W.E.B. Du Bois Institute

Marcus Garvey: The Harlem YearsAuthor(s): John Henrik ClarkeSource: Transition, No. 46 (1974), pp. 14-15+17-19Published by: Indiana University Press on behalf of the W.E.B. Du Bois InstituteStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2934951 .Accessed: 10/04/2011 21:16

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TRANSITION 46

MARCUS GARVEY: THE HARLEM YEARS

John Henrik Clarke

There is now a renaissance of interest in the life of Marcus Garvey. The African Independence Explosion, that started in 1957 when the former West African colony called the Gold Coast, became an independent country, now called Ghana, helped to set this renaissance in mo- tion. Some of Marcus Garvey's dreams about African redemption were being realized. In his lifetime, he was a man who had a stubborn belief in the impossible, and came close to achieving it. During the uncertain years that followed the First World War, he built the largest Black mass movement that this country has ever seen. There was never a leader like him, before or since. His popu- larity was universal, his program for the redemption of Africa and the return of African people to their mother- land, shook the foundations of three empires.

In nearly all matters relating to the resurgence of African people, in this country and abroad, there is re- consideration of this man in his program that seemed impossible in his lifetime. His prophecy has been ful- filled in the independence explosion that brought more than 30 African nations into being. The concept of Black Power that he advocated, using other terms, is now a reality in large areas of the world where the people of African origin are predominant.

Marcus Garvey's principal areas of agitation were the Afro-American struggle in the United States, his native Caribbean Islands and the universe of Black humanity everywhere. From the year of his arrival in the United States in 1916 until his deportation in 1927, the ethnic community called Harlem was his window on the world. From this vantage point he became one of the great figures ofthe 20th century.

It is no accident that Marcus Garvey had his greatest success in the United States among Black Americans in the community called Harlem. He came to the United States and began to build this movement at a time of great disenchantment among Afro-Americans who had pursued the "American Dream," until they had to con- cede that the dream was not dreamed for them. They had listened to the "American Promise," and also conceded

that the promise was not made to them. Marcus Garvey gave them the vision of a new dream, a new promise, and a new land. He restored hope where hope had been lost. This is the real relevance of Marcus Garvey for today.

In the years following the end of the First World War, when America's promise to us had been betrayed, again we looked once more toward Africa and dreamed of a time and place where our essential manhood was not questioned.

A leader emerged and tried to make this dream into a reality. His name was Marcus Garvey. The personality and the movement founded by Marcus Garvey, together with the writers and artists of the Renaissance period, helped to put the community of Harlem on the map. While the literary aspect of the Renaissance was unfold- ing, Marcus Garvey and his Universal Negro Improve- ment Association, using Harlem as his base of operation, built the largest mass movement among black people that this country had ever seen. This movement had international importance and was considered to be a threat to the colonial powers of Europe which were entrenched in Africa.

This magnetic and compelling personality succeeded in building a mass movement after other men had failed. This may be due to the fact that he was born and reared in an age of conflict that affected the world of African peoples everywhere.

The appearance of the Garvey movement was perfectly timed. The broken promises of the postwar period had produced widespread cynicism in the Black popula- tion which had lost some of its belief in itself as a people. Adam Clayton Powell, Sr. wrote of Garvey: "He is the only man that made Negroes not feel ashamed of their color." In his book, Marching Blacks, Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. wrote:

Marcus Garvey was one of the greatest mass leaders of all time. He was misunderstood and maligned, but he brought to the Negro people for the first time a sense of pride in being black.

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The Garvey movement had a profound effect on the political development of Harlem and on the lives of both the Adam Clayton Powells. The fight to make Harlem a Congressional Districl began during the Garvey period.

In his New World A-coming, Roi Ottley (1943) observed that,

Garvey leaped into the ocean of black unhappiness at a most timely moment for a savior. He had witnessed the Negro's disillusionment mount with the progress of the World War. Negro soldiers had suffered all forms of Jim-Crow, humilia- tion, discrimination, slander, and even violence at the hands of a white civilian population. After the war, there was a resurgence of Ku Klux Klan influence: another decade of racial hatred and open lawlessness had set in, and Negroes again were prominent among the victims. Meantime, admi- nistration leaders were quite pointed in trying to persuade Negroes that in spite of their full participation in the war effort they could expect no changes in their traditional status in America.

This attitude had helped to create the atmosphere into which a Marcus Garvey could emerge. In many ways the scene was being prepared for Marcus Garvey for over one hundred years before he was born. There is no way to understand this without looking at the American antecedents of Marcus Garvey, i.e., the men, forces and movements that came before him.

During the eighteenth century there was strong agita- tion among certain groups of Black people in America for a return to Africa. This agitation was found mainly among groups of 'free Negroes' because of the uncer- tainty of their position as freed men in a slaveholding society. "One can see it late into the eighteenth century," Dr. DuBois explains in his book Dusk of Dawn, "when the Negro Union of Newport, Rhode Island, in 1788, proposed to the Free African Society of Philadelphia a general exodus to Africa on the part of at least free Negroes"

The Back-to-Africa idea has been a recurring theme in Afro-American life and thought for more than a hundred years. This thought was strong during the formative years of the Colonization Society and succeeded in con- vincing some of the most outstanding Black men of the 18th and 19th centuries, such as: John Russwurm, the first Black college graduate (Bowdoin, 1820), and Lott Carey, the powerful Virginia preacher. Later the Society fell into severe disrepute after an argument with the Abolitionists.

Marcus Garvey was not the first West Indian to play a vital role in the Afro-American freedom struggle. West Indians have been coming to the United States for over a century. The part they have played in the pro- gress of the Afro-American in his long march from sla- very to freedom has always been an important factor. More important is the fact that the most outstanding of these Caribbean-Americans saw their plight and the plight of the Afro-American as being one ai d the same.

As early as 1827, a Jamaican, John B. Russwurm, one of the founders of Liberia, was the first colored man to be graduated from an American college and to publish a newspaper in this country; 16 years later his fellow countryman, Peter Ogden, organized in New York City the first Odd-Fellows Lodge for Negroes. Prior to the Civil War, West Indian coi tribution to the progress of Afro-American life was one of the main contributing factors in the fight for freedom and full citizenship in the northern part of the United States.

In his book Souls of Black Folk, Dr. W. E. B. DuBois says that the West Indians were mainly responsible for the manhood program presented by the race in the early decades of the last century. Indicative of their tendency to blaze new paths is the achievement of John W. A. Shaw of Antigua, who, in the early 90's of the last century passed the civil service tests and became deputy commis- sioner of taxes for the County of Queens in New York State.

In 18th century America, two of the most outstanding figures for liberty and justice were the West Indians- Prince Hall and John B. Russwurm. When Prince Hall came to the United States the nation was in turmoil. The colonies were ablaze with indignation. Britain, with a series of revenue acts, had stoked the fires of colonial dis- content. In Virginia, Patrick Henry was speaking of liberty or death. The cry "No Taxation Without Repre- sentation" played on the nerve strings of the nation. Prince Hall, then a delicate-looking teenager, often walk- ed through the turbulent streets of Boston, an observer unobserved.

A few months before these hectic scenes, he had arrived in the United States from his home in Barbados, where he had been born about 1748, the son of an Englishman and a free African woman. He was, in theory, a free man, but he knew that neither in Boston nor in Barbados were persons of African descent free in fact. At once, he ques- tioned the sincerity of the vocal white patriots of Boston. It never seemed to have occurred to them that the an- nounced principles motivating their action was-stronger argument in favor of destroying the system of slavery. The colonists held in servitude more than a half million human beings, some of them white; yet they engaged in the contradiction of going to war to support the theory that all men were created equal.

More than a hundred years of struggle, agitation and disenchantment would follow this period. When Marcus Garvey began his organizational work in the United States a large number of Black Americans were willing to listen to him.

In Philosophy and Opinions Marcus Garvey would later ask himself: "Where is the black man's government? Where is his king and his kingdom ? Where is his president, his country and his ambassador, his army, his navy, his men of big affairs?" He could not answer the question affirma tively, so he decided to make the Black man's go- vernment, king and kingdom, president ana men of big affairs. He taught his people to dream big again; he reminded them that they had once been kings and rulers of great nations and would be again. The cry "Up you mighty race, you can accomplish what you will" was a call to the Black man to reclaim his best self and re-enter the mainstream of world history. When Marcus Garvey came to the United States in 1916, World War I had already started. The migration of Black workers from the South to the new war industries in the North and eastern parts of the United States was in full swing. Dis- satisfaction, discontent, and frustration among millions of Black Americans were accelerating this migration. The atmosphere and the condition was well prepared for the message and the program of Marcus Garvey.

* He came to the United States in 1916, one year after the

death of Booker T. Washington. He had exchanged cor- respondence with Booker T. Washington with the hope

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of securing some means to build, in Jamaica, a school similar to Tuskegee in Alabama. Unfortunately, Booker T. Washington had died the previous year.

Marcus Garvey's plans for the self-determination of his people are outlined in the following excerpts from "Aims and Objects of Movement for Solution of Negro Problem" issued by Marcus Garvey as President- General of Universal Negro Improvement Association, 1924.

The Universal Negro Improvement Association is an orga- nization among Negroes that is seeking to improve the con- dition of the race, with the view of establishing a Nation in Africa where Negroes will be given the opportunity to develop by themselves, without creating the hatred and ani- mosity that now exist in countries of the white race through Negroes rivaling them for the highest and best positions in government, politics, society and industry. This organiza- tion believes in the rights of all men, yellow, white and black. To us, the white race has a right to the peaceful possession and occupation of countries of its own and in like manner the yellow and black races have their rights .. Only by an honest and liberal consideration of such rights can the world be blessed with the peace that is sought by Christian tea- chers and leaders.

The Spiritual Brotherhood of Man. The following pre- amble to the Constitution of the organization speaks for itself: The Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities' League is a social, friendly, humani- tarian, charitable, educational, institutional, constructive, and expansive society and is founded by persons, desiring to the utmost, to work for the general uplift of the Negro peoples of the world. And the members pledge themselves to do all in their power to conserve the rights of all mankind, believing always in the Brotherhood of Man and the Father- hood of God. The motto of the organization is: One God! One Aim! One Destiny! Therefore, let justice be done to all mankind, realizing that if the strong oppresses the weak, confusion and discontent will ever mark the path of man, but with love, faith and charity toward all, the reign of peace and plenty will be heralded into the world and the genera- tions of men shall be called Blessed.

The declared Objects of the Association are: To establish a Universal Confraternity among the race; to promote the spirit of pride and love; to reclaim the fallen; to administer to and assist the needy, to assist in civilizing the backward tribes of Africa; to assist in the development of Independent Negro Nations and Communities; to establish a central nation for the race; to establish Comrrissionaries or Agencies in the principal countries and cities of the world for the representation of all Negroes.

The early twenties were times of change and accom- plishment in the Harlem community. It was the period when Harlem was literally put on the map. Two events made this possible: a literary movement known as the Harlem Renaissance and the emergence in Harlem of the magnetic and compelling personality of Marcus Garvey. He was the most seriously considered and the most color- ful of the numerous black Manassehs who presented themselves and their grandiose programs to the people of Harlem.

Marcus Garvey's reaction to color prejudice and his search for a way to rise above it and lead his people back to Africa, spiritually if not physically, was the all-con- suming passion of his existence. His glorious and ro- mantic movement exhorted the Black people of the world and fixed their eyes on the bright star of a future in which they could reclaim and rebuild their African homeland and heritage.

Garvey succeeded in building a mass movement among American Blacks while other leaders were attempting it and doubting that it could be done. He advocated the return of Africa to the Africans and people of African descent.

He organized, very boldly, the Black Star Line, a steamship company for transporting cargoes of African produce to the United States, and because of this spread rapidly throughout the Caribbean area and Central and South America, among West Indian migrant laborers. And due to the effectiveness of the American mass media of communication, it penetrated into the continent of Africa.

One year after he entered the United States, in 1917, he made a speaking tour of the principal cities, building up a national following. By 1919 he had branches well esta- blished all over the world preparing to send delegates and representatives of fraternal organizations to "the first International Convention of the Negro Peoples of the World," which was held in August 1920 in New York City.

The first public mass meeting was held at Madison Square Garden -the largest auditorium in the state, and white reporters conceded that about 25,000 assembled inside the auditorium, and there was an overflow standing in the streets.

The significance of this thirty-day convention was that for the first time representatives of African people from all over the world met in sessions to report on conditions under which they lived-socially, economically and politically-and to discuss remedial measures.

After the historic First UNIA International Conven- tion of the Negro Peoples of the World in 1920, the cry, "Africa for the Africans, those at home and those abroad," became part of the folklore of the Black Americans. The most important document that came out ot this convention was the Declaration of the Rights of the Negro Peoples of the World. Marcus Garvey had started negotiations with the President of Liberia for colonization and development of Africa by Western world Blacks. This was the beginning of the hope and heartbreak of Marcus Garvey's colonization scheme.

Between 1920 and 1925 the Garvey Movement rose to great heights and in spite of its troubles, continued to grow. This is the period in which the Movement had its greatest success and was under the severest criticism. The Convention of 1920 was a monumental achievement in Black organization. This convention came in the years after the First World War, when the promises to Black Americans had been broken, lynching was rampant, and when Blacks were still recovering from "the red summer of 1919," in which there were race riots in most of the major cities and the white unemployed took out their grievances on the Blacks, who many times were com- peting with them for the few available jobs. During this time, Marcus Garvey brought the Black Star Line into being and into a multiplicity of troubles. He divorced his wife and married another, and made his name and his organization household words in nearly every part of the world where Black people lived.

The trials and tribulations of the Black Star Line would read like the libretto of a comic opera, except the events were both hectic and tragic, and there were more villains than heroes involved in this attempt to restore to Black people a sense of worth and nationness.

Marcus Garvey's trouble with the courts started soon after the formation of the Black Star Line. The charges and counter-charges relating to the Black Star Line were

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the basis of most of his troubles and the cause of his con- viction and being sent to Atlanta Prison. This was the beginning of the end of the greatest years of the Garvey Movement.

The years of triumph and tragedy were building years, searching years and years of magnificent dreaming. Marcus Garvey's vision of Africa had lifted the spirit of Black Americans out of the Depression that followed the First World War. The UNIA's African Legions and Black Cross Nurses became familiar sights on the streets of Harlem. The UNIA grew in membership and in sup- port of all kinds. Garvey was the beating heart of the movement. His persuasive voice and prolific writings and his effective use of pageantry struck a responsive chord throughout the Black communities of America and abroad. Branches of the Movement were established in Latin America, wherever there were large Caribbean communities. An African Orthodox Church was founded in America. Now the Black man was searching for a new God, as well as a new land.

The Garvey Movement began to take effective roots in America when millions of Blacks had begun to feel that they would never know full citizenship with dignity in this country where their ancestors had been brought against their will, and where they had contributed to the wealth and development of the country in spite of condi- tions of previous servitude. Against this background of broken promises and fading hope, Marcus Garvey began to build a world-wide Black movement. This, the first Black mass protest crusade in the history of the United States began to pose serious problems for white America. This movement also posed serious problems for the then existing Black leadership, especially for Dr. W. E. B. DuBois.

In the article, "DuBois Versus Garvey: Race Propa- gandists at War," the writer Elliott M. Rudnick outlines the origins of the conflict between these two Black giants who looked at the world from different vantage points. Both of them were Pan-Africanists and both of them had as their objectives the freedom and redemption of African people everywhere. Yet, there was no meeting of the minds on the methods of reaching these desirable goals, In the article Rudnick says: "Unlike DuBois, Marcus Garvey was able to gain mass support and his propa- ganda had a tremendous emotional appeal. He esta- blished the Universal Negro Improvement Association in New York (with branches in many U.S. cities and several foreign countries). The aim of the organization was the liberation of Africa. By 1919, he set up the Black Star Line and the Negro Factories Corporation. In August, 1920, Garvey called a month-long convention of the U.N.I.A. in New York City. In the name of '400,000,000 Negroes of the World,' he declared that Africa must be free. He did not bother to display the restraint which characterized Pan-African leaders and many of his remarks were inflammatory. He warned that his race was prepared to shed its blood to remove the whites from the natives' rightful land in Africa. His con- vention delegates and members paraded through Harlem. Tens of thousands of Negroes were excited by the massed units of the African Legion in blue and red uniforms and the white-attired contingents of the Black Cross Nurses. Garvey's followers sang the new U.N.I.A. anthem, 'Ethiopia, Thou Land of Our Fathers' and they

proudly waved the Association's flag (black for Negro skin, green for Negro hopes, and red for Negro blood). Never again was the race to have a leader who could pro- duce such a wonderful show."

DuBois publicly ignored Garvey until December of 1920 and this tardiness of editorial recognition was probably due to the Crisis editor's ambivalence toward him. Du- Bois was profoundly impressed 'by "this extraordinary leader of men," and he acknowledged that Garvey was "essentially an honest and sincere man with a tremendous vision, great dynamic force, stubborn determination and unselfish desire to serve." However, the Crisis editor also considered him to be:

... dictatorial, domineering, inordinately vain and very sus- picious ... The great difficulty with him is that he has abso- lutely no business sense, no flair for real organization and his general objects are so shot through with bombast and exaggeration that it is difficult to pin them down for careful examination.

The following month, after DuBois had requested (and failed to receive) a financial statement from the Jamaican on the Negro Improvement Association and the Black Star Line, the Crisis editor wrote: "When it comes to Mr Garvey's industrial and commercial enterprises there is more ground for doubt and misgiving than in the mat- ter of his character."

At least once DuBois entertained the idea that his own hopes for Africa's reclamation and an international Black economy could be achieved through Garvey's mass appeal. The two men were not strangers to each other before Garvey came to the United States in 1916. In the years between their first meeting and the eve of the Second Pan-African Congress, DuBois had built a Black intel- lectual movement, while Garvey had built a Black mass movement.

* Garvey and his movement had a short and spectacular

life span in the United States. His movement took really effective form in the United States in about 1919, and by 1926 he was in a Federal prison, charged with misusing the mails. From prison he was deported home to Ja- maica. This is, briefly, the essence of the Garvey saga in America.

Marcus Garvey, who was duly elected Provisional Presi- dent of Africa by his followers, was never allowed to set foot on African soil. He spoke no African language. But Garvey managed to convey to African people everywhere (and to the rest of the world) his passionate belief that Africa was the home of a civilization which had once been great and would be great again. When one takes into consideration the slenderness of Garvey's resources and the vast material forces, social conceptions and imperial interests which automatically sought to destroy him, his achievement remains one of the great propa- ganda miracles of this century.

Garvey's voice reverberated inside Africa itself. The King of Swaziland later told Mrs Marcus Garvey that he knew the names of only two Black men in the Western world: Jack Johnson, the boxer who defeated the white man Jim Jeffries, and Marcus Garvey. From his narrow vantage point in Harlem, Marcus Garvey became a world figure.

After years of neglect, new interest in the life and ideas of this remarkable man has created a Marcus

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Garvey Renaissance. In his homeland, Jamaica, he has been proclaimed a national hero. All over the Black world he is being reconsidered with respect and reve- rence. His greatness lies in the fact that he was daring enough to dream of a better future for Black people, wherever they live on this earth.

The Garvey movement began to fragment and decline concurrently with the end of the Harlem Renaissance. This period had a meaning that is generally missed by most people who write about it. This movement had indigenous roots and it could have existed without the concern and interest of white people. This concern, often

overstated, gave the movement a broader and more colorful base, and may have extended its life span. The movement was the natural and logical result of years of neglect, suppression, and degradation. Black Americans were projecting themselves as human beings and de- manding that their profound humaneness be accepted. It was the first time a large number of Black writers, artists, and intellectuals took a unified walk into the North American sun.

The Black nationalists and freedom fighters before and after Marcus Garvey were saying, no more or less than what Garvey had said in word and deed: "Up! Up! You mighty race. You can accomplish what you will."[]

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