Marcus Garvey's Vision of Black Nationalism

Marcus Garvey was an important figure in black America in the era between the two World Wars, and he organized a black movement that had considerable influence over subsequent black movements. He was one of the leaders in the movement seeking an African homeland, and he achieved an international following because of his particular abilities as a showman as well as an organizer. Many of Garvey's ideas have been rejected as the civil rights movement has altered course over the years, but it is time to reconsider and to examine some of the important and valuable ideas set forth by Garvey.

Garvey was a native of Jamaica who started a Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) in that country in 1914, and his first manifesto called on all people of African heritage to establish a "Universal Confraternity." He met with hostility or indifference, and two years later he came to New York and revived the UNIA. The organization had a slow start but became in time a major force as it stirred the imagination of the black masses. Garvey did this with a peculiar vision of Pan-African nationalism at a time when W.E.B. DuBois's form of Pan-Africanism could not get a foothold. Garvey and DuBois were indeed rivals and enemies, and each criticized the other in harsh terms.

Garvey was born in 1887 and first followed in his father's footsteps as an apprentice printer, becoming in time a journeyman and foreman in that trade. He was involved in a typographical union and printers' stri

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st and placed more emphasis on Negro separatism and black nationalism. He proposed that blacks should return to their "African homeland" and establish a black republic or monarchy with himself as head. He created a number of special organizations to direct the return of blacks to Africa. His appeal was largely to the "internal proletariat" among blacks, and he found an enthusiastic response from the poorer, darker-skinned migrants from the South, for they responded to the elaborate rituals, colorful regalia, and grandiose titles used by Garvey. Garvey was a showman and reached out for an international following, and to this end he established his own newspaper and sent emissaries to other countries: He had the common touch, which the more austere--but in the end more realistic--NAACP leaders could never capture. More and more as his movement progressed, Garvey emphasized racial purity and separatism and rejected the possibility that members of different races might live in close proximity on an equal basis. He had a low estimation of light-skinned blacks and glorified color. Garveyism made "nationhood" the highest ideal of all peoples and then stated that blacks needed a nation and country of their own. The problem faci

Category: History - M