Marcus Garvey (1887–1940) was a Jamaican political leader, publisher, journalist, entrepreneur, and orator who was a staunch proponent of the black nationalism and Pan-Africanism movements. He founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League (UNIA-ACL), as well as the Black Star Line, part of the Back-to-Africa movement that promoted the return of the African diaspora to their ancestral lands.
Prior to the 20th century, African-American leaders advocated the involvement of the African diaspora in African affairs. Garvey was unique in advancing a Pan-African philosophy, known as Garveyism, which focused on the complete and unending redemption of the continent of Africa by people of African ancestry, both at home and abroad.
Promoted by the UNIA as a movement of African redemption, Garveyism would eventually inspire others, ranging from the Nation of Islam to the Rastafari movement, which proclaims Garvey a prophet. His intent was for those of African ancestry to "redeem" Africa and for the European colonial powers to leave. Garvey summarized his essential ideas in the Negro World editorial "African Fundamentalism," in which he wrote, “Our union must know no clime, boundary, or nationality…to let us hold together under all climes in every country….”
Marcus Garvey
Pan-African movement leader Marcus Garvey, pictured in August 1924.
In 1910, Garvey left Jamaica and began traveling throughout the Central American region. Garvey lived in London from 1912 to 1914, where he took classes in law and philosophy at Birkbeck College, worked for newspapers, and sometimes spoke at Hyde Park's Speakers' Corner. Garvey's philosophy, influenced by Booker T. Washington, Martin Delany, and Henry McNeal Turner, led him to organize the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) in Jamaica in 1914.
After corresponding with Booker T. Washington, Garvey arrived in the U.S. in 1916 to give a lecture tour. He visited Tuskegee and afterward met a number of black leaders. In May 1916, he undertook a 38-state speaking tour. In May 1917, Garvey and 13 others formed the first UNIA division outside Jamaica and began advancing the idea of social, political, and economic freedom for black people.
Garvey next set about developing a program to improve conditions for those of African ancestry "at home and abroad" under UNIA auspices. August 1918 marked the first publication of the widely distributed Negro World newspaper. By June 1919, UNIA's membership had grown to over 2 million. On June 27, 1919, the Black Star Line of Delaware was incorporated by the members of UNIA, with Garvey as President. By September, the Black Star Line obtained its first ship, rechristened as the S.S. Frederick Douglass in September 1919. By August 1920, the UNIA claimed 4 million members, the International Convention of the UNIA was held, and Garvey survived an attempt on his life.
Convinced that black people should have a permanent homeland in Africa, Garvey sought to develop Liberia. The Liberia program, launched in 1920, was intended to establish colleges, universities, industrial plants, and railroads; however, it was abandoned in the mid-1920s after strong opposition from European powers with interests in the region.
A movement of black opposition to Garvey that came to be known as the “Garvey Must Go” Campaign aimed to reveal Garvey as a fraud. Run by a group called the Friends of Negro Freedom, the campaign pressed the federal government to investigate the Black Star Line. They alleged violence by Garvey's associates, including a related to the assassination of former Garvey deputy J.W.H. Eason in New Orleans in January 1923. The “Garvey Must Go” movement also revealed that Garvey had met secretly with Ku Klux Klan leader Edward Young Clarke in June of 1922.
On January 15, 1923, U.S. Attorney General Harry M. Daugherty received a petition for a continued investigation into alleged mail fraud by Garvey that accused him of using the mail to expand the influence of his movement. Garvey was convicted of mail fraud in 1923, and beginning in February 1925 he served nearly three years of a five-year sentence in the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary. While there he wrote his “First Message to the Negroes of the World from Atlanta Prison,” in which he proclaimed, “Look for me in the whirlwind or the storm, look for me all around you, for, with God’s grace, I shall come and bring with me countless millions of black slaves who have died in America and the West Indies and the millions in Africa to aid you in the fight for Liberty, Freedom and Life.”
U.S. President Calvin Coolidge commuted Garvey’s sentence in 1927, and he was deported to Jamaica. After further political activism abroad, he died in London on June 10, 1940, at the age of 52. Schools, highways, and numerous buildings in Africa, the Caribbean, Europe, and the United States have been named in his honor. There is a bust of Garvey in the Organization of American States Hall of Heroes in Washington, D.C. Garvey's admirers have included Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Earl and Louise Little, the parents of black militant activist Malcolm X, who met each other at a UNIA convention in Montreal.