Marcus Garvey ignited one of the most phenomenal social movements in modern history and was admired around the world. Yet few today understand his quest to promote the economic and cultural advancement of Black people.
In January, former President Biden’s posthumous pardon of Garvey created a moment to resurface the vision of the pan-African pioneer. President Trump’s efforts to dismantle inclusive policies in federal and corporate workplaces may provide new impetus for applying Garvey’s vision today.
Garvey came to the U.S. in 1916 during a period of reactionary politics in opposition to a growing Black urban migration. It was a time of mob lynching in the South, campaigns to deny housing and jobs in the North and hooligan riots to eliminate Black settlements in cities across the country. President Woodrow Wilson took steps to resegregate the federal workplace and erode the Black civil service even as he called on Black men to enlist during World War I.
In the midst of despair, Garvey found a way to lift the spirits of the urban folk by nurturing an affirming statement of Black pride and achievement. His organization, the Universal Negro Improvement Association (U.N.I.A.), advocated for Pan-African awareness with the slogan “One God, One Aim, One Destiny.”
U.N.I.A. was centered in Harlem with branches across the country and overseas, growing by 1920 to become the largest Black organization ever developed. It was not a civil rights group seeking integration — members viewed that agenda as impractical and potentially fatal — but an omnibus syndicate for self-help in the Black urban community.
U.N.I.A. provided laborers, cooks, porters, messengers and other common folk with the confidence of belonging to an organization with a global reach. Garvey was a master of the symbolic gesture and developed popular imagery, such as the red, black and green Pan-African flag.
Garvey used parades and rallies to excite the imagination and attract many thousands of dues-paying members. To established Black leaders, such as W.E.B. DuBois of the NAACP, Garvey’s ornate uniform and grandiose ambitions were ridiculous. What critics failed to appreciate was how Garvey drew on historical memory to inspire the masses. For example, his uniform modeled the garb of the victorious 18th-century revolutionary leaders of Haiti, adapting elements of the military uniform of Jean Jacques Dessalines — the first leader of an independent Black republic — and created a spectacle of sovereignty.
Economically, Garvey’s program went beyond small community outlets. He appealed to U.N.I.A. members and the Black community in general to collectively invest in larger ventures. In 1920, he founded U.N.I.A.’s financial arm, the Negro Factories Corporation, to underwrite community enterprises. It was capitalized at $1 million through the sale of 200,000 shares of common stocks at $5 per share. Working-class people bought stock by combining savings, according to Juliet E. K. Walker’s book “The History of Black Business in America.”
The corporation invested in an array of companies to serve the needs of urban consumers, such as a textile factory in Harlem to make uniforms for U.N.I.A. members and dolls for Black children. It opened three grocery stores, two restaurants, a steam laundry and a printing press for the weekly “Negro World” newspaper, with a circulation of 200,000.
U.N.I.A. owned modest buildings and encouraged branches to provide mutual aid to members in need, including small loans, death benefits and employment assistance. For Garvey, the organization’s rapid expansion was the triumph of a long vision of concern over the state of the pan-African world.
Marcus Mosiah Garvey was born in Jamaica in 1887, then still under British rule. He left Jamaica in 1910 to work on the British-owned plantations. According to the “Philosophy and Opinions of Marcus Garvey,” he was appalled at the abuse of Black workers, wondering, “Where is the Black man’s government? Where are his men of big affairs? I could not find them, and I will help to make them.”
He next went to London to work and attended public lectures on African history, researching rare books in libraries in search of the neglected story of the pan-African experience. He was inspired by Booker T. Washington’s memoir “Up from Slavery,” and his effort to develop a program of industrial education at Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, and support Black towns and businesses through the National Negro Business League.
Garvey returned to Jamaica hoping to start an industrial education school and established U.N.I.A. as the management arm. He wrote to Booker T. Washington and was invited to visit Tuskegee to learn the operation, but Washington passed away a few months before Garvey arrived in America. During the visit, Garvey toured 38 states and was disenchanted with the racial conditions — and the Black political leadership — but found the folk receptive to appeals for collective action.
He opened a U.N.I.A. chapter in Harlem as urban migration fostered a cosmopolitan community, then expanded to 30 other cities. In 1920, Garvey hosted a month-long conference that drew 25,000 members to Madison Square Garden, where he issued the poignant “Declaration of Rights of the Negro Peoples of the World,” which demanded independence for Africa from European and Arab colonization and justice for Blacks of the diaspora.
U.N.I.A. influenced the development of cultural institutions like the African Orthodox Church as well, founded in 1921. But the rapid expansion exceeded its managerial expertise and aggravated financial missteps and poor business decisions. Such was the case with Garvey’s ill-fated idea to start a shipping company, the Black Star Steamship Line, in a highly competitive industry. Established in 1922, it was meant to carry goods to seaports in the Caribbean and to Liberia, the first African republic and adopted home of “Garveyites.”
The solicitation of stocks for the purchase of three run-down ships raised concerns of mismanagement by shareholders, drawing the attention of federal prosecutors already keeping watch on Garvey and U.N.I.A. In 1923, in a trial that supporters viewed as politically motivated, Garvey was convicted on a single charge of federal mail fraud involving a $25 contribution to the steamship line.
In 1925, Garvey was sentenced to the maximum term of five years. In 1927, President Calvin Coolidge commuted the sentence and deported Garvey to Jamaica. As a convicted felon, he was prevented from returning to America. In later years, he attempted to rekindle U.N.I.A. in Jamaica and London but was tarnished by the conviction. He died in 1940 in London at the age of 53.
Garvey’s accomplishments were largely forgotten by history until the reggae band Burning Spear revived his vision in songs. Eventually, Jamaica recovered his body for a state burial and established the Marcus Garvey Prize for Human Rights. Some African countries adapted elements of the Pan-African flag, and Ghana named its state shipping company in honor of the Black Star Line.
During an earlier period of reactionary politics in America, Garvey created a movement that enabled Black people to be proud of their cultural heritage, engage in meaningful cooperative economics and embrace a common destiny for “Mother Africa.” As America rejects inclusive workplace policies today, his vision may be relevant once again.
Roger House is professor emeritus of American Studies at Emerson College and the author of “Blue Smoke: The Recorded Journey of Big Bill Broonzy” and “South End Shout: Boston’s Forgotten Music Scene in the Jazz Age.” His forthcoming book is “Five Hundred Years of Black Self-Governance: A Call to Conscience.”
