Marcus Garvey??

[msportmore]

Hello all,

Just saw the post about Nanny. Can someone PLEASE tell me why SOME North Americans seem to believe that Marcus Garvey was American? Dis man inna wan a mi class dem a callige likkle moas run mi dung a tell mi sey Marcus was American...So mi sey to misself "Watchya?" Cause a mussi wan different Marcus Garvey him did a chat bout.

Please enlighten my dawkniss

[churchgirl]

Re: Marcus Garvey??

Cudden tell yuh a tall. Perhaps because, while here in the US, he was most notable for his fight for Blacks to go back to Africa and the very large following he had and also his contributions to the Harlem Rennaissance. Das all mi cyan tink of.

Tell him, him betta recanize. [img]/forums/images/graemlins/laugh.gif[/img] Brite!

[Dr.Dudd]

Re: Marcus Garvey??

Because he did majority of his achievements in the USA and he was not defending his Jamaican heritage,but his African Heritage. He also never difrentiate between Africans of Jamaica and Africans of the USA. So on the face of it majority of members did not necessarily know that he was Jamaican. They took it for granted that he was American.
You have to take into consideration that at that time the majority of African Americans in New York were transplants too from southern states,so the few that might have known because of the quality of the education available to them.Majority couldn't find another state on the map,much more to see Jamaica as another country. They would possibly assume that it was another state so they just assumed that he was from some other state.

[evanovitch]

Re: Marcus Garvey??

this is taken from "I, Marcus Garvey"...an autobographical work based upon a document written by MG while in Tombs Prison in New York City....

FOUNDING OF THE U.N.I.A.
Immediately, I boarded a ship at Southhampton for Jamaica where I arrived on July 15, 1914. The UNIA and African Communities (Imperial) League was founded and organized five days after my arrival, with the programme of uniting all the Negro peoples of the world into one great body to establish a country and government absolutely their own. Where did the name of the organization come from. It was while speaking to a West Indian Negro who was a passenger with me from Southampton, who was returning to the West Indies from Basutoland with his Basuto wife, that I further learned of the horrors of native life in Africa. He related to me in conversation such horrible and pitiable tales that my heart bled within me.
Retiring from the conversation to my cabin, all day and the following night I pondered over the subject matter of that conversation, and at midnight, lying flat on my back, the vision and thought came to me that I should name the organization United Negro Improvement Association and African Communities (Imperial) League. Such a name I thought would embrace the purpose of all black humanity. Thus to the world a name was born, a movement created and a man became known."

......I succeeded to a great extent in establishing the association in Jamaica with the assistance of a Catholic Bishop, the Governor, Sir John Pringle, the Rev. William Graham, a Scottish clergyman and several other white friends. I got in touch with Booker Washington and told him what I wanted to do. He invited me to America and promised to speak with me in the Southern and other States to help my work. Although he died in the fall of 1915, I made my arrangements and arrived in the United States on MArch 23, 1916.

Here I found a new and different problem. I immediately visited some of the then so-called Negro leaders, only to discover, after a close study of them, that they had no programme, but were mere opportunists who were living off their so-called leadership while the poor people were groping in the dark. I travelled through 38 States and everywhere found the same condition.

I visited Tuskegee and paid respects to the dead hero, BW, and then returned to New York, where I organized the NY division of the UNIA. After instructing people in the aims amd objects of the association, I intended returning to Jamaica to perfect the Jamaican organization, but when we had enrolled about 800 or 1000 members in the Harlem district and had elected the officers, a few Negro politicians began trying to turn the movement into a political club.

Seeing that these politicians were about to destroy my ideals, I had to fight to get them out of the organization. There it was that I made my first political enemies in Harlem. They fought me until they smashed the first organization and reduced its membership to about 50.

I started again and in two months built up a new organization of about 150 members. Again the politicians came and divided us into two factions. they took away all the books of the organization, its treasury and all its belongings. At that time I was only an organizer, for it was not then my intention to remain in America, but to return to Jamaica. The organization had its proper officers elected, and I was not an officer of the NY division, but President of the Jamaica branch."

I know this is long but the entire thing is such good reading. This is but an excerpt from the entire article. Marcus did a lot of work in Jamaica. After being released from Tombs Prison, he was convicted and sentenced to 5 years in a federal penitentiary in Atlanta. He served a portion of the sentence which was commuted by President Coolidge in November 1927, on condition that he be deported to Jamaica.
Back in Jamaica, he continued to do his UNIA work and also founded the People Political Party in 1929. He contested and won a seat in the KSAC Council in that year and in 1930 lost his bid to enter the Legislative council largely because the mass of his supporters had no vote. During the KSAC election campaign he issued a manifesto which called for changes including legal reform. He criticized the Jamaican legal system and was charged with contempt of court. At that trial he was asked to apologize for statements before the court and did so. Nevertheless, he was declared guilty and sentenced to 3 months in St Catherine District Prison. While there he won his seat on the Council. While campaigning for the Legislative Council seat he was arrested for publishing an article in THE BLACKMAN. The editorial, criticizing members of the KSAC was not written by Garvey, but he was found guilty of seditious libel and sentenced to 6 months. He appealed and won.

[Dr.Dudd]

Re: Marcus Garvey??

Ivanov,this was done after he was in prison,it was not made available to the average member of his organization,and his subsiquent works was not known. Remember the communication system was not like it was today,incidentally Jamaica had no phones then because the telephone was imtroduced in the late 30's and there was no way even then to call long distance because there was no Satelite,no undersea cables and nor radio telephones,nor computers.
They just did not know that much about him,they knrw about what he proposed,but that was what most people knew about him.

[evanovitch]

Re: Marcus Garvey??

actually, in 1923, it was published in CURRENT HISTORY and was titled THE NEGRO'S GREATEST ENEMY...true Ja had no phones etc but the word to mouth was up and running and just as people would rally behind Busta and JAG Smith in later years, a black man agitating for their rights was news...had he not garnered considerable attention, he would not have been tried on so many trumped up charges in ja..he faced legal problems, political harrassment and subsequent financial problems in ja leading to his losing his home Edelweiss Park and much of his personal property...remember that it was this financial dilemna which led him to leave for England in March 1935 thinking he could recoup there...

[redafroqueen]

Re: Marcus Garvey??

this is great info!!! ... i am really enjoying reading this ... keep it coming

thanks for sharing [img]/forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[Dr.Dudd]

Re: Marcus Garvey??

Just because a book was published,that does not make it available to the masses and the lack of knowledge about the ethnicity of Garvey by many Americans was due to the difficulty with the communication process at that time.
word of mouth in Jamaica does havre any bearing on the point since that would not have helped in any way to communicate this to people in US at that time.
In those mail went by boat and it took sometimes weeks for a boat go from Jamaica to New York because it had to stop at many ports on the way.
The high way system or even overland tractor trailers did not exist. So it was the boats or nothing.
Incidentally Busta was not into representational politics yet,he only came into politics long after the 1938 riots in which he got in by accudent,because he was a loan shark that was about to loose his shirt in loans to the water front workers.
so the people was not running after him as you said,they only start after King George prepared him in UP Park Camp and used the Gleaner to placate him in the eyes of the people,because they were afraid that Norman manley genuinly wanted to improve the plight of the native Jamaicans,but that is for another post.
Incidentally the Brits blunted the peoples will by imprisoning Garvey,but they use Bustamante to neutralize norman Manley,thus blunting it again and they are still using other stretegy today.

[evanovitch]

Re: Marcus Garvey??

thank u for reading it msred...marcus came to the US in 1916 and went home in 1927...dat's 11 yrs but 5 was spent in jail...he left for england in 1935 and died 1940...he did a lot of work in ja...as he himself said...
"at 18 I had an excellent position as a manager of a large printing establishment, having under my control several men old enough to be my grandfathers. But i got mixed up with public life. I started to take an interest in the politics of my country and then I saw the injustice done to my race because it was black, and I became dissatisfied on that account. ".....
....I asked, "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?" I could not find them, and then I declared, "I will help to make them."

....My young and ambitious mind led me into flights of great imagination. I saw before me then, even as I do now, a new world of black men, not peons, serfs,dogs and slaves, but a nation of sturdy men making their impress upon civilization and causing a new light to dawn upon the human race. My brain was afire. There was a world of thought to conquer. i had to start ere it became too late and the work be not done"....

....I really never knew that there was so much colour prejudice in Jamaica, my own native home, until I started the work of the UNIA. We started immediately before the war. I had just returned from a successful trip to Europe,which was an exceptional achievement for a black man.The daily papers wrote me up with big headlines and told of my movement. But nobody wanted to be a negro....men and women as black as I , and even more so, had believed themselves white under the West Indian order of society....i had to decide whether to please my friends and be one of the "black-whites" of Jamaica, and be reasonably prosperous or come out openly and defend and help improve and protect the integrity of the black millions and suffer....the war helped a lot in arousing consciousness ...especially after the British at home rejected a large number of West Indian coloured men who wanted to be officers in the British Army. When they were told that Negroes could not be officers...they started their own propaganda,which supplemented the programme of the UNIA....with this and other contributing agencies a few of the stiff necked coloured people began to see the reasonableness of my programme, but they were firm in refusing to be known as Negroes. Furthermore, I was a black man and therefore had absolutely no right to lead....leadership should have been in the hands of a yellow or a very light man...."

Marcus was deep and that is why he is a National Hero....ironic that that last statement proved true with busta and norman...but Marcus was their equal in intellect, forward thinking and contribution to the Jamaica of today....he is much more than the prophecy of Selassie....he pioneered our independence movement and the civil rights movement in this USA...if u ever get a chance read up on him as written by himself...u will see that some of the leaders of black america at that time, were instrumental in his problems here...i know i am going on but the man is deep...not was...is...he is as relevant today as he was then

[redafroqueen]

Re: Marcus Garvey??

evan ... i am loving this to "life" not death ... since it is a breath of life to me.

thanks again!

by the way where are you finding your excerps????

[img]/forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[evanovitch]

Re: Marcus Garvey??

ms red...i have been reading and collecting books on the west indies and africa since primary school days in ja...live a country and mi modder was school techa so u know how dat go...i go home every three months and i shark down di bookstores every trip and dis trip last week i hit the mother lode...they had had some conference in ja which brought a lot of authors and books from all ova di islands...guess for that reason, a local printery reissues a booklet with MG's personal manifesto so to speak...mi tell u I grabbed it so hard...been reading and rereading it so much...

[redafroqueen]

Re: Marcus Garvey??

WOW! evan, that's AWESOME ... and exciting to get all those books filled with knowledge/history.

what a great collection you must have

[churchgirl]

Re: Marcus Garvey??

This really is quite informative Evan. You should check us out here 'Pon de Verandah' on Fridays as we run the 'Spotlight' series with info on jamaican culture - present and historic. We could definitely benefit from the info you share.

[Q3210]

Re: Marcus Garvey??

Marcus Garvey Jnr. Mr. Garvey`s son could have been born in America hence another reason to the mis-conception. ??