crossing 38 states.[92] At stopovers on his journey he listened to preachers from the African Methodist Episcopal Church and the Black Baptist churches.[93] While in Alabama, he visited the Tuskegee Institute and met with its new leader, Robert Russa Moton.[94] After six months traveling across the U.S. lecturing, he returned to New York City.[95]
In May 1917, Garvey launched a New York branch of UNIA.[96] He declared membership open to anyone "of Negro blood and African ancestry" who could pay the 25 cents a month membership fee.[97] He joined many other speakers who spoke on the street, standing on step-ladders;[98] he often did so at Speakers' Corner on 135th Street.[99] In his speeches, he sought to reach across to both Afro-Caribbean migrants like himself and native African-Americans.[100] Through this, he began to associate with Hubert Harrison, who was promoting ideas of black self-reliance and racial separatism.[101] In June, Garvey shared a stage with Harrison at the inaugural meeting of the latter's Liberty League of Negro-Americans.[102] Through his appearance here and at other events organised by Harrison, Garvey attracted growing public attention.[103]
After the U.S. entered the First World War in April 1917, Garvey initially signed up to fight but was ruled physically unfit to do so.[104] He later became an opponent of African-American involvement in the conflict, following Harrison in accusing it of being a "white man's war".[105] In the wake of the East St. Louis Race Riots in May to July 1917, in which white mobs targeted black people, Garvey began calling for armed self-defense.[106] He produced a pamphlet, "The Conspiracy of the East St Louis Riots", which was widely distributed; proceeds from its sale went to victims of the riots.[107] The Bureau of Investigation began monitoring him, noting that in speeches he employed more militant language than that used in print; it for instance reported him expressing the view that "for every Negro lynched by whites in the South, Negroes should lynch a white in the North."[108]
By the end of 1917, Garvey had attracted many of Harrison's key associates in his Liberty League to join UNIA.[109] Garvey also secured the support of the journalist John Edward Bruce, agreeing to step down from the group's presidency in favor of Bruce.[110] Bruce then wrote to Dusé Mohamed Ali to learn more about Garvey's past. Mohamed Ali responded with a negative assessment of Garvey, suggesting that he simply used UNIA as a money-making scheme. Bruce read this letter to a UNIA meeting and put pressure on Garvey's position.[111] Garvey then resigned from UNIA, establishing a rival group that met at Old Fellows Temple.[112] He also launched legal proceedings against Bruce and other senior UNIA members, with the court ruling that UNIA's name and membership—now estimated at around 600—belonged to Garvey, who resumed control over the organization
The growth of UNIA: 1918–1921
UNIA membership grew rapidly in 1918.[97] In June that year it was incorporated,[114] and in July a commercial arm, the African Communities' League, filed for incorporation.[97] Garvey envisioned UNIA establishing an import-and-export business, a restaurant, and a launderette.[97] He also proposed raising the funds to secure a permanent building as a base for the group.[97] In April, Garvey launched a weekly newspaper, the Negro World,[115] which Cronon later noted remained "the personal propaganda organ of its founder".[116] Financially, the Negro World was backed by philanthropists like Madam C. J. Walker,[117] but six months after its launch was pursuing a special appeal for donations to keep it afloat.[118] Various journalists took Garvey to court for his failure to pay them for their contributions, a fact much publicised by rival publications;[117] at the time, there were over 400 black-run newspapers and magazines in the U.S.[119] Unlike many of these, Garvey refused to feature adverts for skin-lightening and hair-straightening products,[120] urging black people to "take the kinks out of your mind, instead of out of your hair".[121] By the end of its first year, the circulation of Negro World was nearing 10,000;[117] copies circulated not only in the U.S., but also in the Caribbean, Central, and South America.[122] Several British colonies in the Caribbean banned the publication.[
In April 1918, Garvey's UNIA began publishing the Negro World newspaper
Garvey appointed his old friend Domingo, who had also arrived in New York City, as the newspaper's editor.[124] However, Domingo's socialist views alarmed Garvey, who feared that they would imperil UNIA.[125] Garvey had Domingo brought before UNIA's nine-person executive committee, where the latter was accused of writing editorials professing ideas at odds with UNIA's message. Domingo resigned several months later; he and Garvey henceforth became enemies.[126] In September 1918, Amy Ashwood sailed from Panama to be with Garvey, arriving in New York City in October.[127] In November, she became General Secretary of UNIA.[128] At UNIA gatherings, she was responsible for reciting black-authored poetry, as was the actor Henrietta Vinton Davis, who had also joined the movement.[129]
After the First World War ended, President Woodrow Wilson declared his intention to present a 14-point plan for world peace at the forthcoming Paris Peace Conference. Garvey joined various African-Americans in forming the International League for Darker People, a group which sought to lobby Wilson and the conference to give greater respect to the wishes of people of colour; their delegates nevertheless were unable to secure the travel documentation.[130] At Garvey's prompting, UNIA sent a young Haitian, Eliezer Cadet, as its delegate to the conference.[131] Despite these efforts, the political leaders who met in Paris largely ignored the perspectives of non-European peoples, instead reaffirming their support for European colonialism.[132]
In the U.S., many African-Americans who had served in the military refused to return to their more subservient role in society and throughout 1919 there were various racial clashes throughout the country.[133] The government feared that African-Americans would be encouraged toward revolutionary behavior following the October Revolution in Russia,[134] and in this context, military intelligence ordered Major Walter Loving to investigate Garvey.[135] Loving's report concluded that Garvey was a "very able young man" who was disseminating "clever propaganda".[136] The BOI's J. Edgar Hoover decided that Garvey was politically subversive and should be deported from the U.S., adding his name to the list of those to be targeted in the forthcoming Palmer Raids. To ratify the deportation, the BOI presented Garvey's name to the Labor Department under Louis F. Post, however Post's department refused to do so, stating that the case against Garvey was not proven.
Success and obstacles
Garvey speaking at Liberty Hall in 1920
UNIA grew rapidly and in just over 18 months it had branches in 25 U.S. states, as well as divisions in the West Indies, Central America, and West Africa.[138] The exact membership is not known, although Garvey—who often exaggerated numbers—claimed that by June 1919 it had two million members.[138] It remained smaller than the better established National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP),[138] although there was some crossover in membership of the two groups.[139] The NAACP and UNIA differed in their approach; while the NAACP was a multi-racial organization which promoted racial integration, UNIA had a black-only membership policy. The NAACP focused its attention on what it termed the "talented tenth" of the African-American population, such as doctors, lawyers, and teachers, whereas UNIA included many poorer people and Afro-Caribbean migrants in its ranks, seeking to project an image of itself as a mass organization.[140] To promote his views to a wide audience, Garvey took to shouting slogans from a megaphone as he was driven through Harlem in a Cadillac.[141]
There were tensions between UNIA and the NAACP and the latter's supporters accused Garvey of stymieing their efforts at bringing about racial integration in the U.S.[142] Garvey was dismissive of the NAACP leader W. E. B. Du Bois, and in one issue of the Negro World called him a "reactionary under [the] pay of white men".[143] Du Bois generally tried to ignore Garvey,[144] regarding him as a demagogue,[145] but at the same time wanted to learn all he could about Garvey's movement.[146] In 1921, Garvey twice reached out to DuBois, asking him to contribute to UNIA publications, but the offer was rebuffed.[147] Their relationship became acrimonious; in 1923, DuBois described Garvey as "a little fat black man, ugly but with intelligent eyes and big head".[148] By 1924, Grant suggested, the two hated each other.[148]
UNIA established a restaurant and ice cream parlour at 56 West 135th Street,[149] and also launched a millinery store selling hats.[150] With an increased income coming in through UNIA, Garvey moved to a new residence at 238 West 131st Street;[140] in 1919, a young middle-class Jamaican migrant, Amy Jacques, became his personal secretary.[151] UNIA also obtained a partially-constructed church building at 114 West 138 Street in Harlem, which Garvey named "Liberty Hall" after its namesake in Dublin, Ireland, which had been established during the Easter Rising of 1916.[152] The adoption of this name reflected Garvey's fascination for the Irish independence movement.[153] Liberty Hall's dedication ceremony was held in July 1919.[154] Garvey also organised the African Legion, a group of uniformed men who would attend UNIA parades;[155] a secret service was formed from Legion members, providing Garvey with intelligence about group members.[156] The formation of the Legion further concerned the BOI, who sent their first full-time black agent, James Wormley Jones, to infiltrate UNIA.[157] In January 1920, Garvey incorporated the Negro Factories League,[158] through which he opened a string of grocery stores, a restaurant, a steam laundry, and publishing house.[159] According to Grant, a personality cult had grown up around Garvey within the UNIA movement;[160] life-size portraits of him hung in the UNIA headquarters and phonographs of his speeches were sold to the membership.
A UNIA parade through Harlem in 1920
In August 1920, UNIA organized the First International Conference of the Negro Peoples in Harlem.[162] This parade was attended by Gabriel Johnson, the Mayor of Monrovia in Liberia.[163] As part of it, an estimated 25,000 people assembled in Madison Square Gardens.[164] At the conference, UNIA delegates declared Garvey to be the Provisional President of Africa, charged with heading a government-in-exile that could take power in the continent when European colonial occupation ended.[165] Some of the West Africans attending the event were angered by this, believing it wrong that an Afro-Jamaican, rather than a native African, was taking this role.[166] Many outside the movement ridiculed Garvey for giving himself this title.[167] The conference then elected other members of the African government-in-exile,[168] resulting in the production of a "Declaration of the Rights of the Negro Peoples of the World" which condemned colonial rule across Africa.[169] In August 1921, UNIA held a banquet in Liberty Hall, at which Garvey gave out honors to various supporters, including such titles as the Order of the Nile and the Order of Ethiopia.[170]
UNIA established growing links with the Liberian government, hoping to secure land in the West African nation onto which it could settle African-American migrants.[171] Liberia was in heavy debt, with UNIA launching a fundraising campaign to raise $2 million towards a Liberian Construction Loan.[171] In 1921, Garvey sent a UNIA team to assess the prospects of mass African-American settlement in Liberia.[172] Internally, UNIA experienced various feuds. Garvey pushed out Cyril Briggs and other members of the African Blood Brotherhood from UNIA, wanting to place growing distance between himself and black socialist groups.[173] In the Negro World, Garvey then accused Briggs—who was of mixed heritage—of being a white man posing as a black man. Briggs successfully sued Garvey for criminal libel.[174] This was not the only time he faced this charge; in July 1919 Garvey had been arrested for comments made about Edwin Kilroe in the Negro World.[175] When this case eventually came to court, the court ordered Garvey to provide a printed retraction.[176]
Assassination attempts, marriage, and divorce
In October 1919, George Tyler, a part-time vendor of the Negro World, entered the UNIA office and tried to assassinate Garvey. The latter received two bullets in his legs but survived. Tyler was soon apprehended but died in an escape attempt from jail; it was never revealed why he tried to kill Garvey.[177] Garvey soon recovered from his wounds; five days later he gave a public speech in Philadelphia.[178] After the assassination attempt, Garvey hired a bodyguard, Marcellus Strong.[179] Shortly after the incident, Garvey proposed marriage to Amy Ashwood and she accepted.[180] On Christmas Day, they had a private Roman Catholic church wedding, followed by a major ceremonial celebration in Liberty Hall, attended by 3000 UNIA members.[181] Jacques was Ashwood's maid of honour.[180] After the wedding, Garvey moved into Ashwood's apartment.[182]
"Explanation of the Objects of the Universal Negro Improvement Association"
Complete 1921 speech
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The newlyweds embarked on a two-week honeymoon in Canada, accompanied by a small UNIA retinue, including Jacques. There, Garvey spoke at two mass meetings in Montreal and three in Toronto.[183] Returning to Harlem, the couple's marriage was soon strained. Ashwood complained of Garvey's growing closeness with Jacques.[182] Garvey was upset by his inability to control his wife, particularly her drinking and her socialising with other men.[184] She was pregnant, although the child was possibly not his; she did not inform him of this, and the pregnancy ended in miscarriage.[185]
Three months into the marriage, Garvey sought an annulment, on the basis of Ashwood's alleged adultery and the claim that she had used "fraud and concealment" to induce the marriage.[186] She launched a counter-claim for desertion, requesting $75 a week alimony. The court rejected this sum, instead ordering Garvey to pay her $12 a week. It refused to grant him the divorce.[187] The court proceedings continued for two years.[187] Now separated, Garvey moved into a 129th Street apartment with Jacques and Henrietta Vinton Davis, an arrangement that at the time could have caused some social controversy.[188] He was later joined there by his sister Indiana and her husband, Alfred Peart.[189] Ashwood, meanwhile, went on to become a lyricist and musical director for musicals amid the Harlem Renaissance.[190]
The Black Star Line
From 56 West 135th, UNIA also began selling shares for a new business, the Black Star Line.[149] The Black Star Line based its name on the White Star Line.[191] Garvey envisioned a shipping and passenger line travelling between Africa and the Americas, which would be black-owned, black-staffed, and utilised by black patrons.[192] He thought that the project could be launched by raising $2 million from African-American donors,[193] publicly declaring that any black person who did not buy stock in the company "will be worse than a traitor to the cause of struggling Ethiopia".[194] He incorporated the company and then sought about trying to purchase a ship.[195] Many African-Americans took great pride in buying company stock, seeing it as an investment in their community's future;[196] Garvey also promised that when the company began turning a profit they would receive significant financial returns on their investment.[197] To advertise this stock, he travelled to Virginia,[197] and then in September 1919 to Chicago, where he was accompanied by seven other UNIA members. In Chicago, he was arrested and fined for violating the Blue Sky Laws which banned the sale of stock in the city without a license.
A certificate for stock of the Black Star Line
With growing quantities of money coming in, a three-man auditing committee was established, which found that UNIA's funds were poorly recorded and that the company's books were not balanced.[199] This was followed by a breakdown in trust between the directors of the Black Star Line, with Garvey discharging two of them, Richard E. Warner and Edgar M. Grey, and publicly humiliating them at the next UNIA meeting.[200] People continued buying stock regardless and by September 1919, the Black Star Line company had accumulated $50,000 by selling stock. It could thus afford a thirty-year old tramp ship, the SS Yarmouth.[201] The ship was formally launched in a ceremony on the Hudson River on 31 October.[202] The company had been unable to find enough trained black seamen to staff the ship, so its initial chief engineer and chief officer were white.
The ship's first assignment was to sail to Cuba and then to Jamaica, before returning to New York.[204] After that first voyage, the Yarmouth was found to contain many problems and the Black Star Line had to pay $11,000 for repairs.[205] On its second voyage, again to the Caribbean, it hit bad weather shortly after departure and had to be towed back to New York by the coastguard for further repairs.[206] Garvey planned to obtain and launch a second ship by February 1920,[144] with the Black Star Line putting down a $10,000 down payment on a paddle ship called the SS Shadyside.[207] In July 1920, Garvey sacked both the Black Star Line's secretary, Edward D. Smith-Green, and its captain, Joshua Cockburn; the latter was accused of corruption.[208] In early 1922, the Yarmouth was sold for scrap metal.[209]
In 1921, Garvey travelled to the Caribbean aboard a new BSL ship, the Antonio Maceo, which they had renamed the Kanawha.[210] While in Jamaica, he criticised its inhabitants as being backward and claimed that "Negroes are the most lazy, the most careless and indifferent people in the world".[211] His comments in Jamaica earned many enemies who criticised him on multiple fronts, including the fact he had left his destitute father to die in an almshouse.[212] Attacks back-and-forth between Garvey and his critics appeared in the letters published by The Gleaner.[213] From Jamaica, Garvey travelled to Costa Rica, where the United Fruit Company assisted his transportation around the country, hoping to gain his favour. There, he met with President Julio Acosta.[214] Arriving in Panama, at one of his first speeches, in Almirante, he was booed after doubling the advertised entry price; his response was to call the crowd "a bunch of ignorant and impertinent Negroes. No wonder you are where you are and for my part you can stay where you are."[215] He received a far warmer reception at Panama City,[216] after which he sailed to Kingston. From there he sought a return to the U.S., but was repeatedly denied an entry visa. This was only granted after he wrote directly to the State Department.
Death and burial: 1940
In January 1940, Garvey suffered a stroke which left him largely paralysed.[339] His secretary, Daisy Whyte, took on responsibility for his care.[340] At this point, Padmore spread rumours of Garvey's death; this led to many newspapers publishing premature obituaries, many of which he read.[341] Garvey then suffered a second stroke and died at the age of 52 on 10 June 1940.[342] His body was interred in a vault in the catacombs of St Mary's Roman Catholic Church in Kensal Green Cemetery, West London.[343]
Various wakes and memorials were held for Garvey, especially in New York City and Kingston.[343] In Harlem, a procession of mourners paraded to his memorial service.[343] Some Garveyites refused to believe Garvey had died, even when confronted with photographs of his body in its coffin, insisting that this was part of a conspiracy to undermine his movement.[343] Both Ashwood and Jacques presented themselves as the "widow of Marcus Garvey" and Ashwood launched legal action against Jacques in an attempt to secure control over his body.[344]
The writer Richard Hart later noted that within a decade of his death "a veritable cult" had begun to grow around Garvey's memory in Jamaica.[345] By the 1950s, Jamaican politicians of varied ideological backgrounds were invoking his name.[345] Leslie Alexander, a Kingston real estate agent, proposed the removal of Garvey's body and its return to Jamaica.[346] Alexander's campaign was successful and in 1964 Garvey's remains were dug up and returned to Jamaica. The body lay in state at the Roman Catholic Cathedral in Kingston while thousands of visitors came to see it.[347] It was then reburied in King George VI Memorial Park on 22 November 1964 with pomp and ceremony befitting a national hero; numerous foreign diplomats attended.[348] The monument, designed by G. C. Hodges, consists of a tomb at the center of a raised platform in the shape of a black star, a symbol often used by Garvey. Behind it, a peaked and angled wall houses a bust, by Alvin T. Marriot, of Garvey, which was added to the park in 1956 (before his reinterment) and relocated after the construction of the monument.
Ideology
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.
— Lyrics from the UNIA anthem[350]
Ideologically, Garvey was a black nationalist.[351] Generally referring to dark-skinned peoples of African descent as "Negroes", he and UNIA insisted that that term be capitalised, thus according dignity and respect to those whom it described.[352] His ideas were influenced by a range of sources. According to Grant, while in London Garvey displayed "an amazing capacity to absorb political tracts, theories of social engineering, African history and Western Enlightenment."Garvey was exposed to the ideas about race that were prevalent at the time;[353] his ideas on race were also heavily informed by the writings of Edward Wilmot Blyden.
During the late 1910s and 1920s, Garvey was also influenced by the ideas of the Irish independence movement, to which he was sympathetic.[355] He saw strong parallels between the British subjugation of Ireland and the broader subjugation of black people,[153] and identified strongly with the Irish independence leader Éamon de Valera.[356] 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."[357] For Garvey, Ireland's Sinn Féin and the Irish independence movement served as a blueprint for his own black nationalist cause.[356] 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."[358] He also admired the Indian independence movement then seeking freedom from the British Empire, describing Mahatma Gandhi as "one of the noblest characters of the day".
Racial separatism
While in the U.S., ideas about the need for black racial purity became central to Garvey's thought.[353] He promoted racial separatism, but did not stress the idea of racial superiority.[360] He argued that mixed-race people would be bred out of existence;[361] this hostility to black people not deemed of "pure" African blood was an idea that Garvey shared with Blyden.[362] Cronon believed that Garvey exhibited "antipathy and distrust for any but the darkest-skinned Negroes".[363] He also rallied against Eurocentric beauty standards among blacks, seeing it as an impediment to black self-respect.[364]
Garvey vehemently denounced miscegenation.[365] He accused Du Bois and NAACP of promoting "amalgamation or general miscegenation".[366] He rallied against what he called the "race destroying doctrine" of those African-Americans calling for racial integration in the U.S., instead maintaining 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 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."[364]
He argued that the European-American population of the U.S. would never tolerate the social integration proposed by activists like DuBois and that campaigns for such integration would only encourage anti-black riots and lynchings.[365] He openly conceded that the U.S. was a white man's country and thus did not think African-Americans could expect equality within it. He thus opposed attempts at social and economic integration of the races within the country.[364]
Garvey's belief in racial separatism, the migration of African-Americans to Africa, and opposition to miscegenation all endeared him to the KKK, who supported many of the same policies.[365] He was willing to collaborate with U.S. white supremacists to achieve his aims. They were willing to work with him because his approach effectively acknowledged the idea that the U.S. should be a country exclusively for white people and would abandon campaigns for advanced rights for African-Americans within the U.S.[367] Garvey called for black collaboration with the white separatist Anglo-Saxon Clubs, stating that they shared the same ideals: "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."[
Pan-Africanism
Garvey adopted a Pan-Africanist view,[369] and in the wake of the First World War called for the formation of "a United Africa for the Africans of the World".[370] UNIA promoted the view that Africa was the natural homeland of the African diaspora.[371] While imprisoned, he penned an editorial for the Negro World entitled "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."[372]
Garvey supported the Back-to-Africa movement, which had been influenced by Edward Wilmot Blyden, who migrated to Liberia in 1850.[373] However, Garvey did not believe that all African-Americans should migrate to Africa. Instead, he thought that only an elite selection, namely those African-Americans of the purest African blood, should do so. The rest of the African-American population, he believed, should remain in the United States, where they would be extinct within fifty years.[367] 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 facilitated by his Black Star Line.[374] 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.[374] 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.
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.
— Garvey, August 1920 [375]
In the 1920s, Garvey referred to his desire for a "big black republic" in Africa.[376] Garvey's envisioned Africa was to be a one-party state in which the president could have "absolute authority" to appoint "all his lieutenants from cabinet ministers, governors of States and Territories, administrators and judges to minor offices".[361] 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",[361] suggesting that it would have resembled the later Haitian government of François Duvalier.[377] 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".
In 1920, Garvey began discussions through his emissary Ellie Garcia with the president of Liberia, Charles D.B. King, to relocated the UNIA headquarters to that West African country. Further visits to Liberia took place in 1921 and 1923, but by 1924 the relationship between Garvey and King had soured, and the Liberian government confiscated their property, proscribed the UNIA, and deported the UNIA representatives.[379]
Garvey never visited Africa himself,[380] and did not speak any African languages.[381] He knew very little about the continent's varied customs, languages, and religions, or of its traditional social structures,[382] with his critics often thinking that his views of the continent were romanticised and ignorant.[383] It has been speculated that the Western colonial authorities would not have given permission to Garvey to visit colonies where he would be calling for decolonisation.[384] The Jamaican writer and poet Claude McKay for instance noted that Garvey "talks of Africa as if it were a little island in the Caribbean Sea."[383] Garvey shared negative stereotypes about Africa as a backwards continent that was in need of the civilizing influence of Western, Christian states.[385] Among his stated aims were "to assist in civilising the backward tribes of Africa" and "to promote a conscientious Christian worship among" them.[385] His idea that Africans would ultimately be liberated by the efforts of the African diaspora living outside the continent has been considered condescending.
Moses stated that rather than respecting indigenous African cultures, Garvey's views of an ideal united Africa were based on "the imperial model of Victorian England".[387] When extolling the glories of Africa, Garvey cited the ancient Egyptians and Ethiopians who had built empires and monumental architecture, which he saw as evidence of civilization, rather than the smaller-scale societies of other parts of the continent.[388] Moses thought that Garvey "had more affinity for the pomp and tinsel of European imperialism than he did for black African tribal life".[388] The writer Richard Hart similarly noted that Garvey was "much attracted by the glamour of the British nobility", as reflected in the way he gave prominent supporters such British-derived titles as "Lords", "Ladies", and "Knights".
Economic views
Economically, Garvey supported capitalism,[390] stating that "capitalism is necessary to the progress of the world, and those who unreasonably and wantonly oppose or fight against it are enemies to human advancement."[361] He proposed that no individual should be allowed to control more than one million dollars and no company more than five million.[361] Under Garvey, UNIA's focus was on achieving economic independence for the African diaspora. In Garvey's opinion, "without commerce and industry, a people perish economically. The Negro is perishing because he has no economic system".
In the U.S., Garvey promoted a capitalistic ethos for the economic development of the African-American community.[392] He wanted to achieve greater financial independence for the African-American community, believing that this would ensure greater protection from discrimination.[360] In his view, European-American employers would always favor European-American employees, and thus to gain more security, African-Americans needed their own businesses.[368] He admired Booker T. Washington's economic endeavours although was critical of his individualistic focus: Garvey believed African-American interests would best be advanced if businesses included collective decision making and group profit sharing.[392] While in Harlem, he envisioned the formation of a global network of black people trading amongst themselves, believing that his Black Star Line would contribute to this aim.[393] 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."
There is no evidence that Garvey was ever sympathetic to socialism. While in the U.S., he strongly opposed attempts by socialist and communist groups to recruit African-Americans into the trade union movement,[395] and urged African-Americans not to support the Communist Party.[396] He viewed the communist movement as a white person's creation that was not in the interests of African-Americans.[396] 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."[396] In response, the Communist International characterised Garveyism as a reactionary bourgeoise philosophy