Jamaican Marcus Mosiah Garvey arguably represents the most significant leader of African Americans in American History. While the successes of other Black leaders like Booker T. Washington, Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X and others may have been more successful at leading in their own time, the pursuits Garvey dedicated the whole of his life to would culminate in an economic-based plan for complete redemption and liberation of all Blacks. As Carter (2002) maintains, ôGarveyÆs capitalistic approach to the economic development of African Americans in the United States...became the procedural and conceptual model for future achievements in African American economic developmentö (1).
At the behest of Booker T. Washington, the self-educated Garvey, who labored as a printerÆs apprentice, journeyed to the U.S. His arrival occurred after the death of Washington, and Garvey began extensive travel throughout the U.S. The America of 1916 was experiencing a prosperity that few nations ever witnessed. The bourgeoning industrial revolution was transforming the American landscape and economy. It was not, Garvey felt, transforming the situation of Black Americans whose influence decreased in proportion to the increase in the power of wealthy capitalists. Garvey formulated a nationalist plan to develop the collective interests of African Americans. GarveyÆs ability to galvanize millions of African Americans to support his plans for Black redemption and liberation through self-reliant economic production made him a direct threat to the most powerful û and white û economic and political forces in U.S. society.
Before addressing the specific ways in which the leadership of Marcus Garvey was viewed as a threat by the white power structure of the 1920s, it is important for a better understanding of this perception of him to briefly revisit the two political theories underlying American capitalism. The conservative viewpoint argue...