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Marcus Mosiah Garvey was born on August 7, 1887 in St. Ann's Bay, Jamaica, West Indies. His father was a stonemason and with the help of his wife Sarah, the family maintained a modest living through subsistence farming. Marcus Garvey abandoned formal learning at a young age and by 14 was serving as an apprentice in his godfather's printing business. Soon after, he moved to Kingston and became acquainted with the anti-colonialist and Black Nationalism themes that later dominated his philosophy. After some traveling, Garvey, inspired by the work of Booker T. Washington, organized the UNIA in Kingston, Jamaica in 1914. His organization had little success in Kingston, and on March 23, 1916, Garvey arrived in New York City. He launched a series of lectures in the United States and Canada to raise funds for the UNIA. A year later he settled in Harlem and became known for his street corner lectures. New York had become the capital of the black world, the place to which great numbers of southern blacks migrated. They were receptive to Garvey's ideas because of the rampant discrimination and violence they faced from whites competing for the same jobs, especially after World War I. In August of 1920, 25,000 African Americans attended the first UNIA convention at Madison Square Garden. Garvey was elected president general of the UNIA, and issued a Declaration of Rights of the Negro Peoples of the World. As a Black Nationalist organization, the goals of the UNIA were focused on social, economic and political self-determination. This included establish-ing a shipping line for its members to return to Africa, and Garvey heading an independent state. These plans were abandoned after financial mismanagement led to the collapse of the UNIA's Black Star Line in 1921. Garvey was imprisoned and indicted for mail fraud in 1922. He or his staff had apparently oversold thousands of shares in the shipping line business. The U.S. government was assisted in their efforts by NAACP officials and most notably W.E.B. DuBois who sought to discredit the movement. Garvey served nearly three years of a five-year sentence. His early release was secured by a petition drive launched by his wife Amy Jacques Garvey who also edited and published a two-volume work entitled The Philosophy and Opinions of Marcus Garvey. Garvey was deported to Jamaica on his release in 1925 and never allowed to return to the U.S. again. He suffered a stroke in London and died there on June 10, 1940. His legacy is the largest nationalist movement ever created for people of African descent in history. Its membership reached 1 million strong during the 1920s, and Garvey is still celebrated as a national hero in Jamaica.
Africana: The Encyclopedia of African and African American Experience
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