Chapter 8: MARCUS GARVEY AND THE UNIVERSAL NEGRO IMPROVEMENT ASSOCIATION
While Randolph published the Messenger and founded the Friends of Negro Freedom, Marcus Garvey established a flourishing mass movement, the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) and a formidable mass-circulation newspaper, the Negro World. Garvey repudiated both Randolph's trans-race working-class alliance and Du Bois's interracial moral suasion in favor of a "race first" strategy frankly based upon eternal race war. Garvey insisted that an alliance with any significant portion of the white race, whether based on self-interest or morality, was impossible. Greed, not sentiment, ruled humanity; whites repeatedly demonstrated that race, not class or nationality, was the basic unit of human society. "You cannot get away from race," Garvey warned. "I do not care how far you go, how far your travels be, you cannot get away from your race. You will have to come back some day or the other; it is only a question of time [until] we will be driven back to the race" by white conduct, even if not by our own desires. "Mobs of white men all over the world" would "lynch and burn Negroes.... No mercy, no respect, no justice will be shown the Negro until he forces all other men to respect him."[1] Africans at home and abroad would compel such respect by constructing black economic enterprises, racial consciousness and pride, and ultimately an independent black nation in Africa. Garvey reached millions with this message through his ecstatically received speeches, prominently reprinted (and circulated throughout the Western hemisphere) in the Negro World.
Echoing the widespread Social Darwinist ideas of his age, Garvey asserted that "the survival of the fittest" was the inexorable law of human life. Referring to the wildly popular (among blacks) Afro-American heavyweight boxing champion, Garvey said that "this is the Jack Johnson age, when the fittest will survive." The question was that "of a man proving himself fit to live. I say to you here tonight that if you are fit to live you will live; if you are not fit you will die." Garvey unabashedly accepted racism as natural and inevitable, and conceded that blacks, given the opportunity, would oppress other races as whites oppressed blacks. Negroes must put aside their individualism and cooperate with each other simply because they had no alternative. Garvey said that "If I could have successfully gotten out of the colored race, I would not be here tonight... but I know this, being a Negro like you, whatsoever happens to you as a race is bound to happen to me. If I were a white man I would not give two rows of pins whether you stay at home, or play on the piano, or go to the moving picture. If I were a Jew my interests would be with the Jews; if I were an Irishman my interests would be with the Irish, if I were an Anglo-Saxon my interests would be with the Anglo-Saxons. Now that I am a Negro, with whom must my interests be but with you?"[2]
Racial consciousness, pride, and unity were Garvey's preferred weapons in the fight against white supremacy. Africans must rise as a race, not as individuals; only collective consciousness and collective action could redeem Africa and the race. Because "all white men are white men... all Negroes should be Negroes," whatever their nationality, class, or skin color. Racial identity was "the greatest weapon the Negro has for his development." All Negroes were bound together by common blood, the greatness of their past civilization, their history of slavery and colonization, and their present experiences of white dominion. "The second you forget the sufferings of the past," he said, "that very moment you become defeated in the struggle of life." Criticizing divisions within the black race based on skin color, Garvey said that the UNIA "is for everybody, so long as you have one drop of black blood in your veins." Garvey warned that whites would "try to divide you, telling you that you are colored, you are black, and therefore you are not one. They themselves say that we are Negroes, with even one drop of black blood." Garvey demanded that "a new and worthy race" emerge from "the 400,000,000 of our people who have for centuries dragged out an existence as serfs and peons under the domination of alien forces and alien races.... The Negro, like the rest of mankind, has a place in the world. His place, however, will not be given to him by others, but he must take and occupy it.... This can only be done when each and every member of the race realizes the consciousness of self--that each and every one has a part to play."[3]
While Garvey was unsparing in his criticism of white atrocities and oppression, he also praised the energy, self-confidence, and creativity of the whites, who furthered their interests at whatever cost to other races. "I admire the white man for his strategy," Garvey said. "I admire him for his pluck and daring. I will never curse the white man, I will never oppose the white man, because he has been the master genius of civilization." In a similar vein, Garvey praised William Hearst, a vituperative racist, as a statesman who "loves his race. He can see nothing else but his race." Garvey declared that "If I were a white man, Hearst would be my best friend; but since I am a black man, Hearst is my bitter enemy." Garvey also praised the Jews as role models whose accumulation of wealth and power in the face of Christian hostility showed the way for blacks. Using an anti-Semitic canard as high praise, Garvey said that the Jews, everywhere despised, were too numerically weak for physical conquest. They therefore planned for centuries "a financial conquest of the world," which "was realized in the last war. Let me tell you: it was not the Kaiser who made the war; it was not the English statesmen who made the war; it was the Jew who made the war and the Jew who stopped the war. Jewish financiers, Jewish capital in London, in Paris, in Berlin and in Petrograd financed and started the war" and Russian Jewish capital stopped it after "the Jew had the promise of Palestine." The Jews thus exemplified "the rise of a race from a position of serfdom, exclusion and oppression, to the proud place of controlling the wealth and commerce of the world."[4]
Garvey extolled the benefits of American racism in inculcating black racial identity and consciousness, alleging that "the honest prejudice of the South was sufficiently evident to give the Negro of America the real start--the start with a race consciousness, which I am convinced is responsible for the state of development already achieved by the race." In Garvey's native Jamaica, the ruling whites emphasized class rather than race as a strategy of dominion; by seemingly accepting a small number of successful blacks and "colored" people of mixed descent as nominal equals, they diffused racial consciousness and divided the African majority against itself. "In the WEST INDIES Negroes outnumber whites one hundred to one. [Whites] do not lynch Negroes because the odds are too great. [The] white man goes up to the Negro with a bible in his hands instead of a rope. He tells you that you are as good as he, but he sees to it that you never get above the station in life that he intends. He makes economic conditions such that he keeps you too poor to mix up in his society and join his clubs. The higher class Negro in the WEST INDIES holds the poor class down" because successful blacks and creoles distanced themselves from their poorer brethren. "Fourteen thousand people could not in the wildest dream stand in the way of eight hundred thousand people if those people had common sense, if they had even horse sense," Garvey said. "Conditions racially depend on yourselves because some of you Negroes refuse to admit what you are, you want to be everything except what God created you to be.... In Jamaica every man represents a race to himself--the most peculiar country for the race question I have ever met."[5]
Inescapable American racism, however, was a positive good which united blacks of all complexions and conditions as a racial class of their own. "We have no hatred for the Southern White Man," Garvey claimed. "I believe that the Southern White Man is the best friend the Negro ever had. But for the Southern White man the Negro would still be asleep. He 'JIM CROWED' you and he KICKED you. That aroused class consciousness. If it were not for the attitude of the white man I would be addressing Negro congregations with white wives. Lynching did more to arouse consciousness in the Negro than anything else. [Virulent racists] HOKE SMITH, TILLMAN and SMUTS are the Negroes' best friends. Their attitude towards the Negro caused the Negro to wake up to class prejudice. I am a SMITH, SMUTS and TILLMAN all in one word. If we had not been lynched and jim-crowed, we would never have awakened and started a Republic in Africa."[6]
Garvey believed that "man is wicked, man is envious, man is murderous, and you can expect very little of man. The only protection against injustice in man is power, physical power, financial power, educational power, scientific power, power of every kind; it is that power that the UNIA is encouraging Negroes to get for themselves." Improved interracial understanding could solve nothing "because the mass of white people everywhere are the same as they were when Jesus visited this world.... If Jesus failed I do not see how Du Bois can do it." American oppression of blacks even amidst the Great War, combined with spreading anti-Negro riots abroad, demonstrated that whites were indeed everywhere the same. "We brought the Kaiser to his knees because we believed that we were fighting for a just cause. But after we 'licked' the Kaiser, after we had brought him to his knees, we found out that crackerdom was universal, that crackers were in England as well as America, in France as well as Germany, in Italy as well as in Russia."[7]
The UNIA, therefore, preached that "charity begins at home" and "there is no love but the love that you have for yourself." Directly confronting traditional religious sentiments that stressed love of one's enemies, Garvey proclaimed that "fellowship with the fellow men of your own race" was imperative for survival:
Even though in the future we may have to demonstrate love and charity to all, yet we cannot afford to do it now because we have done it in the past and it has not benefited us. We have been giving of our love and charity to others and deprived ourselves of it and we have not travelled very far on it.... We cannot start out now to practice virtues to others because nobody is going to listen to you. You have to meet the other person on his own battleground and knock him down, and when he is down you pick him up and say, "This is the way you ought to go."[8]
We do not know when Christ will return, Garvey said, and in the meantime "we are living down here, and the other fellow has part of what belongs to us [and so] we are going to suspend the idea of brotherhood and talk something else.
I believe in the brotherhood of Christ when all of us get into heaven. That's time enough for all of us to be brothers in Christ.... As long as some one, I say, is depriving us of our portion and our job, there cannot be any talk about brotherhood.... There is no brotherhood when one man is robbing the other fellow, and that is what is happening to Negroes now.... If you will stand up and let him take it from you, and then talk about his being a brother to you, when he has gone away and left you without a nickel with which to buy bread, then you are crazy, indeed; for... you will simply stay there and die unless you will go after the other fellow and fight for what is ours. And that's the kind of man the white man is.... They have no mercy and no sympathy, and anywhere they can get wealth they are going there and will take it....
We are going to show them the quality of mercy--after we get even with the "crackers." I don't believe there can be any dispensation of mercy until you "get even" with the "other fellow."... I want to feel satisfied that he feels what I felt, and then, after that, we can call it quits, for then we can appreciate each others' feelings.[9]
Blacks would remind complaining whites that "we are giving to you no more than you give to us. Give us a kick and we will return the kick; give us a smile and we will return the smile--and you know that nobody can smile like the Negro. He smiles broadest and he fights longest." The oppressed, Garvey said, must "organize in terms of self" in response to "similar kinds of organizations on the part of their oppressors." Black practice of racial self-interest "finds its highest justification in the practices and methods of their oppressors." In terms virtually identical to those used by white radicals, Garvey proclaimed that "those who are slaves must strike the blow for their freedom. In all the history of the human race I have never heard of a race begging for their freedom and getting it; they have had to fight for their freedom [before] winning it." The Negro was formally emancipated but was "not satisfied with the kind of freedom he has now; he wants a larger freedom...."[10]
Commenting on British demands for control of the ex-German colonies in Africa, Garvey asked:
What is the difference between Mexico and England in the matter of an African mandate? The only difference is [that] one has a powerful navy to conquer and to enslave, and the other has no powerful navy to do it.... Brute force is the thing that rules the world; not religion, not politics, but brute force, and if you have an organization you will get brute force as quickly as you can. England has parcelled out our land simply because England has a big club in her hand and you have nothing. If you would take my advice you would get a club ten times as big. I am saying this without any fear or regard for what has been done, because they have absolutely no more right to do it than I had the right to sit down here and say I am going to parcel out England.... One month after [the UNIA unites four hundred million blacks] 30,000,000 Anglo-Saxons will hold themselves in that little island called England and never show themselves around the 12,000,000 square miles of land called Africa.[11]
Blacks, therefore, must "prepare with financial power; prepare with educational power; prepare with scientific power."[12] Speaking of the failure of various African rebellions against British rule, Garvey allowed that realpolitik "may sound very harsh and cold-blooded," but that whites would not heed prayers and petitions.
If you can drop a bomb further than he can, and even more deadly, then he is going to listen to your complaint. If you can make some chemical and produce some explosive by which you can put him out of commission easier than he can you, he is going to listen to you.... Africa can only be redeemed by the scientific skill of the Negro himself. He will have to match fire with hell-fire; he will have to match science with higher science; he will have to match brains with greater brains. It is well we understand this now.
The great white man has held sovereignty over the world through his power in science, in art, and in industry. Negroes, my advice to you is to get that kind of power that will place you on a par with the great white man.... If you want to meet the other fellow and his aeroplane, get one.... [and also a gun that fires] at least ten yards further than his. These are cold facts, and it is well the Negro realized that now. We are living in a material age, the age when power rules--not sentiment, not emotion, but power, and the best thing you can do is to get it.[13]
Garvey vigorously advocated black self-defense against white violence. Ironically, however, he quoted slaveowner Patrick Henry's "Give me liberty or give me death" rather than McKay's incendiary and recently-published "If We Must Die." Garvey asserted that "where killing is concerned the Negroes never take the initiative. The Negroes did not start the riot in Chicago, but they finished it."[14]
Garvey emphasized that racism was intensifying in America and worldwide and claimed that blacks faced actual extermination in the United States and in Africa unless they acted quickly. "I am here tonight to point you the way to glory or to destruction," he said. "For three hundred years we have been held as chattel and industrial slaves in the Western World, and for five hundred years we have been robbed, exploited and killed in Africa. The world in which we live today is closing in upon us, and in a short while we will be thrown off to die as an unfit and unprepared people. We have in the past, and up to the present, been lynched, raped, jim-crowed, segregated and exploited in our labor, and after all this, it is apparent that in the great industrial struggle that is to come, we will be thrown off to suffer and to die." Garvey reminded his audiences that
the attitude of the great white race is to subjugate, to exploit, and, if necessary, to exterminate the weaker peoples with whom they come into contact. They will subjugate them first, if the weaker ones will stand for it; then exploit them; then, afterwards, if they will not stand for the subjugation or exploitation, the other recourse is extermination, as with the North American Indian and the aborigines of Australia and the natives of the many countries now inhabited by the great white race.... [The white man] believes in the superiority of race. You will not blame him for it, because today he is all-powerful, he is progressive, he is advancing on every hand.... It is human, it is natural that the successful man will hold himself above the unsuccessful individual; so of the race, so of the nation.[15]
In the United States, whites would exterminate the blacks either by armed violence or, more likely, economic deprivation. Garvey warned that "In another three hundred years only the fittest of this great human family of ours will be found peopling this world; all other races not sufficiently prepared, not sufficiently organized, not sufficiently protected, will be wiped off the face of the globe, either by political or military slaughter, or by economic disaster." He reminded his audiences that in the decades before World War I whites in the North and South had driven blacks out of the trades and occupations in which they had retained a foothold after the Civil War. Only the temporary need for black labor during the crisis of war had opened new industries for Negro labor. Now that the war was over, whites would renew their drive to expel blacks from every niche of the economy, "and when you close down upon a man's bread and butter you have beaten him." Economic depression and a growing population would intensify competition for jobs and accelerate this process of economic extermination. "This is a white man's country," Garvey said; the white man will "kill you before he allows you to take his place.... Do you think that man is going to yield up his job to you when there is only one job and two men?" The white worker, "the man who doesn't stop to reason but only to eat," "the good for nothing 'cracker' white man who has nothing to rely on but his color" was the most vicious racist, but elites also fomented racism for their own ends. "Economically," Garvey warned, "the white man can kill every Negro in thirty days."[16]
Garvey reminded his audiences that "no security, no success can come to the Black man, so long as he is outnumbered in the particular community where his race may become industrially and commercially strong. We may control all the business places in Harlem, all the department stores, we may succeed in Harlem, but as long as there are six million white people in New York, there is always danger. If there is a great economic [de]pression there are thousands of white people in New York belonging to the old and unreasonable elements. Do you think the poor white people, poor white trash as they are called down South, do you think that they would allow the Negroes to succeed in Harlem and they remain starving? Do you know what they will do? They will march up one day and run every Negro out of Harlem. This [is] not an idea, it is a fact, because it is demonstrated every day in the South. The successful Negro, the thrifty Negro, will work there for years. He will build up a splendid business and a home for himself and family, and then the poor white people in the neighborhood, seeing the successful man having his automobile and his fine house will get together" and drive him out, calling him uppity and insisting that no black should succeed while any whites remained poor. "Therefore, you have absolutely no assurance that the white people will protect you, so long as we are only ten millions." Piteous appeals and militant resistance were both futile because "you cannot successfully combat [the white man] here because he has everything at his command." The Negro's only recourse was "to stop the white man in Africa."[17]
Africans who remained in the ancestral homeland were similarly endangered because the Europeans intended to recoup their wartime losses by intensified exploitation in Africa. "In Europe these Caucasians after having exploited others, robbed and killed others, are now dissatisfied with their own native habitat and are endeavoring to reach beyond Europe." The Monroe Doctrine prevented the European rape of South America, while Japan kept the whites out of Asia. The whites, therefore, lusted after Africa's riches. "America affords us a splendid example of the designs that the races and nations of the world now have upon Africa.... They made up their minds that they would take the country away from the Indians by kidnapping and killing them, and ultimately they succeeded" until America "became the white man's country as you see it now." This took centuries, but the results were readily apparent today. "Once [the aborigines] were millions, even as Negroes are millions in Africa." The white man "is practicing there just what the early settlers practiced in America years and years ago. It is a question of Africans at home being unable to help themselves because they are not adept in the civilization that confronts them." But blacks endured slavery for 250 years "so that in coming in contact with the slaveholders you might understand the men with whom you have to deal.... The Negro child just from the cradle knows that the white man has a design against the entire world that is not white.... His one purpose is to possess himself of all the land and rule and dominate the world for ever."[18]
The UNIA leader repeatedly reminded his followers of the genocidal history of white Americans. "A couple of hundred years ago a certain number of innocent people lived in this country, called America. These people were called North American Indians. Some other people who were dissatisfied with their condition in another part of the world, after that part of the world had become too overstocked with people to satisfy everybody" invaded the Americas and exterminated the Indians. "There was not enough room for two great people to occupy the same place and exist together, and, therefore, one had to die, to make room for the other. The same design is now being [centered] upon Africa.... It is simply that [the white] race believes that no other race has a right to live." Garvey's solution was a Back to Africa movement that would unite Africans at home and Africans abroad. Twelve million Negroes in America could not "stop the cracker from spreading hell all over the world. Not until the Negroes of the world on the battle plains of Africa teach some nation as the Japanese taught the Russians will [the whites] stop burning and lynching you in all parts of the world."[19]
Garvey bolstered his Back to Africa movement with four major arguments: Africa belonged by right to the Africans of the world; Africa was a rich and noble continent well worth possessing; a massive return would benefit the immigrants, the Africans who remained abroad, and those who already resided in Africa; and building a strong Africa was fully practical.
UNIA theology insisted that God had created each race with a distinct identity and given it a special place on earth. God "never created four hundred million people to be wanderers all over the world, but gave blacks "a land of their own.... Africa shall be for the Africans, those at home and those abroad." Garvey asserted that "God Almighty gave you a country--the richest and the most prolific among all the continents.... It is for you to repossess yourselves of it. Remember, men, the African is in each and every one of us colored men. We cannot get away from it if we tried. One sixteenth of the blood makes you an African and we cannot get away from it. Therefore do not play the fool and talk about your not being an African. All of us are Africans. But the only difference is: Some are Africans at home and others are Africans abroad.... How can we sing and play in a foreign land? Let us stop laughing for the white man." Garvey said that "the Almighty Architect, when He created the world, designed that black men should inherit the land of Africa .... Although we have been slaves in these parts for nearly three hundred years, it goes without argument that we are still citizens of Africa.... When [our parents] were robbed from Africa, they never gave over their rights of ownership in the land to any other race or any individual. By right of heritage therefore, each and every Negro in the Western world has a moral and a legal claim to Africa. As Africans abroad, we should lend our assistance morally and financially for the redemption of our motherland."[20] Garvey asserted that Africa
is the land of my fathers. They never gave it to anybody, and by my rights, legal and moral, it belongs to me; that's all. I cannot argue with the white man about Canada. I won't argue a second with the white man and tell him Canada is mine. I won't argue with him a second trying to convince him that America is mine. I wouldn't argue with the Englishman two minutes, telling him that the great British Empire is mine. But I will spend eternity fighting with any man who wants to talk about Africa; because it is mine. Let the Canadians have Canada. Let the Americans have America. When we are through, then we will go to Africa.... The conquest I want you to make is not the conquest of Europe; not the conquest of alien races; not the conquest of Asia. I want you to make the conquest of Africa--that which is yours.[21]
Garvey asserted that "every American Negro and every West Indian Negro must understand now that there is but one fatherland for the Negro, and that is Africa."[22]
Condemning the assertion by Du Bois and the Pan-African Congress that whites would remain in Africa, Garvey proclaimed that "Africa must be for the Africans, and for them exclusively." Blacks were everywhere told that America, or Europe, or Asia, belonged to some other race; they therefore demanded Africa for themselves alone. "The barrier [to African freedom] is the white man; and we say to the white man who now dominates Africa, that it is to his interests to clear out of Africa now.... We mean to re-take every square inch of the 12,000,000 square miles of African territory belonging to us by right divine." Garvey pointedly said that "if the two races cannot live in peace in America I can't see how the two races can live in peace in Africa. Therefore, if we have to get out of America somebody must get out of Africa." He warned that "there will be no peace in the world until the white man confines himself politically to Europe, the yellow man to Asia and the black man to Africa.... This division was made by the Almighty Power that rules." Although Garvey claimed that the redemption of Africa would occur within the lifetimes of his auditors, he also reminded them of the seven hundred year struggle of the Irish for freedom, just now bearing fruit. "There is bound to be a free Africa whether it be tomorrow or a hundred years hence.... We are going to get it if it takes a year or a hundred years or a thousand years."[23]
The Africans' contributions to white civilization had, in Garvey's eyes, earned them a land of their own. "The American republic is reared upon the blood of millions of black men and women. The great British empire is built upon the blood and sacrifice of a million of black men." The Africans who built white nations could construct their own homeland as well. Africans in the United States and the West Indies had learned modern technology and civilization from the whites; this knowledge would develop and civilize Africa. Africans in the diaspora would return to "our own dear motherland" and "give to her that which we have acquired and imbibed during our three hundred years of sojourn in a foreign land." Africans had acquiesced in slavery because they lacked the power and weapons to resist the white invaders and could acquire these things only by a long apprenticeship abroad. This apprenticeship had now ended and "we are the children of their hope." Our ancestors "were whipped, maimed, branded with hot irons, [and] worked to death to make us what we are today. Now, that we are civilized.... Who can refuse the plea of the dead grandmother or father from the grave of slavery for help for posterity of the race? From the heights of Heaven our foreparents call out to us to do now for ourselves, or make up our minds to suffer worse than they did in a selfish world that is now closing in around us."[24]
Garvey discerned a divine purpose in the Africans' forced exile and subsequent liberation: "God brought us out of slavery for a purpose, and that purpose is now." He enthused that "Liberia... is beckoning to us to come to her rescue commercially, industrially and educationally." Western science and technology would ensure that "in time it will be an honor to be an African citizen as it was in days gone by to be a Roman citizen." Africans who returned home would carve a powerful nation out of the wilderness much as had the whites who settled North America. "We shall send out Pilgrim Fathers to the great continent of Africa and there lay the foundation for the future glory of this race of ours."[25]
Garvey's opponents fully shared his Eurocentric privileging of science and technology over native African religions and customs. Yet some criticized Garvey's vision of "Pilgrim Fathers" and, citing Liberian opposition to UNIA plans, charged that Garvey envisioned the imperialistic conquest of the native peoples rather than assistance to them. Africa, they pointed out, was not an empty continent any more than America had been; it was inhabited by peoples of diverse cultures who might not welcome the tutelage, "development," "civilization" and "progress" imposed by Westernized blacks. And indeed, Garvey repeatedly said that "civilized" blacks "capable of self-government" were to control Africa; the Preamble to the UNIA's Constitution touted "civilizing the backward tribes of Africa" as a main UNIA goal.[26] Garvey, ignoring the widespread miscegenation that he elsewhere acknowledged and deplored, and neglecting also the vast cultural chasm between African Americans and native Africans (and among native Africans themselves) replied that "everybody knows that there is absolutely no difference between the native African and the American and West Indian Negroes, in that we are descendants from one common family stock. It is only a matter of accident that we have been divided and kept apart for over three hundred years." Africans abroad and at home would soon reunite "in the spirit of brotherly love."
Garvey denied any intention of subjecting native Africans under the yoke of the UNIA. Because the Negro had suffered from "race superiority as inflicted upon him by others," he would reject "a similar assumption on the part of his own people." Although some American and West Indian blacks desired "a kind of autocratic and despotic control" similar to that exercised by whites, such designs ignored "the existing feeling among Negroes everywhere not to tolerate the infliction of race or class superiority upon them, as is the desire of the self-appointed and self-created race leadership" of the last fifty years.[27]Garvey thundered that
The masses of Negroes in America, the West Indies, South and Central America are in sympathetic accord with the aspirations of the native Africans. We desire to help them build up Africa as a Negro Empire, where every black man, whether he was born in Africa or in the Western world, will have the opportunity to develop on his own lines under the protection of the most favorable democratic institutions.....
Africa shall develop an aristocracy of its own, but it shall be based upon service and loyalty to the race.[28]
Confronted with opposition from Liberia's government (opposition which he desperately concealed from his followers), Garvey claimed that Liberia was founded as a refuge for all blacks and that the narrow-minded clique who presently controlled it could not rightfully exclude others who sought asylum. He also proclaimed that Africa was well worth the effort of reconquest. Whites, he said, deceived Negroes with stories about Africa's horrible climate and intolerable conditions; yet whites greedily wanted Africa for themselves. "Africa is the richest continent in the world" and was fully suitable for "the African Empire upon which the sun will never set."[29]
The Back to Africa movement, Garvey promised, would benefit both individual Africans of the diaspora and the race as a whole. "Liberia offers great opportunities to all men and women who desire to start off independently to build fortunes for themselves and their families," he said. Africa would offer jobs for Afro-Americans commensurate with their education and talents. Addressing a group of students in November 1921, Garvey said that the UNIA would ensure that upon graduation the men need not clean spittoons and the girls need not "go into white women's kitchens to wash and scrub." Instead, "you shall go to Africa to be the statesmen of that great Republic, the greatest, I believe, the world will ever see." In the United States, "there is not one Negro... that the white man has respect for," but in Africa every Negro could aspire to any office, including the Presidency. Some UNIA members frankly acknowledged the hardships of pioneer life in an economically and technologically backward nation, but insisted that they would rather suffer such privations in a land where they could hold their heads high and aspire to any dignity. "I would rather be a dead dog in Africa--a black dead dog, than be [a] discriminated against, ostracized, abused Negro in this or any other part of the world," one UNIA official exclaimed. Garvey himself thundered that blacks must not remain content with their servile status in the United States. "A man without ambition is unfit to live. I prefer to die, and every Negro to die, rather than to live and think that God created me as inferior to the white man." In a statement he hoped would stir others to achievement, Garvey said that "My job is to build a nation and an Empire.... No man can place a limit over my ambition."[30]
Garvey also insisted that the redemption of Africa would also benefit the entire black race, and thus every member of it, in ways unattainable by individual effort of any kind. Because blacks were judged as members of a racial group, the backwardness of Africa reflected poorly on Africans abroad. "The pride and self-respect, the prestige and standing of the Negro peoples of the world would be increased by the development of a strong, progressive and self-governing republic in Africa," Garvey asserted. Only such a world power could protect Africans abroad: "When Africa becomes a first-rate power, if you live in Georgia, if you live in Mississippi, if you live in Texas, as a black man I will dare them to lynch you, because you are an African citizen and you will have a great army and a great navy to protect your rights." Garvey acknowledged that some blacks would remain abroad indefinitely, "but we are going to stay here with the protection behind us of the Republic of Africa." Garvey was convinced that "when the Southern white man knows that behind the Negro stands a latest model dreadnought, a latest model cruiser, a latest model submarine, a latest model aeroplane, the latest discovered poison gas--ah! he will come to terms. He will come to terms, but not until then, and you cannot build up a separate navy, a separate army, in a country where there is an existing government." Garvey agreed with Booker T. Washington that the accumulation of money and property would abolish the color line; he added, however, that Negroes required their own government to protect what white governments would not. "The Japanese and Chinese are not lynched in this country," Garvey falsely claimed, "because of the fear of retaliation. Behind these men are standing armies and navies to protect them."[31]
Garvey also believed that Africans would enrich the world with their own distinctive civilization. Like many reformers, he depicted his vision of the future as the restoration of a past golden age. Africa, he said, "has given civilization to the world and made the white man what he is.... The Negro gave him science and art and literature and everything that is dear to him today." The white man had corrupted and destroyed Africa's gift, and blacks must now "take hold of that civilization that we once held." Garvey heralded an African Renaissance: "Give us fifty years, and we will show them a civilization that will startle the universe. We did it once, and we gave it to them on trial. They have abused it, however; they have wrecked it. They have made it a bankrupt civilization, and we are going to start out anew and show them something fresh." Garvey said that "our ancestors held up the torch of science, of art, and of literature" when whites were but cave-dwelling savages. "We are determined to point the race to a brighter future, a future that may yet restore to us the ancient glory of our fathers."[32]
An African homeland where Negroes could develop along the lines of their own racial genius, was essential. Garvey believed that however much blacks had learned from their long apprenticeship in the West, when they returned home they would "develop a civilization of our own among ourselves as a distinct ethnic group among the many independent groups comprising the great human family." African Americans "desire a wider expansion. That expansion can only be realized on the continent of Africa, our ancient fatherland"; blacks could attain freedom only "after we have established an imperial power to command the respect of nations and of races."[33]
Garvey decried the debilitating and crippling effects of racism upon young blacks in the United States and said that "consciousness of self" was necessary for self-esteem and achievement. He complained that belief in white superiority "has become a second part of our nature.... because the impressions we get as children are the impressions that remain with us through life." The only solution was an African nation where Africans could develop along the lines of their distinctive racial genius, unfettered by alien influences. "We need a new emancipation; we need to be emancipated from alien education, alien influence, alien environment; we need to build up a culture and civilization of our own. Any people who accept the culture and civilization of another are bound to fall as slaves and subjects to that race from which they accepted these influences."[34]
African Americans could reap the benefits of nationhood immediately by establishing the UNIA as a powerful government-in-exile representing Africans throughout the world, Garvey asserted. Whites negotiated with representatives of sovereign powers backed by armed force, but dealt with blacks either as isolated individuals or through leaders whom the whites themselves had appointed. "Heretofore leaders have been forced upon us, men of the type that represented the views of an alien race and submerged their manhood for paltry personal gains; men who in the very nature of the circumstances could not and did not represent our views." The result was that "when you offend one white man in America, you offend ninety millions of white men. When you offend one Negro, the other Negroes are unconcerned because we are not organized. Not until you can offer protection to your race as the white man offers protection to his race, will you be a free and independent people in the world." Whites "have treated us as a mass according to the representation we have presented to them" and have not yet recognized that "Du Bois and Moton are no more; we buried them in 1914.... We shall present our own leaders" elected by blacks themselves.[35]
The UNIA would establish Africa as a major power "in the near future," but in the meantime the UNIA "includes all the wants and needs of the Negro.... We are endeavoring to perform the functions of a government for our race." Garvey claimed that the UNIA was "as strong as any government. So that as governments send out their ambassadors and representatives and stand behind them even to the last man of the nation, so we are sending out ambassadors, delegates and ministers plenipotentiary and mean to stand behind them to the last man." Garvey asserted that "we have opened the eyes of the world," and asked, "has there ever been a movement among Negroes that has yet cornered the attention of the entire globe?" UNIA success "means that a new estimate has been placed upon the Negro." The 1920 convention "will register us for all time as a great international power and a great international force. After August no man will dare, no nation will dare treat with the Negro singly or individually; but whenever any race or nation desires to treat with the Negro they have to come to the accredited representatives of the Negro race." He predicted that "we shall write a constitution within this month of August that shall guide and govern the destiny of four hundred million Negroes of the world."[36]
The UNIA's Declaration of Rights represented not a wish-list of future demands, but liberties that Africans now possessed and would exercise at whatever cost to themselves or their oppressors; the UNIA Constitution and Declaration of Rights were binding upon the four hundred million Africans of the world, who pledged "the sacred blood of the race" in their defense. The Convention "was but a pooling of the heartaches and the fraternal greetings of the Negro people of the world.... We had to make laws; we had to formulate and adopt a Constitution, a Declaration of Rights to the world.... Four hundred million Negroes will sacrifice the last drop of their blood to see that every article comes true. No more fear, no more cringing, no more sycophantic begging and pleading...." Destiny was inexorably leading Africans to that freedom "that Lincoln never meant... that will see us a nation among nations." The Declaration of Rights "shall be the Holy Writ of this Negro race of ours. It shall be the very Scriptures by which we shall know ourselves.... This Declaration of Rights shall take its place alongside of the Declaration of Independence of the United States of America and the Magna Charta of England." At the 1921 convention, Garvey declared "we are assembled here as legislators.... This organization represents a larger group of people than any government" (four times the population of the United States).[37]
When critics of both races mocked these views as pretentious, Garvey asserted that the UNIA represented blacks just as the Irish Provisional Government had represented the Irish, and other movements for national liberation had represented their peoples. "If any other race was agitating the cause that we agitate, the whole world would pronounce the righteousness of it.... But because we are Negroes the world THINKS IT A JOKE." His task dwarfed that of all existing heads of states, because they merely administered existing states, while the UNIA was creating a new government. Garvey acknowledged that "before you have a government you must have a people":[38] the UNIA was engaged not merely in the process of state-building, but of welding the various, divided Africans of the world into a unified whole.
Garvey's opponents ridiculed the Back to Africa plan as absurdly impractical. How, they asked, could unorganized Negroes, lacking their own state, overcome the opposition of the mighty white empires that ruled Africa--and also ruled the oceans over which UNIA emigrants, soldiers, and weapons must pass? Garvey sometimes finessed this issue with his frequent protestations that the UNIA did not oppose any existing government:
I am not against this government; I have nothing to say against any government; I have no time to talk about other peoples' governments whether it be that of England, France, Germany or any other nation. The government that I am talking about now is the new government that is to be, the government of Africa from whence my father and grandfathers, against their will, were brought years and years ago....
I have said nothing against the government of the United States. In fact, I think Uncle Sam is very pleased with the fact that the Negro is getting ready to protect himself and not bother Uncle Sam so much.... We are not going to worry Uncle Sam nor any other nation for that matter; we are going to build up in Africa a government of our own, big enough and strong enough to protect Africa and Negroes anywhere. Men do not respect mass meetings and petitions; men respect that thing that everybody is afraid of. The white folks have it here and everywhere, the yellow men have it in Asia, and Negroes must get it....
I do not care what white men or yellow men say; I want to see freedom for the Negro everywhere; I want to say that I am a citizen of Africa.... If you are interested in Europe or Asia that is your business. I am interested in Africa. I am not going to try to stop you talking about Europe; I am not going to try to stop you talking about Asia; so please don't interfere with my talking about Africa.[39]
Garvey repeated such statements often, possibly in an attempt to mollify hostile white governments and their ever-watchful and paranoid secret police forces. Usually, however, he recognized that the reconquest of Africa would come only over the opposition of powerful white governments that the UNIA must displace. Even in the above statement he added that "the Universal Negro Improvement Association is organizing now, and there is going to be some dying later on." Garvey insisted that the fighting would occur on "the battle plains of Africa" rather than in the Western nations where blacks were usually heavily outnumbered; but he recognized that such aspirations inevitably conflicted with white pride and white interests. Garvey warned that "the slightest hope of your success in this African program" would mean "the loss of billions and billions of dollars of wealth to other people who are looking toward Africa for their solvency." Echoing Socialist pronouncements on the role of violence in the social revolution, Garvey asserted that "violence will only be an extreme resort. But history has shown that races that have enslaved other races will never willingly give up their slaves. In the past they have listened to nothing but force." The Negro wanted peace, but was demanding what was his. "I do not care what the philosophers say and theologians say--war to me is the only medium through which we can seek redemption." Africans would wage war "not in any country where government is already constituted" but in Africa, "and if you refuse [our just demands], what you get, please take." The way of George Washington and other patriots was "the way of the sword and of blood."[40]
How then could Africa prevail? Garvey reminded his audiences that many other seemingly hopeless causes had triumphed because of the courage and persistence of their leaders. Every race had endured slavery at some point in their history; the British had been slaves when Rome ruled the world, but had eventually conquered their own world empire. George Washington defeated the mightiest sea power of his day against overwhelming odds; the Irish struggled for seven hundred years against that same empire. Lenin and Trotsky have given the world "a social republic, the first of its kind. If Lenin and Trotsky were able to do that for Russia, you and I can do that for Africa." The oppressed peoples of the world were rising; Ireland, India, Egypt, and Israel were winning their freedom. "This question of prejudice will be the downfall of civilization, and I warn the white race of this, and of their doom," Garvey thundered. "... I warn those nations which believe themselves above the law of God, above the commandments of God.... Your arrogance will destroy you.... I warn them that the hour is coming when the oppressed will rise in their might, in their majesty, and throw off the yoke of ages.... What a destruction, what a holocaust it will be! Can you imagine it?... Truly it will be an ocean of blood." Garvey awaited "the next world war" which, before the ashes of "The Great War" had cooled, he presciently named "the second world war."[41]
Garvey also touted the magnificent fighting spirit of the black race, now skilled in modern weapons and tactics. "David did not know anything else but slingshots, but Negroes know how to use every implement of war in the world." Having fought on behalf of the whites for centuries, blacks must now fight for themselves. "When it comes to dying, no one dies quicker under the leadership of the white man than the Negro," Garvey declared. "The New Negro has fought the last battle for the white man, and he is now getting ready to fight for the redemption of Africa."[42] Praying and begging have not worked; but when the UNIA proclaimed that somebody would die,
then the whole world got alarmed.... We told them that we demand our rights and if we don't get them, somebody is going to die, and since that time the whole world has been concerned. If you will study about [the UNIA], you will find that more printer's ink has been used about us because we encouched that one word in our constitution, that word "Death." Nobody likes that word. When you start to use that word, people become interested. But the Negro is not disposed to fight anybody or to kill anybody but is prepared to adopt the course followed by everybody who has sought human liberty.... Some may say we can't do it but if we were men enough to drive the German hosts across the Rhine, we can drive somebody into the Indian ocean or across the Nile, and that some of us are prepared to do.[43]
Garvey reiterated that "the white man's strength at the present time is maintained by brute force" and that the white man "is the super-savage of the age [who] kills to satisfy himself and to maintain his power." Inevitably some blacks must die for the freedom of the race. "That is the answer I have to give those who are fearful about the white man. He has but one life to give for mine, and anytime he is willing to give his I am ready to give mine." There would be no redemption, Garvey warned, without the shedding of blood. "We shall have in this 20th century nothing less than freedom.... By the blood of the fathers, the children are freed." Garvey professed that for him, "death is but the snap of a finger if by dying [I] can free Africa and redeem the entire race." Oppressors would customarily "execute and imprison the leaders of the cause of liberty everywhere.... Leadership means sacrifice; leadership means martyrdom."[44]
Divisions between Europe and Japan, between the nations of Europe themselves, and between the hostile classes within each European nation, also portended success for Africa. Garvey frequently predicted a coming race war, sometimes between the whites and Japan and sometimes between whites and blacks. "When the American Secretary of the Navy, Joseph Daniels, said that the next war will be a war of races, he was thinking wisely." A war between the whites and Asia would establish Africa as the balance of power. Garvey at times asserted that "the impending clash will be between white Europe and brown and yellow Asia"; at other times, he predicted that "the next war will be between the Negroes and the whites, unless our demands for justice are recognized. With Japan to fight with us we can win such a war...."[45]
Imminent international class war within the white race would similarly benefit blacks. In 1919 Garvey commented that the revolution in Hungary "means revolution among the whites," who were still killing each other "because the masses are not yet free." He predicted that "the bloody conflict between capital and labor" would "give us a breathing space" during which blacks would seize "freedom from the tyrannical rule of oppressive over-lords." The Paris Peace Conference, which Garvey called the "Pieces Conference," would, he realized, only foment renewed war. Garvey predicted that Bolshevism, a white creation that he would gladly use for his own purposes, would "spread until it finds a haven in the breasts of all oppressed peoples, and then there shall be a universal rule of the masses." For "the masses are going to rule. The few little despots and robbers who used to run the world are now being sent to their graves, and before another ten years roll by all of them will be buried by the hands of the masses...." Two years later Garvey saw the disarmament conference as a portent of impending class war. The European ruling classes "realize that they cannot continue to build armaments--those weapons of destruction--and have so many hungry people in their midst; it spells revolution."[46] Africans would benefit whether the European governments taxed their poor beyond endurance or disarmed.
When taunted about the specifics of his plan of African liberation, Garvey angrily retorted that no sane general publicized his plans in advance. Strategy and tactics were best kept secret from the enemy. But in the last analysis, Garvey based his vision on an act of faith: blacks could liberate Africa if they willed it. Like the charismatic leaders of other oppressed groups who confronted formidable structural and physical obstacles, Garvey largely ignored the barriers in his path and convinced his followers that they were invincible. "Africa can be won," he cried, "and if you will make up your minds to win it, it is already won."[47] Garvey assured his followers that "With the Universal Negro Improvement Association there is no 'can't,' there is no 'if': it must be done!" He admonished blacks that
you have doubted yourselves for three hundred years; you have believed in the almighty potency of the other man for five hundred years; you have believed God to have created you to the condition that you now live in. It is a lie, it is not so! God never created you to an inferior position. He made you the equal of all men.... All of us are entitled to this great inheritance. All of us were created lords of the creation, and whether we be white, yellow, brown, or black, Nature intended a place for each and every one.... Four hundred million Negroes shall shed, if need be, the last drop of their blood for the redemption of Africa and the emancipation of the race everywhere.[48]
Garvey and other UNIA leaders constantly referred to a Biblical verse (included in the Universal Negro catechism): "Princes shall come out of Egypt, Ethiopia shall soon stretch out her hands unto God." Garvey assured his followers that "You are the princes that shall come out of EGYPT. Everything under the sun is possible for you." But first, "we must remake ourselves, lift ourselves from the conditions of slavery, of being lackeys, parasites or wards, to the position of real men, men of initiative, men of brawn and power, men of great accomplishments." Speaking in Panama, Garvey again used a Biblical metaphor, saying that "I am here now in Colon to dig up those who are practically dead, and make them new."[49] Garvey extolled himself as a man of average ability who rose above his circumstances as could all other blacks, reminding an audience in his native Jamaica that he had been born in a society that told the black man
that he must be merely a hewer of wood and carrier of water--a servant looking up to the white man as servant and master--who was born to believe himself inferior to other races--born not to have hope for himself. Under this environment I was born myself--you all know of this. But I did not confine myself to this environment. I refuse to be enslaved by an environment which keeps a black man at the foot of the ladder. I was entitled to climb as any other man, be they white, yellow, or black. I was determined to climb the ladder of success, equal with every other man because God created all mankind and gave mankind the overlordship of the world...[50]
Garvey's power lay in his ability to persuade hundreds of thousands of Negroes, on every continent that blacks inhabited, of the truth and practicality of this vision. Such power led an American secret police agent to complain that "there will eventually be trouble, not so much from what [Garvey] says, but what the people will think about themselves as a result of his talks." William Pickens, a prominent NAACP official, likewise predicted that "the idea [Garvey] has injected into the Negro masses will remain, even if Garvey shall be jailed or hung."[51]
His critics notwithstanding, Garvey did not abandon the fight for equality in the United States in favor of dreams of African empire. Garvey did insist, however, that begging and pleading, signing petitions, making demands, and holding public meetings only evoked white ridicule and contempt and branded Negroes as a dependent, suppliant race. Only self-help and racial development could empower Africans at home or abroad. Negroes must unite for "industrial and commercial conquest.... As a people we cannot continue to tamely submit to the indignities heaped upon us by other races that call themselves superior." Lofty aspirations "will avail little, unless we have in our possession the material means to realize our ideals and plans."[52]
UNIA strategy posited a symbiotic relationship between economic self-development in the West and the economic and political conquest of Africa. Only an independent African state could protect the lives and property of Africans abroad, while black economic self-sufficiency in the Americas would undergird the reconquest of Africa. The UNIA, Garvey said, would "build an economic base for the Negro wheresoever he lives." The New Negro "realizes that if he becomes economically self-sustaining and becomes a factor in the commercial and industrial life of the world, he will not only gain some of the good things of this world, but will also gain prestige and standing. For these reasons we have not asked other races to help us, but have endeavored to help ourselves by starting the Black Star Line (BSL) and the Negro Factories Corporation," through which the Negro would "become fit to survive industrially." The sailing of the first Black Star Line ship, Garvey enthused, meant that "the Negro has made his bid for world conquest.... The age of commercial activity calls for the best of energy in the individual, race and nation.... Let our steamship sail the high seas, not one, not two, but hundreds of them. The stronger we become upon land and sea, the more will be the respect shown to us and the greater will be the glory.... Success and greatness come not only by praying for it but by working for it.... There is a world of opportunities awaiting us, and it is for us, through unity of will and of purpose, to say we shall and we will play our part upon the great human stage of activity." The UNIA does not ask "all the Negroes of Harlem and the United States to pack up their trunks and leave for Africa. We are not crazy, because we have to wait until we get a Lenox Avenue and a Seventh Avenue before we could get the Negroes of Harlem to leave for Africa.... But we are asking you to get this organization to do the pioneering work. The majority of us may remain here, but we must send our scientists, our mechanics, and our artisans and let them build railroads, let them build the great Educational and other institutions necessary" before the great masses could return. "Africa must be redeemed, but before her redemption we have to prove to the world that we are fit. The chance to make ourselves fit is now presented to every son and daughter of Africa. We must now achieve in commerce, science, education, art, industry and politics."[53]
Garvey represented the familiar American ethos of "commercialized idealism."[54] He appealed to African Americans on the grounds both of racial uplift and personal profit, which he sometimes conflated. Financial support of UNIA businesses, he said, was "a question of duty. It is a question of your own interest." Although he initially conceived of the Black Star Line as a racial enterprise that would pay "no private dividends," he almost immediately switched positions and claimed that "a five dollar investment in the Black Star Line today may be worth one hundred dollars six months from now." Those who lent money for the Liberian Construction Loan "are lending [money] to yourselves to be used by yourselves for the building up of a nation and a government of your own, and at the same time getting anywhere from 15 to 25 or 30 per cent or more on your investment." The Black Star Line and the Negro Factories Corporation would provide employment for thousands of blacks; the UNIA was "a movement that will be bringing later on bread and butter to thousands of us."[55]
The Black Star Line was the UNIA's most celebrated and controversial venture. It would, Garvey assured his followers, offer "untold opportunities to every stockholder and every member of the race." A black-owned steamship line would transport black produce and passengers throughout the world, thereby facilitating intra-racial comity, trade, and understanding. Blacks should "trade with each other legitimately in the interests of the entire race." The BSL had its own niche, "a place all its own in the world.... it will be impossible for [white capitalists] to squeeze out a black company appealing to black men." Garvey claimed that Africans were already withholding produce from white ships, awaiting the BSL's arrival. Ultimately, the BSL would transport black settlers, soldiers, and weapons to Africa. Proximately, it would enhance the prestige of the race by demonstrating that blacks could operate a huge, modern commercial enterprise. "Nothing engineered by the Negroes within the last 500 years has been as big or stupendous as the Black Star Line... [which] reveals the new business acumen of the Negro." The U.S. government's refusal of passports to UNIA delegates to the Paris Peace talks, and the ruin of a black-owned coal mine by a white railroad that refused to transport its coal, accentuated the need for black independence of white transit. Garvey reminded African Americans that they had bought $250 million of Liberty Bonds during World War I--an investment that merely fastened more tightly the chains of their slavery. When the BSL encountered stiff opposition from African-American leaders Garvey stigmatized each such skeptic as "worse than a traitor to the cause of struggling Ethiopia" and vowed that the BSL would launch its first ship even if the UNIA must "float it in an ocean of human blood." When the BSL did fail, Garvey denied any responsibility and blamed traitors, saboteurs, and incompetents within the UNIA and the BSL.[56]
Garvey's critics incessantly complained that the BSL was a propaganda device rather than a commercial venture. And indeed, even after the Black Star Line went bankrupt, Garvey defended its symbolic value. Speaking of the Yarmouth, the BSL's first vessel, Garvey asserted that fifteen thousand people had attended its launching, and boasted
The sailing of that ship brought into the fold of the UNIA hundreds of thousands of Negro men and women who never could have been reached otherwise, who would never even have been convinced of the possibility of a race scattered throughout the world coming together under one program, on one definite platform.... The Black Star Line did for the Negroes what nothing in the world ever did for 500 years prior to its inception. The Black Star Line created a world sentiment that placed the Negro on a platform that he was never regarded as capable of occupying before.... Half of the strength of the association, half the success had been derived from the pioneering work of the Black Star Line.[57]
Garvey admitted that the BSL, like many pioneering enterprises, was not a total commercial success but asserted that "in the early stages of the BSL it carried a propaganda that enhanced the reputation of this race." Many Negroes identified the BSL with the UNIA, and only heard of latter via the former. The BSL, with tiny resources, competed against huge conglomerates such as the United Fruit Company. Many shipping lines had gone bankrupt during the postwar depression; the United States Shipping board, with its vast resources, had lost hundreds of millions of dollars. "For us to succeed was a task Herculean. For us to fail was an experience worth the while...." [58] Garvey asserted that repayment of BSL investors was a race duty, and launched the Black Star Line Redemption Fund (never operational) for that purpose.
The UNIA also established the Negro Factories Corporation, a venture that at its height supported a grocery store, a steam laundry, and other enterprises in New York. After a tour of various UNIA locals that sponsored their own businesses, William Ferris estimated that the UNIA employed eight hundred African Americans, about half of whom worked for the home office in New York. Negro commercial enterprises, Garvey said, would employ blacks, keep money in the community, and make blacks economically independent of whites. Garvey recognized that white employers would retaliate against black racial activists; and indeed the UNIA papers document occasional firings of UNIA members.
In language familiar to socialists, Garvey warned blacks that when they patronized white stores, invested in white companies, or deposited in white banks, their money became an instrument of their own oppression. Black money built white enterprises that denied blacks employment, Jim Crowed or excluded blacks altogether, and amassed the financial power that controlled governments and empires. Black money in white firms also enslaved Africa. Garvey advised that every UNIA division start its own bank, which would pool the resources of the black community for its own individual and collective advancement. In this and other respects the UNIA would build the new society within the shell of the old.
By this system we are going to run businesses employing hundreds of thousands of members as the years roll by and make ourselves in this community economically independent of everybody else by having our money working for us rather than having the other fellow working our money without even considering us.... We could start anything we want; we could buy a hundred ships at a time. We could force legislation, we could do anything, because at our command we have billions of dollars of surplus, the savings of the members of the association which would be used in developing industries... and make the Negro economically independent of any other race in the world.... In the space of five years no Negro in America need ask the white man for a job.[59]
Speaking in terms reminiscent of black (and white) Socialist advocates of cooperatives and of working-class ownership of the means of production, Garvey promised that if blacks pooled their capital, "not another Negro would be lynched by our being able to control the industries. If you accumulate money in another five years you would not want to go and beg a mob not to lynch you. In that space of time you will control nearly every business in the Southern States and control and dictate the policy of Wall Street itself, and Wall Street controls the policy of the government.... If you have money everybody hears you."[60] If blacks invested their resources in racial enterprises, they could topple white imperialism throughout the world:
The white folks control your finance or your money the world over; they take the same club you give them and club you with it. All that is happening to our people in Africa is caused by that, and you don't know it. Saving your money and putting it away in the white banks has caused Wall Street to control the rubber output in the Congo and the diamond output in Kimberley. They have bought the mine concessions there and enslaved our people and taken away your country with your own money, and you don't know it..... Wall Street has gone down to Haiti and has taken control of the government of Haiti. The National City Bank of New York controls Haiti. The directors of the National City Bank never had a nickel for themselves. You went to work and saved your money and cast it into the repository of the National City Bank, and they took that money and bought concessions in Haiti and placed your own race in slavery in Haiti. You are supplying the club with which other people are clubbing you.[61]
Garvey foresaw the day when the black race could, "by [its] own means as a commercial power, cause instantly to cease all forms of discrimination and injustice against which he now has just reason to complain."[62]
The UNIA demanded for blacks all the rights of citizens in whatever country they resided. Its "Declaration of Rights of the Negro Peoples of the World," adopted at the 1920 Convention, complained that blacks were everywhere "denied the common rights due to human beings for no other reason than their race and color." It denounced lynching, Jim Crow, disfranchisement, taxation without representation, racist injustice in the courts, and discrimination in the professions, the government, and labor unions.[63]
The Declaration also insisted that blacks would secure their full rights "by whatsoever means possible" and that "any law or practice" that deprived "any African of his land or the privileges of free citizenship within his country is unjust and immoral, and no native should respect any such law or practice." Blacks should not pay taxes levied by governments from which they were excluded, or obey any racist law. Any country guilty of lynching was "outside the pale of civilization," and any potential victim should use "every means to protect himself against barbarous practices inflicted upon him because of color." The Declaration proclaimed that "any limited liberty which deprives one of the complete rights and prerogatives of full citizenship is but a modified form of slavery." It asserted "the inherent right of the Negro to possess himself of Africa" and resolved that "the League of Nations is null and void as far as the Negro is concerned, in that it seeks to deprive Negroes of their liberty." The Declaration demanded that "the governments of the world recognize our leader and his representatives chosen by the race to look after the welfare of our people under such governments.... We demand that our accredited representatives be given proper recognition in all leagues, conferences, conventions and courts of international arbitration whenever human rights are discussed." The most controversial provision stated that "no Negro shall engage himself in battle for an alien race without first obtaining the consent of the leader of the Negro people of the world, except in a matter of national self-defense."[64] Garvey, praising this resolution, omitted the weasel clause referring to national self-defense. When West Indian soldiers refused the British command that they help suppress a rebellion in India, Garvey praised the mutiny and claimed UNIA credit for it.
Garvey's program for black self-reliance and independence also included religious and educational reform, organized self-defense against white violence, and an autonomous social life.
Garvey criticized traditional black Christianity as a white man's religion that inculcated subservience, undermined black self-confidence, and paralyzed black initiative. Black churches and pastors, for their own survival and that of their congregations, emphasized Christian love for one's enemies, "turning the other cheek," acceptance of the existing order as divinely sanctioned, and the consolations of life after death. Criticizing such beliefs as encouraging white violence and bolstering white supremacy, Garvey countered with his "eye for an eye" ethic. He also insisted that resisting evil and improving temporal life were religious duties.
UNIA leaders regularly complained that many blacks accepted key tenets of white racist Christianity: that servants should obey their masters, that love of Jesus was more important than worldly success, that blacks descended from Ham (Noah's cursed son), and that God and His angels were white while the devil was black. Garvey asserted that Negroes "give up the world to the white man and take Jesus! The white man has the world and gives up Jesus!.... You must take part of the world and part of Jesus too." He said that "God is not satisfied with prayers alone" and thundered that "God has no colour. He is a spirit. Jesus Christ was not white, black or yellow. He was the embodiment of all fallen mankind. If he was Jesus Christ, the Redeemer, if He came to save fallen mankind and He came as a white man then He did not come to redeem me." Jesus's "physical form bore in it the link of every race." Garvey complained that "every Negro believes that God is white and that the angels are white. God is not white or black; angels have no colour, and they are not white peaches from Georgia. But if [the whites] say that God is white, this organization says that God is black; if they are going to make the angels beautiful white peaches from Georgia, we are going to make them beautiful black peaches from Africa. How long are we going to stand for this propaganda of white superiority and black inferiority?"[65]
Garvey declared that Negroes "are the only inferior race in the world, because we are the only people who have accepted the other fellow's ideals. Go to Japan and see if you see any white God there." Every race portrays God in the image "of their own kind." Garvey charged that "everything that is wicked, everything that is devilish, is white. They told us that the devil was a black man. There isn't a greater devil in the world than the white man." He complained that "through lying teaching, through lying education, we were led to believe that all that was pure, all that was good, all that was noble, came from those who were white, and all that was degrading and debasing came from those who were black. But we new Negroes who were born out of the great war can see nothing perfect except it comes out of our own race." The popularity of skin whiteners and hair straighteners evinced black self-degradation; Garvey attacked advertisements for such cosmetics as "libels upon the reputation of the race."[66]
The solution consisted of "more of Christ and less of theology"; the Sermon on the Mount exemplified "the kind of religion that would help [blacks] rise and find happiness on earth." Garvey preached a "scientific Christianity" that would prepare blacks for heaven "by having them live clean, healthy, happy and prosperous lives down here. No hungry man can be a good Christian. No shelterless civilized man can be a good Christian for he is bound to have bad, wicked thoughts, therefore it should be the duty of religion to find physical as well as well as spiritual food for the body of man." Garvey preached "the beatitude of bread and butter." James Eason, the UNIA leader of Afro-Americans, agreed that "there is just as much religion in making positions for our boys and girls and in buying stock for steamships, which will bring interest for years to come, as there is in being on our knees asking God to do for us what we ought to do for ourselves." In the spirit of Deism, Garvey added that the Supreme Being supervised an immense universe; therefore, "I do not believe in worrying my God with things temporal.... After God created you he was through with you" except for demanding worship.[67]
Garvey, like Thomas Jefferson and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, demanded a revised Bible compatible with the needs of his people, whom Garvey conceived in terms of both class and race. The rich had controlled the Bible "ever since the first edition was printed... [so] anything that would lead [the poor] to subservience would naturally find a place in the Scriptures that [the rich] themselves control and interpret." White preachers should extol the gospel of otherworldliness and poverty to rich whites rather than poor blacks. Whites also distorted the Bible by adding verses implying black inferiority. "God has no printing office up in Heaven," Garvey said. "He has no linotypes or typesetting machines; the angels are not compositors. God inspired the apostles to write and say certain things in those days; but the white folks... changed them to suit themselves." Garvey said that "we believe everything in the Bible" except the doctrine of white superiority. "We are going to cut out all in the Bible which does not suit us." The UNIA would soon publish its own version of the Bible. The UNIA elected a chaplain-general as a major national officer, sung hymns at its conventions, and published the "Universal Negro Catechism," with sections on religion, black history, and UNIA doctrine.[68]
Africans abroad and at home also required "a history exclusively our own, where we would write of our own heroes, lionize our own celebrities, and adore the great men and women of our race.... [and also teach] the glorious achievements of our ancestors--those who lived in the days of Ethiopia, when we had a glorious civilization of our own, when we were regarded as the only civilized group of the great human race." He complained that history textbooks in schools and colleges extolled "great men like Washington and Lincoln" while neglecting "the achievements of men of our own race." White histories ignored or denied black achievements; for example, they attributed the Pyramids to a non-Negro race. Garvey said that "All historians have tried to bring down the Negro.... We want historians of our own to write in burning letters of gold the achievements of our fathers and our achievements today and the achievements of tomorrow."[69]
Reflecting on the failure of African rebellions against British oppression, Garvey also reiterated Harrison's demand for a scientific and technical education for blacks. Instead of "wasting our time in pool rooms, cabarets and places of evil repute," why should blacks not "put in our time developing ourselves scientifically, learning how to manufacture chemicals that can be applied for useful purposes in such conflicts as do take place in Kenya and in South West Africa?" Blacks should attend college, imbibe "all the civilization that America and this Western World affords," and "develop ourselves technically and otherwise. We could make of ourselves better mechanics, better scientists, better artisans, and if we have no use for the knowledge today, surely we could apply it in the days to come," in Africa. Garvey concluded that "If Africa is to be redeemed the Western Negro will have to make a valuable contribution, and there can be no better contribution to African liberty made by us than that which is technical and scientific."[70]
Garvey also envisioned a distinctive and international black "high society," with its own rituals, awards, ceremonies, titles, and receptions. Believing that Negroes associated with whites for the prestige, honors, awards and titles this afforded them--and realizing that whites conferred such boons only upon subservient blacks--Garvey demanded a separate black institutional framework with its own system of rewards. He also insisted that blacks honor each other for racial service rather than for the accumulation of money, which usually won accolades. Accordingly, the UNIA held court receptions, conferred titles such as "knight" and "duke" upon honored members and officials, and evolved elaborate uniforms, ceremonial occasions, and pageants for its members. One UNIA official extolled
gorgeous robing or anything that attracts the eye--anything to lift the people from the stupor of the ages--and expense means nothing to us just now. If we had to hire a man and pay him a hundred dollars a week just to beat a drum and the beating of that drum created the proper impression, we would do it.... Our people have been so destroyed by propaganda that we are taking every possible method to relieve the situation.... Anything that is pompous, grand and gorgeous, while it may not be economical, yet is very effective among any simple people.... So, yes, the robes are rather gorgeous like the gorgeous tail of a rooster, but, there, God let loose his gorgeousness to attract the hens. Seems unnecessary but in the mind of the hen, it plays a very important part....[71]
When critics of both races ridiculed these practices, Garvey responded that "some white people in Europe and America say Mr. Garvey likes colors and robes and titles. Can you tell me where you can find more titles and robes than in Europe?" As usual, Garvey complained, whites and their black allies condemned as ridiculous in blacks behavior that they admired in whites. Citing the English Court and Parliament and the Catholic church as venerable institutions based partly on spectacle, Garvey asked "why then do [whites] tell Negroes not to be spectacular? We want everything they have." Garvey defended titles by asserting that every other empire had recognized and encouraged merit by rewarding it: "Why should we discard that which has made other folks great?"[72]
After Du Bois heaped scorn and ridicule upon the UNIA's titles, Garvey tellingly replied that the NAACP leader "can see and regard honor conferred only by their white masters. If Du Bois was created a Knight Commander of the Bath by the British King, or awarded a similar honor by some white Potentate, he would have advertised it from cover to cover of the Crisis, and he would have written a book and told us how he was recognized above his fellows by such a Potentate." Garvey's point hit home: Du Bois did exult when he or any black wore the uniform of the United States or any other white supremacist nation. (Du Bois had, of course, aimed at a captaincy in the US's Army's Military Intelligence Division himself.) Du Bois's conduct at the PAC Conferences manifested an unseemly worship of power--a respect for glitter, pageanty, and uniforms when backed by white violence.[73]
The Negro World described the First UNIA Court Reception, in August 1921, as "a ceremonial that may correctly be regarded as a revival of the ancient glory, pomp and splendour of Ethiopia in the days of the Queen of Sheba, centuries long ago, of her greatness and world supremacy, comparable to similar state functions held in the ceremonial courts of England, Germany, Italy, France and the United States.... Persons of prominence and note were knighted, as in the days of old, for distinguished service to the race.... Several young misses also presented upon making their social debut." This reception, the Negro World asserted, was not empty glitter like other Negro functions, but a harbinger of Negro achievement in all spheres that set "a high standard of society of their own, devoid of any slavish imitation of the social standards of other races."[74]
Garvey envisioned the UNIA, in short, as an international organization that would meet all of the needs of the Negro masses, presently and in the future. The UNIA would demand full rights for Africans wherever they resided even as it constructed the economic and cultural basis for a future African kingdom in the ancient homeland. Offering a place and a role for everyone of African descent, the UNIA would combine self-help, individual enrichment, and group betterment. Its pageantry, spectacle, uniforms, and demonstration of mass power would engender individual and racial pride, even as its economic enterprises undergirded that pride with a solid material base. The UNIA, Garvey hoped, would combine the eminently practical with the distantly utopian.
[1] MG, Speech in Panama, May 3, 1921, MGP III, 384; MG, Editorial Letter, NW, October 1, 1919, MGP II, 41-42.
Secondary discussions of Garvey include Judith Stein, The World of Marcus Garvey: Race and Class in Modern Society (Baton Rogue, 1986); E. David Cronon, Black Moses: The Story of Marcus Garvey (Madison, 1955), Theodore Vincent, Black Power and the Garvey Movement (Berkeley, 1971); and Tony Martin, Race First: The Ideological and Organizational Struggles of Marcus Garvey and the Universal Negro Improvement Association (Westport, 1976).
[2] MG Speech, January 23 or 24, 1922, MGP IV, 456; MG speech, February 13, 1921 MGP III, 200; MG Speech, September 25, 1920, MGP III, 19.
[3] MG Speech, September 26, 1919, MGP II, 29; MG Speech, September 7, 1921, MGP IV, 34; MG Speech, February 5, 1922, MGP IV, 487; MG, "A Membership Appeal by Marcus Garvey to the Negro Citizens of New York," July 1921, MGP IV, 563; MG, Editorial Letter, November 1, 1921, MGP IV, 160; MG, Editorial Letter, February 2, 1921, MGP III, 159-60.
[4] MG Speech, November 13, 1921, MGP IV, 177-178; MG Speech, September 25, 1920, MGP III, 21; MG Speech, November 27, 1921, MGP IV, 222; MG Speech, February 16, 1921, MGP III, 215-216; MG speech as paraphrased by NW, August 19, 1922, MGP IV, 826. Although some historians have quoted Garvey's remark as evidence of anti-Semitism, it is clear from context that Garvey was praising the Jews as an exemplary race whom blacks should emulate. For a rare example of an historian who understands this, see David Brion Davis, "Jews and Blacks in America," The New York Review of Books, December 2, 1999, pp. 60-61.
The attitude of many Jews toward Garvey depended on their position on Zionism. Unsurprisingly, Zionists hailed Garvey with enthusiasm, while Jewish Socialists favored Randolph and the Messenger. See Hasia Diner, In the Almost Promised Land: American Jews and Blacks, 1915-1935 (Baltimore, 1995), 53-55, 58, 64, 76, 202-227.
[5] MG, "West Indians in the Mirror of Truth," January 1912, MGP I, 197-198; MG Speech, July 14, 1921, MGP III, 530; MG Speech, in the Gleaner, MGP III, 297-298.
[6] MG Speech, July 14, 1921, MGP III, 529-530. By "class" Garvey means that blacks were their own category, or class; in other words, when he here says "class consciousness" he means "race consciousness."
[7] MG Speech, August 1, 1922, MGP IV, 771; MG Speech, September 4, 1921, MGP IV, 25; MG Speech, October 30, 1919, MGP III, 405.
[8] MG Speech, July 13, 1921, MGP III, 528; MG speech, October 2, 1921, MGP IV, 100; MG speech, September 25, 1921, MGP IV, 86.
[9] MG Speech, ca. February 16, 1921, MGP III, 211-214.
[10] MG Speech, July 2 [4], 1921, MGP III, 552; MG in NW, April 10, 1920, MGP III, 410-411; MG Speech, February 1, 1921, MGP III, 154.
[11] MG Speech, July 23, 1922, MGP IV, 746.
[12] MG Speech, July 23, 1922, MGP IV, 745-6.
[13] MG Editorial, June 13, 1922, MGP IV, 674.
[14] MG Speech in NW, October 11, 1919, MGP II, 68.
[15] MG Speech, September 25, 1920, MGP III, 20; MG, "African Redemption Fund Appeal," MGP III, 744; MG Editorial, April 5, 1922, MGP IV, 592-594.
[16] MG Speech, February 5, 1922, MGP IV, 484; MG Speech, November 7, 1920, MGP III, 79; MG Speech, June 5, 1922, MGP IV, 659; MG Speech, May 5, 1921, MGP III, 382.
[17] MG Speech, August 8, 1920, MGP II, 559-560; MG speech, November 7, 1920, MGP III, 79-80.
[18] MG Speech, ca. February 26, 1921, MGP III, 208; MG speech, November 7, 1920, MGP III, 77-79.
[19] MG Speech, February 5, 1922, MGP IV, 485-486; MG speech, september 26, 1920, MGP III, 24.
[20] MG Speech, September 25, 1920, MGP III, 26; MG speech, July 17, 1920, MGP II, 414-415; MG, "A Membership Appeal from Marcus Garvey to the Negro Citizens of New York," July, 1921, MGP III, 561-2.
[21] MG speech, ca. February 16, 1921, MGP III, 211-215.
[22] MG speech, August 25, 1919, MGP I: 503. The government reporter did not capitalize "Negro".
[23] MG speech, March 25, 1919, MGP I, 396; MG, August 25, 1919, MGP I, 502; MG speech, September 25, 1920, MGP III, 21; MG Editorial, NW, November 30, 1918, MGP I, 303; MG speech, January 15, 1922, MGP IV, 367.
[24] MG speech, October 30, 1919, MGP II, 130; MG Editorial, June 27, 1922, MGP IV, 684; MG speech, January 1, 1923, MGP IV, 323; MG, "African Redemption Fund Appeal," MGP III, 745; MG speech, July 24, 1920, MGP II, 455; MG, Editorial, February 2, 1921, MGP III, 161; MG speech, June 15, 1922, MGP II, 658; MG speech, September 26, 1929, MGP III, 25.
[25] MG speech, October 30, 1919, MGP II, 130; MG Editorial, June 27, 1922, MGP IV, 684; MG speech, January 1, 1923, MGP IV, 323; MG, "African Redemption Fund Appeal," MGP III, 745; MG speech, July 24, 1920, MGP II, 455; MG, Editorial, February 2, 1921, MGP III, 161; MG speech, June 15, 1922, MGP II, 658; MG speech, September 26, 1929, MGP III, 25.
[26] "Constitution and Book of Laws," July 1918, MGP I, 257,
[27] MG Editorial, April 18, 1922, MGP 611-612.
[28] ibid.
[29] MG speech, October 24, 1919, MGP II, 116; MG, "A Membership Appeal from Marcus Garvey to the Negro Citizens of New York," ca. July 30, 1921, MGP III, 562. In his October 24 speech, Garvey said that Negro rule would restore "mercy, love, and charity to all."
[30] MG Editorial, NW, December 29, 1920, MGP III, 114; MG speech, November 20, 1921, MGP IV, 211; MG speech, November 7, 1920, MGP III, 80; Rev. Brooks speech, NW, July 25, 1920, MGP II, 442-443; MG speech, May 2, 1921, MGP III, 381; MG speeches, April 27, 1921, MGP III, 370-371.
[31] MG Editorial, March 5, 1921, MGP III, 241; MG speech, September 24, 1920, MGP III, 16; MG speech, September 7, 1921, MGP IV, 38; MG, NW, April 5, 1919, MGP I, 397.
[32] MG speech, October 25, 1919, MGP II, 116; MG speech ca. February 16, 1921, MGP III, 213; MG speech, August 1, 1922, MGP IV, 766-767.
[33] UNIA "Petition to the League of Nations," July 20, 1922, MGP IV, 736-737; UNIA "Petition Against the League of Nations," February 22, 1919, MGP I, 369; MG speech, ca. February 28, 1919, MGP I, 375.
[34] MG speech, March 13, 1920, MGP II, 253; MG speech, February 5, 1922, MGP IV, 488; MG Editorial, April 5, 1922, MGP IV, 595.
[35] MG Editorial, August 17, 1920, MGP II, 600; MG speech, October 25, 1919, MGP II, 120; MG speech, August 1, 1921, MGP III, 581.
[36] MG speech, September 26, 1920, MGP III, 24; MG speech, August 22, 1920, MGP II, 617-618; MG speech, July 17, 1920, MGP II, 416; MG speech, August 3, 1920, MGP II, 500; UNIA "Declaration of Rights," MGP August 1920, II, 577; MG Editorial, September 7, 1920, MGP III, 8-10; MG speech, MGP August 2, 1921, III, 593-594.
[37] MG speech, September 26, 1920, MGP III, 24; MG speech, August 22, 1920, MGP II, 617-618; MG speech, July 17, 1920, MGP II, 416; MG speech, August 3, 1920, MGP II, 500; UNIA Declaration of Rights, MGP August 1920, II, 577; MG Editorial, September 7, 1920, MGP III, 8-10; MG speech, MGP August 2, 1921, III, 593-594.
[38] MG speech, August 13, 1922, MGP IV, 848; MG speech, November 20, 1921, MGP IV, 207.
[39] MG speech, February 1, 1921, MGP III, 150-151.
[40] MG speech, February 1, 1921, MGP III, 150-151; MG speech, January 29, 1922, MGP IV, 466; MG quoted by New York Globe, August 2, 1921, MGP III, 588; MG speech, August 1, 1921, MGP III, 578; MG speech, August 13, 1922, MGP IV, 847.
[41] MG speech, August 14, 1921, MGP III, 664; MG speech, August 31, 1921, MGP III, 735-736; MG Editorial, March 27, 1919, MGP I, 391; MG speech, October 1, 1919, MGP II, 42.
[42] MG speech, ca. February 16, 1921, MGP III, 210; MG speech, November 20, 1921, MGP IV, 206; MG Editorial, October 1, 1919, MGP II, 42.
[43] MG speech, June 5, 1922, MGP 654-655.
[44] MG Speech, March 13, 1920, MGP II, 254; MG speech, January 15, 1922, MGP IV, 364; MG speech, March 12, 1922, MGP IV, 567.
[45] NW quoted in Military Intelligence Division report, April 5, 1919, MGP I, 404; British Military Intelligence report, September 27, 1919, II, 30-31.
[46] MG Editorial, March 27, 1919, MGP I, 391; MG quoted by British Military Intelligence Division report, September 27, 1919, MGP II, 31; MG speech, November 13, 1921, MGP IV, 182-3.
[47] MG speech, ca. February 16, 1921, MGP III, 213.
[48] MG Editorial, April 5, 1922, MGP IV, 595-596.
[49] MG speech, July 13, 1921, MGP III, 528; MG Editorial, April 5, 1922, MGP II, 594; MG speech, April 27, 1921, MGP III, 371.
[50] MG Speech, April 4, 1921, MGP III, 297.
[51] Bureau of Investigation Report, June 25, 1920, MGP II, 401; William Pickens to H. Claude Hudson, June 5, 1922, MGP IV, 651.
[52] MG speech, September 26, 1919, MGP II, 29; MG Editorial, October 11, 1920, MGP III, 50.
[53] MG Editorial, September 7, 1920, MGP III, 9; MG Editorial, May 3, 1920, MGP II, 330; MG Editorial, November 29, 1919, MGP II, 155-156; MG, August 8, 1920, MGP II, 559-560; MG, Editorial, MGP December 3, 1919, MGP II, 160.
[54] The phrase is Herbert J. Seligman's, "Negro Conquest," World Magazine, December 4, 1921, MGP IV, 243. Seligman, an NAACP official, was highly critical of Garvey and the UNIA.
[55] MG speech, February 11, 1921, MGP III, 185; MG Editorial, NW June 4, 1919, MGP I, 413; MG Editorial, July 9, 1919, MGP I, 453; MG speech, February 22, 1921, MGP III, 227; MG speech, May 1, 1920, MGP III, 328.
[56] "To BSL Stockholders," February 27, 1920, MGP II, 225; MG speech, September 26, 1919, MGP II, 28; MG speech, February 22, 1921, MGP III, 225-226; MG Editorial, September 25, 1919, MGP II, 26; MG speech, October 20, 1919, MGP II, 87.
[57] MG speech, August 14, 1922, MGP IV, 867-870.
[58] MG speech, August 14, 1922, MGP IV, 867-870. Some of this is the UNIA's paraphrase of Garvey's speech.
[59] MG speech, September 2, 1922, MGP IV, 1053-1055.
[60] MG speech, September 2, 1922, MGP IV, 1053-1055.
[61] MG speech, September 2, 1922, MGP IV, 1053-1055.
[62] UNIA paraphrase of MG speech, August 8, 1922, MGP IV, 826.
[63] UNIA Declaration of Rights, August 1920, MGP II, 571-578.
[64] ibid.
[65] MG speech, March 26, 1921, MGP III, 282-284; MG speech, February 4, 1921, MGP III, 162; MG speech, September 26, 1920, MGP III, 26. Although whites, in a virtuoso feat of hermenutical ingenuity, claimed that "the curse of Ham" justified perpetual enslavement of Africans, Biblical literalists would note that the Genesis tale has Noah cursing Canaan, Ham's son. Ironically, the Biblical story served to justify conquest and genocide.
[66] MG speech, June 5, 1922, MGP IV, 657; MG speech, July 24, 1920, MGP II, 457; MG speech, September 26, 1920, MGP III, 26.
[67] MG speech, March 29, 1921, MGP III, 292-295; MG speech, May 26, 1921, MGP III, 428; MG speech, February 3, 1921, MGP III, 201; MG in NW, October 25, 1919, MGP II, 103; MG speech, May 2, 1921, MGP III, 382.
[68] MG to the Gleaner, April 5, 1921, MGP III, 337; MG speech, February 4, 1921, MGP III, 161; MG speech, August 25, 1919, MGP I, 507; MG speech, April 21, 1921, MGP III, 319; "Universal Negro Catechism," March 1921, MGP III, 302-320.
[69] UNIA paraphrase of MG speech, August 17, 1922, MGP IV, 897; MG speech, ca. February 16, 1921, MGP III, 215.
[70] MG Editorial, June 13, 1922, MGP IV, 673-674.
[71] J.D. Gordon to John M. Scott, January 31, 1921, MGP III, 148.
[72] MG speech, January 29, 1922, MGP IV, 469; MG speech, August 28, 1922, MGP IV, 1010-1011.
[73] MGP V, February 13, 1923; Lewis, Du Bois, 564-69.
[74] "First UNIA Court Reception," August 27, 1921, MGP III, 698-699.
Echoing the widespread Social Darwinist ideas of his age, Garvey asserted that "the survival of the fittest" was the inexorable law of human life. Referring to the wildly popular (among blacks) Afro-American heavyweight boxing champion, Garvey said that "this is the Jack Johnson age, when the fittest will survive." The question was that "of a man proving himself fit to live. I say to you here tonight that if you are fit to live you will live; if you are not fit you will die." Garvey unabashedly accepted racism as natural and inevitable, and conceded that blacks, given the opportunity, would oppress other races as whites oppressed blacks. Negroes must put aside their individualism and cooperate with each other simply because they had no alternative. Garvey said that "If I could have successfully gotten out of the colored race, I would not be here tonight... but I know this, being a Negro like you, whatsoever happens to you as a race is bound to happen to me. If I were a white man I would not give two rows of pins whether you stay at home, or play on the piano, or go to the moving picture. If I were a Jew my interests would be with the Jews; if I were an Irishman my interests would be with the Irish, if I were an Anglo-Saxon my interests would be with the Anglo-Saxons. Now that I am a Negro, with whom must my interests be but with you?"[2]
Racial consciousness, pride, and unity were Garvey's preferred weapons in the fight against white supremacy. Africans must rise as a race, not as individuals; only collective consciousness and collective action could redeem Africa and the race. Because "all white men are white men... all Negroes should be Negroes," whatever their nationality, class, or skin color. Racial identity was "the greatest weapon the Negro has for his development." All Negroes were bound together by common blood, the greatness of their past civilization, their history of slavery and colonization, and their present experiences of white dominion. "The second you forget the sufferings of the past," he said, "that very moment you become defeated in the struggle of life." Criticizing divisions within the black race based on skin color, Garvey said that the UNIA "is for everybody, so long as you have one drop of black blood in your veins." Garvey warned that whites would "try to divide you, telling you that you are colored, you are black, and therefore you are not one. They themselves say that we are Negroes, with even one drop of black blood." Garvey demanded that "a new and worthy race" emerge from "the 400,000,000 of our people who have for centuries dragged out an existence as serfs and peons under the domination of alien forces and alien races.... The Negro, like the rest of mankind, has a place in the world. His place, however, will not be given to him by others, but he must take and occupy it.... This can only be done when each and every member of the race realizes the consciousness of self--that each and every one has a part to play."[3]
While Garvey was unsparing in his criticism of white atrocities and oppression, he also praised the energy, self-confidence, and creativity of the whites, who furthered their interests at whatever cost to other races. "I admire the white man for his strategy," Garvey said. "I admire him for his pluck and daring. I will never curse the white man, I will never oppose the white man, because he has been the master genius of civilization." In a similar vein, Garvey praised William Hearst, a vituperative racist, as a statesman who "loves his race. He can see nothing else but his race." Garvey declared that "If I were a white man, Hearst would be my best friend; but since I am a black man, Hearst is my bitter enemy." Garvey also praised the Jews as role models whose accumulation of wealth and power in the face of Christian hostility showed the way for blacks. Using an anti-Semitic canard as high praise, Garvey said that the Jews, everywhere despised, were too numerically weak for physical conquest. They therefore planned for centuries "a financial conquest of the world," which "was realized in the last war. Let me tell you: it was not the Kaiser who made the war; it was not the English statesmen who made the war; it was the Jew who made the war and the Jew who stopped the war. Jewish financiers, Jewish capital in London, in Paris, in Berlin and in Petrograd financed and started the war" and Russian Jewish capital stopped it after "the Jew had the promise of Palestine." The Jews thus exemplified "the rise of a race from a position of serfdom, exclusion and oppression, to the proud place of controlling the wealth and commerce of the world."[4]
Garvey extolled the benefits of American racism in inculcating black racial identity and consciousness, alleging that "the honest prejudice of the South was sufficiently evident to give the Negro of America the real start--the start with a race consciousness, which I am convinced is responsible for the state of development already achieved by the race." In Garvey's native Jamaica, the ruling whites emphasized class rather than race as a strategy of dominion; by seemingly accepting a small number of successful blacks and "colored" people of mixed descent as nominal equals, they diffused racial consciousness and divided the African majority against itself. "In the WEST INDIES Negroes outnumber whites one hundred to one. [Whites] do not lynch Negroes because the odds are too great. [The] white man goes up to the Negro with a bible in his hands instead of a rope. He tells you that you are as good as he, but he sees to it that you never get above the station in life that he intends. He makes economic conditions such that he keeps you too poor to mix up in his society and join his clubs. The higher class Negro in the WEST INDIES holds the poor class down" because successful blacks and creoles distanced themselves from their poorer brethren. "Fourteen thousand people could not in the wildest dream stand in the way of eight hundred thousand people if those people had common sense, if they had even horse sense," Garvey said. "Conditions racially depend on yourselves because some of you Negroes refuse to admit what you are, you want to be everything except what God created you to be.... In Jamaica every man represents a race to himself--the most peculiar country for the race question I have ever met."[5]
Inescapable American racism, however, was a positive good which united blacks of all complexions and conditions as a racial class of their own. "We have no hatred for the Southern White Man," Garvey claimed. "I believe that the Southern White Man is the best friend the Negro ever had. But for the Southern White man the Negro would still be asleep. He 'JIM CROWED' you and he KICKED you. That aroused class consciousness. If it were not for the attitude of the white man I would be addressing Negro congregations with white wives. Lynching did more to arouse consciousness in the Negro than anything else. [Virulent racists] HOKE SMITH, TILLMAN and SMUTS are the Negroes' best friends. Their attitude towards the Negro caused the Negro to wake up to class prejudice. I am a SMITH, SMUTS and TILLMAN all in one word. If we had not been lynched and jim-crowed, we would never have awakened and started a Republic in Africa."[6]
Garvey believed that "man is wicked, man is envious, man is murderous, and you can expect very little of man. The only protection against injustice in man is power, physical power, financial power, educational power, scientific power, power of every kind; it is that power that the UNIA is encouraging Negroes to get for themselves." Improved interracial understanding could solve nothing "because the mass of white people everywhere are the same as they were when Jesus visited this world.... If Jesus failed I do not see how Du Bois can do it." American oppression of blacks even amidst the Great War, combined with spreading anti-Negro riots abroad, demonstrated that whites were indeed everywhere the same. "We brought the Kaiser to his knees because we believed that we were fighting for a just cause. But after we 'licked' the Kaiser, after we had brought him to his knees, we found out that crackerdom was universal, that crackers were in England as well as America, in France as well as Germany, in Italy as well as in Russia."[7]
The UNIA, therefore, preached that "charity begins at home" and "there is no love but the love that you have for yourself." Directly confronting traditional religious sentiments that stressed love of one's enemies, Garvey proclaimed that "fellowship with the fellow men of your own race" was imperative for survival:
Even though in the future we may have to demonstrate love and charity to all, yet we cannot afford to do it now because we have done it in the past and it has not benefited us. We have been giving of our love and charity to others and deprived ourselves of it and we have not travelled very far on it.... We cannot start out now to practice virtues to others because nobody is going to listen to you. You have to meet the other person on his own battleground and knock him down, and when he is down you pick him up and say, "This is the way you ought to go."[8]
We do not know when Christ will return, Garvey said, and in the meantime "we are living down here, and the other fellow has part of what belongs to us [and so] we are going to suspend the idea of brotherhood and talk something else.
I believe in the brotherhood of Christ when all of us get into heaven. That's time enough for all of us to be brothers in Christ.... As long as some one, I say, is depriving us of our portion and our job, there cannot be any talk about brotherhood.... There is no brotherhood when one man is robbing the other fellow, and that is what is happening to Negroes now.... If you will stand up and let him take it from you, and then talk about his being a brother to you, when he has gone away and left you without a nickel with which to buy bread, then you are crazy, indeed; for... you will simply stay there and die unless you will go after the other fellow and fight for what is ours. And that's the kind of man the white man is.... They have no mercy and no sympathy, and anywhere they can get wealth they are going there and will take it....
We are going to show them the quality of mercy--after we get even with the "crackers." I don't believe there can be any dispensation of mercy until you "get even" with the "other fellow."... I want to feel satisfied that he feels what I felt, and then, after that, we can call it quits, for then we can appreciate each others' feelings.[9]
Blacks would remind complaining whites that "we are giving to you no more than you give to us. Give us a kick and we will return the kick; give us a smile and we will return the smile--and you know that nobody can smile like the Negro. He smiles broadest and he fights longest." The oppressed, Garvey said, must "organize in terms of self" in response to "similar kinds of organizations on the part of their oppressors." Black practice of racial self-interest "finds its highest justification in the practices and methods of their oppressors." In terms virtually identical to those used by white radicals, Garvey proclaimed that "those who are slaves must strike the blow for their freedom. In all the history of the human race I have never heard of a race begging for their freedom and getting it; they have had to fight for their freedom [before] winning it." The Negro was formally emancipated but was "not satisfied with the kind of freedom he has now; he wants a larger freedom...."[10]
Commenting on British demands for control of the ex-German colonies in Africa, Garvey asked:
What is the difference between Mexico and England in the matter of an African mandate? The only difference is [that] one has a powerful navy to conquer and to enslave, and the other has no powerful navy to do it.... Brute force is the thing that rules the world; not religion, not politics, but brute force, and if you have an organization you will get brute force as quickly as you can. England has parcelled out our land simply because England has a big club in her hand and you have nothing. If you would take my advice you would get a club ten times as big. I am saying this without any fear or regard for what has been done, because they have absolutely no more right to do it than I had the right to sit down here and say I am going to parcel out England.... One month after [the UNIA unites four hundred million blacks] 30,000,000 Anglo-Saxons will hold themselves in that little island called England and never show themselves around the 12,000,000 square miles of land called Africa.[11]
Blacks, therefore, must "prepare with financial power; prepare with educational power; prepare with scientific power."[12] Speaking of the failure of various African rebellions against British rule, Garvey allowed that realpolitik "may sound very harsh and cold-blooded," but that whites would not heed prayers and petitions.
If you can drop a bomb further than he can, and even more deadly, then he is going to listen to your complaint. If you can make some chemical and produce some explosive by which you can put him out of commission easier than he can you, he is going to listen to you.... Africa can only be redeemed by the scientific skill of the Negro himself. He will have to match fire with hell-fire; he will have to match science with higher science; he will have to match brains with greater brains. It is well we understand this now.
The great white man has held sovereignty over the world through his power in science, in art, and in industry. Negroes, my advice to you is to get that kind of power that will place you on a par with the great white man.... If you want to meet the other fellow and his aeroplane, get one.... [and also a gun that fires] at least ten yards further than his. These are cold facts, and it is well the Negro realized that now. We are living in a material age, the age when power rules--not sentiment, not emotion, but power, and the best thing you can do is to get it.[13]
Garvey vigorously advocated black self-defense against white violence. Ironically, however, he quoted slaveowner Patrick Henry's "Give me liberty or give me death" rather than McKay's incendiary and recently-published "If We Must Die." Garvey asserted that "where killing is concerned the Negroes never take the initiative. The Negroes did not start the riot in Chicago, but they finished it."[14]
Garvey emphasized that racism was intensifying in America and worldwide and claimed that blacks faced actual extermination in the United States and in Africa unless they acted quickly. "I am here tonight to point you the way to glory or to destruction," he said. "For three hundred years we have been held as chattel and industrial slaves in the Western World, and for five hundred years we have been robbed, exploited and killed in Africa. The world in which we live today is closing in upon us, and in a short while we will be thrown off to die as an unfit and unprepared people. We have in the past, and up to the present, been lynched, raped, jim-crowed, segregated and exploited in our labor, and after all this, it is apparent that in the great industrial struggle that is to come, we will be thrown off to suffer and to die." Garvey reminded his audiences that
the attitude of the great white race is to subjugate, to exploit, and, if necessary, to exterminate the weaker peoples with whom they come into contact. They will subjugate them first, if the weaker ones will stand for it; then exploit them; then, afterwards, if they will not stand for the subjugation or exploitation, the other recourse is extermination, as with the North American Indian and the aborigines of Australia and the natives of the many countries now inhabited by the great white race.... [The white man] believes in the superiority of race. You will not blame him for it, because today he is all-powerful, he is progressive, he is advancing on every hand.... It is human, it is natural that the successful man will hold himself above the unsuccessful individual; so of the race, so of the nation.[15]
In the United States, whites would exterminate the blacks either by armed violence or, more likely, economic deprivation. Garvey warned that "In another three hundred years only the fittest of this great human family of ours will be found peopling this world; all other races not sufficiently prepared, not sufficiently organized, not sufficiently protected, will be wiped off the face of the globe, either by political or military slaughter, or by economic disaster." He reminded his audiences that in the decades before World War I whites in the North and South had driven blacks out of the trades and occupations in which they had retained a foothold after the Civil War. Only the temporary need for black labor during the crisis of war had opened new industries for Negro labor. Now that the war was over, whites would renew their drive to expel blacks from every niche of the economy, "and when you close down upon a man's bread and butter you have beaten him." Economic depression and a growing population would intensify competition for jobs and accelerate this process of economic extermination. "This is a white man's country," Garvey said; the white man will "kill you before he allows you to take his place.... Do you think that man is going to yield up his job to you when there is only one job and two men?" The white worker, "the man who doesn't stop to reason but only to eat," "the good for nothing 'cracker' white man who has nothing to rely on but his color" was the most vicious racist, but elites also fomented racism for their own ends. "Economically," Garvey warned, "the white man can kill every Negro in thirty days."[16]
Garvey reminded his audiences that "no security, no success can come to the Black man, so long as he is outnumbered in the particular community where his race may become industrially and commercially strong. We may control all the business places in Harlem, all the department stores, we may succeed in Harlem, but as long as there are six million white people in New York, there is always danger. If there is a great economic [de]pression there are thousands of white people in New York belonging to the old and unreasonable elements. Do you think the poor white people, poor white trash as they are called down South, do you think that they would allow the Negroes to succeed in Harlem and they remain starving? Do you know what they will do? They will march up one day and run every Negro out of Harlem. This [is] not an idea, it is a fact, because it is demonstrated every day in the South. The successful Negro, the thrifty Negro, will work there for years. He will build up a splendid business and a home for himself and family, and then the poor white people in the neighborhood, seeing the successful man having his automobile and his fine house will get together" and drive him out, calling him uppity and insisting that no black should succeed while any whites remained poor. "Therefore, you have absolutely no assurance that the white people will protect you, so long as we are only ten millions." Piteous appeals and militant resistance were both futile because "you cannot successfully combat [the white man] here because he has everything at his command." The Negro's only recourse was "to stop the white man in Africa."[17]
Africans who remained in the ancestral homeland were similarly endangered because the Europeans intended to recoup their wartime losses by intensified exploitation in Africa. "In Europe these Caucasians after having exploited others, robbed and killed others, are now dissatisfied with their own native habitat and are endeavoring to reach beyond Europe." The Monroe Doctrine prevented the European rape of South America, while Japan kept the whites out of Asia. The whites, therefore, lusted after Africa's riches. "America affords us a splendid example of the designs that the races and nations of the world now have upon Africa.... They made up their minds that they would take the country away from the Indians by kidnapping and killing them, and ultimately they succeeded" until America "became the white man's country as you see it now." This took centuries, but the results were readily apparent today. "Once [the aborigines] were millions, even as Negroes are millions in Africa." The white man "is practicing there just what the early settlers practiced in America years and years ago. It is a question of Africans at home being unable to help themselves because they are not adept in the civilization that confronts them." But blacks endured slavery for 250 years "so that in coming in contact with the slaveholders you might understand the men with whom you have to deal.... The Negro child just from the cradle knows that the white man has a design against the entire world that is not white.... His one purpose is to possess himself of all the land and rule and dominate the world for ever."[18]
The UNIA leader repeatedly reminded his followers of the genocidal history of white Americans. "A couple of hundred years ago a certain number of innocent people lived in this country, called America. These people were called North American Indians. Some other people who were dissatisfied with their condition in another part of the world, after that part of the world had become too overstocked with people to satisfy everybody" invaded the Americas and exterminated the Indians. "There was not enough room for two great people to occupy the same place and exist together, and, therefore, one had to die, to make room for the other. The same design is now being [centered] upon Africa.... It is simply that [the white] race believes that no other race has a right to live." Garvey's solution was a Back to Africa movement that would unite Africans at home and Africans abroad. Twelve million Negroes in America could not "stop the cracker from spreading hell all over the world. Not until the Negroes of the world on the battle plains of Africa teach some nation as the Japanese taught the Russians will [the whites] stop burning and lynching you in all parts of the world."[19]
Garvey bolstered his Back to Africa movement with four major arguments: Africa belonged by right to the Africans of the world; Africa was a rich and noble continent well worth possessing; a massive return would benefit the immigrants, the Africans who remained abroad, and those who already resided in Africa; and building a strong Africa was fully practical.
UNIA theology insisted that God had created each race with a distinct identity and given it a special place on earth. God "never created four hundred million people to be wanderers all over the world, but gave blacks "a land of their own.... Africa shall be for the Africans, those at home and those abroad." Garvey asserted that "God Almighty gave you a country--the richest and the most prolific among all the continents.... It is for you to repossess yourselves of it. Remember, men, the African is in each and every one of us colored men. We cannot get away from it if we tried. One sixteenth of the blood makes you an African and we cannot get away from it. Therefore do not play the fool and talk about your not being an African. All of us are Africans. But the only difference is: Some are Africans at home and others are Africans abroad.... How can we sing and play in a foreign land? Let us stop laughing for the white man." Garvey said that "the Almighty Architect, when He created the world, designed that black men should inherit the land of Africa .... Although we have been slaves in these parts for nearly three hundred years, it goes without argument that we are still citizens of Africa.... When [our parents] were robbed from Africa, they never gave over their rights of ownership in the land to any other race or any individual. By right of heritage therefore, each and every Negro in the Western world has a moral and a legal claim to Africa. As Africans abroad, we should lend our assistance morally and financially for the redemption of our motherland."[20] Garvey asserted that Africa
is the land of my fathers. They never gave it to anybody, and by my rights, legal and moral, it belongs to me; that's all. I cannot argue with the white man about Canada. I won't argue a second with the white man and tell him Canada is mine. I won't argue with him a second trying to convince him that America is mine. I wouldn't argue with the Englishman two minutes, telling him that the great British Empire is mine. But I will spend eternity fighting with any man who wants to talk about Africa; because it is mine. Let the Canadians have Canada. Let the Americans have America. When we are through, then we will go to Africa.... The conquest I want you to make is not the conquest of Europe; not the conquest of alien races; not the conquest of Asia. I want you to make the conquest of Africa--that which is yours.[21]
Garvey asserted that "every American Negro and every West Indian Negro must understand now that there is but one fatherland for the Negro, and that is Africa."[22]
Condemning the assertion by Du Bois and the Pan-African Congress that whites would remain in Africa, Garvey proclaimed that "Africa must be for the Africans, and for them exclusively." Blacks were everywhere told that America, or Europe, or Asia, belonged to some other race; they therefore demanded Africa for themselves alone. "The barrier [to African freedom] is the white man; and we say to the white man who now dominates Africa, that it is to his interests to clear out of Africa now.... We mean to re-take every square inch of the 12,000,000 square miles of African territory belonging to us by right divine." Garvey pointedly said that "if the two races cannot live in peace in America I can't see how the two races can live in peace in Africa. Therefore, if we have to get out of America somebody must get out of Africa." He warned that "there will be no peace in the world until the white man confines himself politically to Europe, the yellow man to Asia and the black man to Africa.... This division was made by the Almighty Power that rules." Although Garvey claimed that the redemption of Africa would occur within the lifetimes of his auditors, he also reminded them of the seven hundred year struggle of the Irish for freedom, just now bearing fruit. "There is bound to be a free Africa whether it be tomorrow or a hundred years hence.... We are going to get it if it takes a year or a hundred years or a thousand years."[23]
The Africans' contributions to white civilization had, in Garvey's eyes, earned them a land of their own. "The American republic is reared upon the blood of millions of black men and women. The great British empire is built upon the blood and sacrifice of a million of black men." The Africans who built white nations could construct their own homeland as well. Africans in the United States and the West Indies had learned modern technology and civilization from the whites; this knowledge would develop and civilize Africa. Africans in the diaspora would return to "our own dear motherland" and "give to her that which we have acquired and imbibed during our three hundred years of sojourn in a foreign land." Africans had acquiesced in slavery because they lacked the power and weapons to resist the white invaders and could acquire these things only by a long apprenticeship abroad. This apprenticeship had now ended and "we are the children of their hope." Our ancestors "were whipped, maimed, branded with hot irons, [and] worked to death to make us what we are today. Now, that we are civilized.... Who can refuse the plea of the dead grandmother or father from the grave of slavery for help for posterity of the race? From the heights of Heaven our foreparents call out to us to do now for ourselves, or make up our minds to suffer worse than they did in a selfish world that is now closing in around us."[24]
Garvey discerned a divine purpose in the Africans' forced exile and subsequent liberation: "God brought us out of slavery for a purpose, and that purpose is now." He enthused that "Liberia... is beckoning to us to come to her rescue commercially, industrially and educationally." Western science and technology would ensure that "in time it will be an honor to be an African citizen as it was in days gone by to be a Roman citizen." Africans who returned home would carve a powerful nation out of the wilderness much as had the whites who settled North America. "We shall send out Pilgrim Fathers to the great continent of Africa and there lay the foundation for the future glory of this race of ours."[25]
Garvey's opponents fully shared his Eurocentric privileging of science and technology over native African religions and customs. Yet some criticized Garvey's vision of "Pilgrim Fathers" and, citing Liberian opposition to UNIA plans, charged that Garvey envisioned the imperialistic conquest of the native peoples rather than assistance to them. Africa, they pointed out, was not an empty continent any more than America had been; it was inhabited by peoples of diverse cultures who might not welcome the tutelage, "development," "civilization" and "progress" imposed by Westernized blacks. And indeed, Garvey repeatedly said that "civilized" blacks "capable of self-government" were to control Africa; the Preamble to the UNIA's Constitution touted "civilizing the backward tribes of Africa" as a main UNIA goal.[26] Garvey, ignoring the widespread miscegenation that he elsewhere acknowledged and deplored, and neglecting also the vast cultural chasm between African Americans and native Africans (and among native Africans themselves) replied that "everybody knows that there is absolutely no difference between the native African and the American and West Indian Negroes, in that we are descendants from one common family stock. It is only a matter of accident that we have been divided and kept apart for over three hundred years." Africans abroad and at home would soon reunite "in the spirit of brotherly love."
Garvey denied any intention of subjecting native Africans under the yoke of the UNIA. Because the Negro had suffered from "race superiority as inflicted upon him by others," he would reject "a similar assumption on the part of his own people." Although some American and West Indian blacks desired "a kind of autocratic and despotic control" similar to that exercised by whites, such designs ignored "the existing feeling among Negroes everywhere not to tolerate the infliction of race or class superiority upon them, as is the desire of the self-appointed and self-created race leadership" of the last fifty years.[27]Garvey thundered that
The masses of Negroes in America, the West Indies, South and Central America are in sympathetic accord with the aspirations of the native Africans. We desire to help them build up Africa as a Negro Empire, where every black man, whether he was born in Africa or in the Western world, will have the opportunity to develop on his own lines under the protection of the most favorable democratic institutions.....
Africa shall develop an aristocracy of its own, but it shall be based upon service and loyalty to the race.[28]
Confronted with opposition from Liberia's government (opposition which he desperately concealed from his followers), Garvey claimed that Liberia was founded as a refuge for all blacks and that the narrow-minded clique who presently controlled it could not rightfully exclude others who sought asylum. He also proclaimed that Africa was well worth the effort of reconquest. Whites, he said, deceived Negroes with stories about Africa's horrible climate and intolerable conditions; yet whites greedily wanted Africa for themselves. "Africa is the richest continent in the world" and was fully suitable for "the African Empire upon which the sun will never set."[29]
The Back to Africa movement, Garvey promised, would benefit both individual Africans of the diaspora and the race as a whole. "Liberia offers great opportunities to all men and women who desire to start off independently to build fortunes for themselves and their families," he said. Africa would offer jobs for Afro-Americans commensurate with their education and talents. Addressing a group of students in November 1921, Garvey said that the UNIA would ensure that upon graduation the men need not clean spittoons and the girls need not "go into white women's kitchens to wash and scrub." Instead, "you shall go to Africa to be the statesmen of that great Republic, the greatest, I believe, the world will ever see." In the United States, "there is not one Negro... that the white man has respect for," but in Africa every Negro could aspire to any office, including the Presidency. Some UNIA members frankly acknowledged the hardships of pioneer life in an economically and technologically backward nation, but insisted that they would rather suffer such privations in a land where they could hold their heads high and aspire to any dignity. "I would rather be a dead dog in Africa--a black dead dog, than be [a] discriminated against, ostracized, abused Negro in this or any other part of the world," one UNIA official exclaimed. Garvey himself thundered that blacks must not remain content with their servile status in the United States. "A man without ambition is unfit to live. I prefer to die, and every Negro to die, rather than to live and think that God created me as inferior to the white man." In a statement he hoped would stir others to achievement, Garvey said that "My job is to build a nation and an Empire.... No man can place a limit over my ambition."[30]
Garvey also insisted that the redemption of Africa would also benefit the entire black race, and thus every member of it, in ways unattainable by individual effort of any kind. Because blacks were judged as members of a racial group, the backwardness of Africa reflected poorly on Africans abroad. "The pride and self-respect, the prestige and standing of the Negro peoples of the world would be increased by the development of a strong, progressive and self-governing republic in Africa," Garvey asserted. Only such a world power could protect Africans abroad: "When Africa becomes a first-rate power, if you live in Georgia, if you live in Mississippi, if you live in Texas, as a black man I will dare them to lynch you, because you are an African citizen and you will have a great army and a great navy to protect your rights." Garvey acknowledged that some blacks would remain abroad indefinitely, "but we are going to stay here with the protection behind us of the Republic of Africa." Garvey was convinced that "when the Southern white man knows that behind the Negro stands a latest model dreadnought, a latest model cruiser, a latest model submarine, a latest model aeroplane, the latest discovered poison gas--ah! he will come to terms. He will come to terms, but not until then, and you cannot build up a separate navy, a separate army, in a country where there is an existing government." Garvey agreed with Booker T. Washington that the accumulation of money and property would abolish the color line; he added, however, that Negroes required their own government to protect what white governments would not. "The Japanese and Chinese are not lynched in this country," Garvey falsely claimed, "because of the fear of retaliation. Behind these men are standing armies and navies to protect them."[31]
Garvey also believed that Africans would enrich the world with their own distinctive civilization. Like many reformers, he depicted his vision of the future as the restoration of a past golden age. Africa, he said, "has given civilization to the world and made the white man what he is.... The Negro gave him science and art and literature and everything that is dear to him today." The white man had corrupted and destroyed Africa's gift, and blacks must now "take hold of that civilization that we once held." Garvey heralded an African Renaissance: "Give us fifty years, and we will show them a civilization that will startle the universe. We did it once, and we gave it to them on trial. They have abused it, however; they have wrecked it. They have made it a bankrupt civilization, and we are going to start out anew and show them something fresh." Garvey said that "our ancestors held up the torch of science, of art, and of literature" when whites were but cave-dwelling savages. "We are determined to point the race to a brighter future, a future that may yet restore to us the ancient glory of our fathers."[32]
An African homeland where Negroes could develop along the lines of their own racial genius, was essential. Garvey believed that however much blacks had learned from their long apprenticeship in the West, when they returned home they would "develop a civilization of our own among ourselves as a distinct ethnic group among the many independent groups comprising the great human family." African Americans "desire a wider expansion. That expansion can only be realized on the continent of Africa, our ancient fatherland"; blacks could attain freedom only "after we have established an imperial power to command the respect of nations and of races."[33]
Garvey decried the debilitating and crippling effects of racism upon young blacks in the United States and said that "consciousness of self" was necessary for self-esteem and achievement. He complained that belief in white superiority "has become a second part of our nature.... because the impressions we get as children are the impressions that remain with us through life." The only solution was an African nation where Africans could develop along the lines of their distinctive racial genius, unfettered by alien influences. "We need a new emancipation; we need to be emancipated from alien education, alien influence, alien environment; we need to build up a culture and civilization of our own. Any people who accept the culture and civilization of another are bound to fall as slaves and subjects to that race from which they accepted these influences."[34]
African Americans could reap the benefits of nationhood immediately by establishing the UNIA as a powerful government-in-exile representing Africans throughout the world, Garvey asserted. Whites negotiated with representatives of sovereign powers backed by armed force, but dealt with blacks either as isolated individuals or through leaders whom the whites themselves had appointed. "Heretofore leaders have been forced upon us, men of the type that represented the views of an alien race and submerged their manhood for paltry personal gains; men who in the very nature of the circumstances could not and did not represent our views." The result was that "when you offend one white man in America, you offend ninety millions of white men. When you offend one Negro, the other Negroes are unconcerned because we are not organized. Not until you can offer protection to your race as the white man offers protection to his race, will you be a free and independent people in the world." Whites "have treated us as a mass according to the representation we have presented to them" and have not yet recognized that "Du Bois and Moton are no more; we buried them in 1914.... We shall present our own leaders" elected by blacks themselves.[35]
The UNIA would establish Africa as a major power "in the near future," but in the meantime the UNIA "includes all the wants and needs of the Negro.... We are endeavoring to perform the functions of a government for our race." Garvey claimed that the UNIA was "as strong as any government. So that as governments send out their ambassadors and representatives and stand behind them even to the last man of the nation, so we are sending out ambassadors, delegates and ministers plenipotentiary and mean to stand behind them to the last man." Garvey asserted that "we have opened the eyes of the world," and asked, "has there ever been a movement among Negroes that has yet cornered the attention of the entire globe?" UNIA success "means that a new estimate has been placed upon the Negro." The 1920 convention "will register us for all time as a great international power and a great international force. After August no man will dare, no nation will dare treat with the Negro singly or individually; but whenever any race or nation desires to treat with the Negro they have to come to the accredited representatives of the Negro race." He predicted that "we shall write a constitution within this month of August that shall guide and govern the destiny of four hundred million Negroes of the world."[36]
The UNIA's Declaration of Rights represented not a wish-list of future demands, but liberties that Africans now possessed and would exercise at whatever cost to themselves or their oppressors; the UNIA Constitution and Declaration of Rights were binding upon the four hundred million Africans of the world, who pledged "the sacred blood of the race" in their defense. The Convention "was but a pooling of the heartaches and the fraternal greetings of the Negro people of the world.... We had to make laws; we had to formulate and adopt a Constitution, a Declaration of Rights to the world.... Four hundred million Negroes will sacrifice the last drop of their blood to see that every article comes true. No more fear, no more cringing, no more sycophantic begging and pleading...." Destiny was inexorably leading Africans to that freedom "that Lincoln never meant... that will see us a nation among nations." The Declaration of Rights "shall be the Holy Writ of this Negro race of ours. It shall be the very Scriptures by which we shall know ourselves.... This Declaration of Rights shall take its place alongside of the Declaration of Independence of the United States of America and the Magna Charta of England." At the 1921 convention, Garvey declared "we are assembled here as legislators.... This organization represents a larger group of people than any government" (four times the population of the United States).[37]
When critics of both races mocked these views as pretentious, Garvey asserted that the UNIA represented blacks just as the Irish Provisional Government had represented the Irish, and other movements for national liberation had represented their peoples. "If any other race was agitating the cause that we agitate, the whole world would pronounce the righteousness of it.... But because we are Negroes the world THINKS IT A JOKE." His task dwarfed that of all existing heads of states, because they merely administered existing states, while the UNIA was creating a new government. Garvey acknowledged that "before you have a government you must have a people":[38] the UNIA was engaged not merely in the process of state-building, but of welding the various, divided Africans of the world into a unified whole.
Garvey's opponents ridiculed the Back to Africa plan as absurdly impractical. How, they asked, could unorganized Negroes, lacking their own state, overcome the opposition of the mighty white empires that ruled Africa--and also ruled the oceans over which UNIA emigrants, soldiers, and weapons must pass? Garvey sometimes finessed this issue with his frequent protestations that the UNIA did not oppose any existing government:
I am not against this government; I have nothing to say against any government; I have no time to talk about other peoples' governments whether it be that of England, France, Germany or any other nation. The government that I am talking about now is the new government that is to be, the government of Africa from whence my father and grandfathers, against their will, were brought years and years ago....
I have said nothing against the government of the United States. In fact, I think Uncle Sam is very pleased with the fact that the Negro is getting ready to protect himself and not bother Uncle Sam so much.... We are not going to worry Uncle Sam nor any other nation for that matter; we are going to build up in Africa a government of our own, big enough and strong enough to protect Africa and Negroes anywhere. Men do not respect mass meetings and petitions; men respect that thing that everybody is afraid of. The white folks have it here and everywhere, the yellow men have it in Asia, and Negroes must get it....
I do not care what white men or yellow men say; I want to see freedom for the Negro everywhere; I want to say that I am a citizen of Africa.... If you are interested in Europe or Asia that is your business. I am interested in Africa. I am not going to try to stop you talking about Europe; I am not going to try to stop you talking about Asia; so please don't interfere with my talking about Africa.[39]
Garvey repeated such statements often, possibly in an attempt to mollify hostile white governments and their ever-watchful and paranoid secret police forces. Usually, however, he recognized that the reconquest of Africa would come only over the opposition of powerful white governments that the UNIA must displace. Even in the above statement he added that "the Universal Negro Improvement Association is organizing now, and there is going to be some dying later on." Garvey insisted that the fighting would occur on "the battle plains of Africa" rather than in the Western nations where blacks were usually heavily outnumbered; but he recognized that such aspirations inevitably conflicted with white pride and white interests. Garvey warned that "the slightest hope of your success in this African program" would mean "the loss of billions and billions of dollars of wealth to other people who are looking toward Africa for their solvency." Echoing Socialist pronouncements on the role of violence in the social revolution, Garvey asserted that "violence will only be an extreme resort. But history has shown that races that have enslaved other races will never willingly give up their slaves. In the past they have listened to nothing but force." The Negro wanted peace, but was demanding what was his. "I do not care what the philosophers say and theologians say--war to me is the only medium through which we can seek redemption." Africans would wage war "not in any country where government is already constituted" but in Africa, "and if you refuse [our just demands], what you get, please take." The way of George Washington and other patriots was "the way of the sword and of blood."[40]
How then could Africa prevail? Garvey reminded his audiences that many other seemingly hopeless causes had triumphed because of the courage and persistence of their leaders. Every race had endured slavery at some point in their history; the British had been slaves when Rome ruled the world, but had eventually conquered their own world empire. George Washington defeated the mightiest sea power of his day against overwhelming odds; the Irish struggled for seven hundred years against that same empire. Lenin and Trotsky have given the world "a social republic, the first of its kind. If Lenin and Trotsky were able to do that for Russia, you and I can do that for Africa." The oppressed peoples of the world were rising; Ireland, India, Egypt, and Israel were winning their freedom. "This question of prejudice will be the downfall of civilization, and I warn the white race of this, and of their doom," Garvey thundered. "... I warn those nations which believe themselves above the law of God, above the commandments of God.... Your arrogance will destroy you.... I warn them that the hour is coming when the oppressed will rise in their might, in their majesty, and throw off the yoke of ages.... What a destruction, what a holocaust it will be! Can you imagine it?... Truly it will be an ocean of blood." Garvey awaited "the next world war" which, before the ashes of "The Great War" had cooled, he presciently named "the second world war."[41]
Garvey also touted the magnificent fighting spirit of the black race, now skilled in modern weapons and tactics. "David did not know anything else but slingshots, but Negroes know how to use every implement of war in the world." Having fought on behalf of the whites for centuries, blacks must now fight for themselves. "When it comes to dying, no one dies quicker under the leadership of the white man than the Negro," Garvey declared. "The New Negro has fought the last battle for the white man, and he is now getting ready to fight for the redemption of Africa."[42] Praying and begging have not worked; but when the UNIA proclaimed that somebody would die,
then the whole world got alarmed.... We told them that we demand our rights and if we don't get them, somebody is going to die, and since that time the whole world has been concerned. If you will study about [the UNIA], you will find that more printer's ink has been used about us because we encouched that one word in our constitution, that word "Death." Nobody likes that word. When you start to use that word, people become interested. But the Negro is not disposed to fight anybody or to kill anybody but is prepared to adopt the course followed by everybody who has sought human liberty.... Some may say we can't do it but if we were men enough to drive the German hosts across the Rhine, we can drive somebody into the Indian ocean or across the Nile, and that some of us are prepared to do.[43]
Garvey reiterated that "the white man's strength at the present time is maintained by brute force" and that the white man "is the super-savage of the age [who] kills to satisfy himself and to maintain his power." Inevitably some blacks must die for the freedom of the race. "That is the answer I have to give those who are fearful about the white man. He has but one life to give for mine, and anytime he is willing to give his I am ready to give mine." There would be no redemption, Garvey warned, without the shedding of blood. "We shall have in this 20th century nothing less than freedom.... By the blood of the fathers, the children are freed." Garvey professed that for him, "death is but the snap of a finger if by dying [I] can free Africa and redeem the entire race." Oppressors would customarily "execute and imprison the leaders of the cause of liberty everywhere.... Leadership means sacrifice; leadership means martyrdom."[44]
Divisions between Europe and Japan, between the nations of Europe themselves, and between the hostile classes within each European nation, also portended success for Africa. Garvey frequently predicted a coming race war, sometimes between the whites and Japan and sometimes between whites and blacks. "When the American Secretary of the Navy, Joseph Daniels, said that the next war will be a war of races, he was thinking wisely." A war between the whites and Asia would establish Africa as the balance of power. Garvey at times asserted that "the impending clash will be between white Europe and brown and yellow Asia"; at other times, he predicted that "the next war will be between the Negroes and the whites, unless our demands for justice are recognized. With Japan to fight with us we can win such a war...."[45]
Imminent international class war within the white race would similarly benefit blacks. In 1919 Garvey commented that the revolution in Hungary "means revolution among the whites," who were still killing each other "because the masses are not yet free." He predicted that "the bloody conflict between capital and labor" would "give us a breathing space" during which blacks would seize "freedom from the tyrannical rule of oppressive over-lords." The Paris Peace Conference, which Garvey called the "Pieces Conference," would, he realized, only foment renewed war. Garvey predicted that Bolshevism, a white creation that he would gladly use for his own purposes, would "spread until it finds a haven in the breasts of all oppressed peoples, and then there shall be a universal rule of the masses." For "the masses are going to rule. The few little despots and robbers who used to run the world are now being sent to their graves, and before another ten years roll by all of them will be buried by the hands of the masses...." Two years later Garvey saw the disarmament conference as a portent of impending class war. The European ruling classes "realize that they cannot continue to build armaments--those weapons of destruction--and have so many hungry people in their midst; it spells revolution."[46] Africans would benefit whether the European governments taxed their poor beyond endurance or disarmed.
When taunted about the specifics of his plan of African liberation, Garvey angrily retorted that no sane general publicized his plans in advance. Strategy and tactics were best kept secret from the enemy. But in the last analysis, Garvey based his vision on an act of faith: blacks could liberate Africa if they willed it. Like the charismatic leaders of other oppressed groups who confronted formidable structural and physical obstacles, Garvey largely ignored the barriers in his path and convinced his followers that they were invincible. "Africa can be won," he cried, "and if you will make up your minds to win it, it is already won."[47] Garvey assured his followers that "With the Universal Negro Improvement Association there is no 'can't,' there is no 'if': it must be done!" He admonished blacks that
you have doubted yourselves for three hundred years; you have believed in the almighty potency of the other man for five hundred years; you have believed God to have created you to the condition that you now live in. It is a lie, it is not so! God never created you to an inferior position. He made you the equal of all men.... All of us are entitled to this great inheritance. All of us were created lords of the creation, and whether we be white, yellow, brown, or black, Nature intended a place for each and every one.... Four hundred million Negroes shall shed, if need be, the last drop of their blood for the redemption of Africa and the emancipation of the race everywhere.[48]
Garvey and other UNIA leaders constantly referred to a Biblical verse (included in the Universal Negro catechism): "Princes shall come out of Egypt, Ethiopia shall soon stretch out her hands unto God." Garvey assured his followers that "You are the princes that shall come out of EGYPT. Everything under the sun is possible for you." But first, "we must remake ourselves, lift ourselves from the conditions of slavery, of being lackeys, parasites or wards, to the position of real men, men of initiative, men of brawn and power, men of great accomplishments." Speaking in Panama, Garvey again used a Biblical metaphor, saying that "I am here now in Colon to dig up those who are practically dead, and make them new."[49] Garvey extolled himself as a man of average ability who rose above his circumstances as could all other blacks, reminding an audience in his native Jamaica that he had been born in a society that told the black man
that he must be merely a hewer of wood and carrier of water--a servant looking up to the white man as servant and master--who was born to believe himself inferior to other races--born not to have hope for himself. Under this environment I was born myself--you all know of this. But I did not confine myself to this environment. I refuse to be enslaved by an environment which keeps a black man at the foot of the ladder. I was entitled to climb as any other man, be they white, yellow, or black. I was determined to climb the ladder of success, equal with every other man because God created all mankind and gave mankind the overlordship of the world...[50]
Garvey's power lay in his ability to persuade hundreds of thousands of Negroes, on every continent that blacks inhabited, of the truth and practicality of this vision. Such power led an American secret police agent to complain that "there will eventually be trouble, not so much from what [Garvey] says, but what the people will think about themselves as a result of his talks." William Pickens, a prominent NAACP official, likewise predicted that "the idea [Garvey] has injected into the Negro masses will remain, even if Garvey shall be jailed or hung."[51]
His critics notwithstanding, Garvey did not abandon the fight for equality in the United States in favor of dreams of African empire. Garvey did insist, however, that begging and pleading, signing petitions, making demands, and holding public meetings only evoked white ridicule and contempt and branded Negroes as a dependent, suppliant race. Only self-help and racial development could empower Africans at home or abroad. Negroes must unite for "industrial and commercial conquest.... As a people we cannot continue to tamely submit to the indignities heaped upon us by other races that call themselves superior." Lofty aspirations "will avail little, unless we have in our possession the material means to realize our ideals and plans."[52]
UNIA strategy posited a symbiotic relationship between economic self-development in the West and the economic and political conquest of Africa. Only an independent African state could protect the lives and property of Africans abroad, while black economic self-sufficiency in the Americas would undergird the reconquest of Africa. The UNIA, Garvey said, would "build an economic base for the Negro wheresoever he lives." The New Negro "realizes that if he becomes economically self-sustaining and becomes a factor in the commercial and industrial life of the world, he will not only gain some of the good things of this world, but will also gain prestige and standing. For these reasons we have not asked other races to help us, but have endeavored to help ourselves by starting the Black Star Line (BSL) and the Negro Factories Corporation," through which the Negro would "become fit to survive industrially." The sailing of the first Black Star Line ship, Garvey enthused, meant that "the Negro has made his bid for world conquest.... The age of commercial activity calls for the best of energy in the individual, race and nation.... Let our steamship sail the high seas, not one, not two, but hundreds of them. The stronger we become upon land and sea, the more will be the respect shown to us and the greater will be the glory.... Success and greatness come not only by praying for it but by working for it.... There is a world of opportunities awaiting us, and it is for us, through unity of will and of purpose, to say we shall and we will play our part upon the great human stage of activity." The UNIA does not ask "all the Negroes of Harlem and the United States to pack up their trunks and leave for Africa. We are not crazy, because we have to wait until we get a Lenox Avenue and a Seventh Avenue before we could get the Negroes of Harlem to leave for Africa.... But we are asking you to get this organization to do the pioneering work. The majority of us may remain here, but we must send our scientists, our mechanics, and our artisans and let them build railroads, let them build the great Educational and other institutions necessary" before the great masses could return. "Africa must be redeemed, but before her redemption we have to prove to the world that we are fit. The chance to make ourselves fit is now presented to every son and daughter of Africa. We must now achieve in commerce, science, education, art, industry and politics."[53]
Garvey represented the familiar American ethos of "commercialized idealism."[54] He appealed to African Americans on the grounds both of racial uplift and personal profit, which he sometimes conflated. Financial support of UNIA businesses, he said, was "a question of duty. It is a question of your own interest." Although he initially conceived of the Black Star Line as a racial enterprise that would pay "no private dividends," he almost immediately switched positions and claimed that "a five dollar investment in the Black Star Line today may be worth one hundred dollars six months from now." Those who lent money for the Liberian Construction Loan "are lending [money] to yourselves to be used by yourselves for the building up of a nation and a government of your own, and at the same time getting anywhere from 15 to 25 or 30 per cent or more on your investment." The Black Star Line and the Negro Factories Corporation would provide employment for thousands of blacks; the UNIA was "a movement that will be bringing later on bread and butter to thousands of us."[55]
The Black Star Line was the UNIA's most celebrated and controversial venture. It would, Garvey assured his followers, offer "untold opportunities to every stockholder and every member of the race." A black-owned steamship line would transport black produce and passengers throughout the world, thereby facilitating intra-racial comity, trade, and understanding. Blacks should "trade with each other legitimately in the interests of the entire race." The BSL had its own niche, "a place all its own in the world.... it will be impossible for [white capitalists] to squeeze out a black company appealing to black men." Garvey claimed that Africans were already withholding produce from white ships, awaiting the BSL's arrival. Ultimately, the BSL would transport black settlers, soldiers, and weapons to Africa. Proximately, it would enhance the prestige of the race by demonstrating that blacks could operate a huge, modern commercial enterprise. "Nothing engineered by the Negroes within the last 500 years has been as big or stupendous as the Black Star Line... [which] reveals the new business acumen of the Negro." The U.S. government's refusal of passports to UNIA delegates to the Paris Peace talks, and the ruin of a black-owned coal mine by a white railroad that refused to transport its coal, accentuated the need for black independence of white transit. Garvey reminded African Americans that they had bought $250 million of Liberty Bonds during World War I--an investment that merely fastened more tightly the chains of their slavery. When the BSL encountered stiff opposition from African-American leaders Garvey stigmatized each such skeptic as "worse than a traitor to the cause of struggling Ethiopia" and vowed that the BSL would launch its first ship even if the UNIA must "float it in an ocean of human blood." When the BSL did fail, Garvey denied any responsibility and blamed traitors, saboteurs, and incompetents within the UNIA and the BSL.[56]
Garvey's critics incessantly complained that the BSL was a propaganda device rather than a commercial venture. And indeed, even after the Black Star Line went bankrupt, Garvey defended its symbolic value. Speaking of the Yarmouth, the BSL's first vessel, Garvey asserted that fifteen thousand people had attended its launching, and boasted
The sailing of that ship brought into the fold of the UNIA hundreds of thousands of Negro men and women who never could have been reached otherwise, who would never even have been convinced of the possibility of a race scattered throughout the world coming together under one program, on one definite platform.... The Black Star Line did for the Negroes what nothing in the world ever did for 500 years prior to its inception. The Black Star Line created a world sentiment that placed the Negro on a platform that he was never regarded as capable of occupying before.... Half of the strength of the association, half the success had been derived from the pioneering work of the Black Star Line.[57]
Garvey admitted that the BSL, like many pioneering enterprises, was not a total commercial success but asserted that "in the early stages of the BSL it carried a propaganda that enhanced the reputation of this race." Many Negroes identified the BSL with the UNIA, and only heard of latter via the former. The BSL, with tiny resources, competed against huge conglomerates such as the United Fruit Company. Many shipping lines had gone bankrupt during the postwar depression; the United States Shipping board, with its vast resources, had lost hundreds of millions of dollars. "For us to succeed was a task Herculean. For us to fail was an experience worth the while...." [58] Garvey asserted that repayment of BSL investors was a race duty, and launched the Black Star Line Redemption Fund (never operational) for that purpose.
The UNIA also established the Negro Factories Corporation, a venture that at its height supported a grocery store, a steam laundry, and other enterprises in New York. After a tour of various UNIA locals that sponsored their own businesses, William Ferris estimated that the UNIA employed eight hundred African Americans, about half of whom worked for the home office in New York. Negro commercial enterprises, Garvey said, would employ blacks, keep money in the community, and make blacks economically independent of whites. Garvey recognized that white employers would retaliate against black racial activists; and indeed the UNIA papers document occasional firings of UNIA members.
In language familiar to socialists, Garvey warned blacks that when they patronized white stores, invested in white companies, or deposited in white banks, their money became an instrument of their own oppression. Black money built white enterprises that denied blacks employment, Jim Crowed or excluded blacks altogether, and amassed the financial power that controlled governments and empires. Black money in white firms also enslaved Africa. Garvey advised that every UNIA division start its own bank, which would pool the resources of the black community for its own individual and collective advancement. In this and other respects the UNIA would build the new society within the shell of the old.
By this system we are going to run businesses employing hundreds of thousands of members as the years roll by and make ourselves in this community economically independent of everybody else by having our money working for us rather than having the other fellow working our money without even considering us.... We could start anything we want; we could buy a hundred ships at a time. We could force legislation, we could do anything, because at our command we have billions of dollars of surplus, the savings of the members of the association which would be used in developing industries... and make the Negro economically independent of any other race in the world.... In the space of five years no Negro in America need ask the white man for a job.[59]
Speaking in terms reminiscent of black (and white) Socialist advocates of cooperatives and of working-class ownership of the means of production, Garvey promised that if blacks pooled their capital, "not another Negro would be lynched by our being able to control the industries. If you accumulate money in another five years you would not want to go and beg a mob not to lynch you. In that space of time you will control nearly every business in the Southern States and control and dictate the policy of Wall Street itself, and Wall Street controls the policy of the government.... If you have money everybody hears you."[60] If blacks invested their resources in racial enterprises, they could topple white imperialism throughout the world:
The white folks control your finance or your money the world over; they take the same club you give them and club you with it. All that is happening to our people in Africa is caused by that, and you don't know it. Saving your money and putting it away in the white banks has caused Wall Street to control the rubber output in the Congo and the diamond output in Kimberley. They have bought the mine concessions there and enslaved our people and taken away your country with your own money, and you don't know it..... Wall Street has gone down to Haiti and has taken control of the government of Haiti. The National City Bank of New York controls Haiti. The directors of the National City Bank never had a nickel for themselves. You went to work and saved your money and cast it into the repository of the National City Bank, and they took that money and bought concessions in Haiti and placed your own race in slavery in Haiti. You are supplying the club with which other people are clubbing you.[61]
Garvey foresaw the day when the black race could, "by [its] own means as a commercial power, cause instantly to cease all forms of discrimination and injustice against which he now has just reason to complain."[62]
The UNIA demanded for blacks all the rights of citizens in whatever country they resided. Its "Declaration of Rights of the Negro Peoples of the World," adopted at the 1920 Convention, complained that blacks were everywhere "denied the common rights due to human beings for no other reason than their race and color." It denounced lynching, Jim Crow, disfranchisement, taxation without representation, racist injustice in the courts, and discrimination in the professions, the government, and labor unions.[63]
The Declaration also insisted that blacks would secure their full rights "by whatsoever means possible" and that "any law or practice" that deprived "any African of his land or the privileges of free citizenship within his country is unjust and immoral, and no native should respect any such law or practice." Blacks should not pay taxes levied by governments from which they were excluded, or obey any racist law. Any country guilty of lynching was "outside the pale of civilization," and any potential victim should use "every means to protect himself against barbarous practices inflicted upon him because of color." The Declaration proclaimed that "any limited liberty which deprives one of the complete rights and prerogatives of full citizenship is but a modified form of slavery." It asserted "the inherent right of the Negro to possess himself of Africa" and resolved that "the League of Nations is null and void as far as the Negro is concerned, in that it seeks to deprive Negroes of their liberty." The Declaration demanded that "the governments of the world recognize our leader and his representatives chosen by the race to look after the welfare of our people under such governments.... We demand that our accredited representatives be given proper recognition in all leagues, conferences, conventions and courts of international arbitration whenever human rights are discussed." The most controversial provision stated that "no Negro shall engage himself in battle for an alien race without first obtaining the consent of the leader of the Negro people of the world, except in a matter of national self-defense."[64] Garvey, praising this resolution, omitted the weasel clause referring to national self-defense. When West Indian soldiers refused the British command that they help suppress a rebellion in India, Garvey praised the mutiny and claimed UNIA credit for it.
Garvey's program for black self-reliance and independence also included religious and educational reform, organized self-defense against white violence, and an autonomous social life.
Garvey criticized traditional black Christianity as a white man's religion that inculcated subservience, undermined black self-confidence, and paralyzed black initiative. Black churches and pastors, for their own survival and that of their congregations, emphasized Christian love for one's enemies, "turning the other cheek," acceptance of the existing order as divinely sanctioned, and the consolations of life after death. Criticizing such beliefs as encouraging white violence and bolstering white supremacy, Garvey countered with his "eye for an eye" ethic. He also insisted that resisting evil and improving temporal life were religious duties.
UNIA leaders regularly complained that many blacks accepted key tenets of white racist Christianity: that servants should obey their masters, that love of Jesus was more important than worldly success, that blacks descended from Ham (Noah's cursed son), and that God and His angels were white while the devil was black. Garvey asserted that Negroes "give up the world to the white man and take Jesus! The white man has the world and gives up Jesus!.... You must take part of the world and part of Jesus too." He said that "God is not satisfied with prayers alone" and thundered that "God has no colour. He is a spirit. Jesus Christ was not white, black or yellow. He was the embodiment of all fallen mankind. If he was Jesus Christ, the Redeemer, if He came to save fallen mankind and He came as a white man then He did not come to redeem me." Jesus's "physical form bore in it the link of every race." Garvey complained that "every Negro believes that God is white and that the angels are white. God is not white or black; angels have no colour, and they are not white peaches from Georgia. But if [the whites] say that God is white, this organization says that God is black; if they are going to make the angels beautiful white peaches from Georgia, we are going to make them beautiful black peaches from Africa. How long are we going to stand for this propaganda of white superiority and black inferiority?"[65]
Garvey declared that Negroes "are the only inferior race in the world, because we are the only people who have accepted the other fellow's ideals. Go to Japan and see if you see any white God there." Every race portrays God in the image "of their own kind." Garvey charged that "everything that is wicked, everything that is devilish, is white. They told us that the devil was a black man. There isn't a greater devil in the world than the white man." He complained that "through lying teaching, through lying education, we were led to believe that all that was pure, all that was good, all that was noble, came from those who were white, and all that was degrading and debasing came from those who were black. But we new Negroes who were born out of the great war can see nothing perfect except it comes out of our own race." The popularity of skin whiteners and hair straighteners evinced black self-degradation; Garvey attacked advertisements for such cosmetics as "libels upon the reputation of the race."[66]
The solution consisted of "more of Christ and less of theology"; the Sermon on the Mount exemplified "the kind of religion that would help [blacks] rise and find happiness on earth." Garvey preached a "scientific Christianity" that would prepare blacks for heaven "by having them live clean, healthy, happy and prosperous lives down here. No hungry man can be a good Christian. No shelterless civilized man can be a good Christian for he is bound to have bad, wicked thoughts, therefore it should be the duty of religion to find physical as well as well as spiritual food for the body of man." Garvey preached "the beatitude of bread and butter." James Eason, the UNIA leader of Afro-Americans, agreed that "there is just as much religion in making positions for our boys and girls and in buying stock for steamships, which will bring interest for years to come, as there is in being on our knees asking God to do for us what we ought to do for ourselves." In the spirit of Deism, Garvey added that the Supreme Being supervised an immense universe; therefore, "I do not believe in worrying my God with things temporal.... After God created you he was through with you" except for demanding worship.[67]
Garvey, like Thomas Jefferson and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, demanded a revised Bible compatible with the needs of his people, whom Garvey conceived in terms of both class and race. The rich had controlled the Bible "ever since the first edition was printed... [so] anything that would lead [the poor] to subservience would naturally find a place in the Scriptures that [the rich] themselves control and interpret." White preachers should extol the gospel of otherworldliness and poverty to rich whites rather than poor blacks. Whites also distorted the Bible by adding verses implying black inferiority. "God has no printing office up in Heaven," Garvey said. "He has no linotypes or typesetting machines; the angels are not compositors. God inspired the apostles to write and say certain things in those days; but the white folks... changed them to suit themselves." Garvey said that "we believe everything in the Bible" except the doctrine of white superiority. "We are going to cut out all in the Bible which does not suit us." The UNIA would soon publish its own version of the Bible. The UNIA elected a chaplain-general as a major national officer, sung hymns at its conventions, and published the "Universal Negro Catechism," with sections on religion, black history, and UNIA doctrine.[68]
Africans abroad and at home also required "a history exclusively our own, where we would write of our own heroes, lionize our own celebrities, and adore the great men and women of our race.... [and also teach] the glorious achievements of our ancestors--those who lived in the days of Ethiopia, when we had a glorious civilization of our own, when we were regarded as the only civilized group of the great human race." He complained that history textbooks in schools and colleges extolled "great men like Washington and Lincoln" while neglecting "the achievements of men of our own race." White histories ignored or denied black achievements; for example, they attributed the Pyramids to a non-Negro race. Garvey said that "All historians have tried to bring down the Negro.... We want historians of our own to write in burning letters of gold the achievements of our fathers and our achievements today and the achievements of tomorrow."[69]
Reflecting on the failure of African rebellions against British oppression, Garvey also reiterated Harrison's demand for a scientific and technical education for blacks. Instead of "wasting our time in pool rooms, cabarets and places of evil repute," why should blacks not "put in our time developing ourselves scientifically, learning how to manufacture chemicals that can be applied for useful purposes in such conflicts as do take place in Kenya and in South West Africa?" Blacks should attend college, imbibe "all the civilization that America and this Western World affords," and "develop ourselves technically and otherwise. We could make of ourselves better mechanics, better scientists, better artisans, and if we have no use for the knowledge today, surely we could apply it in the days to come," in Africa. Garvey concluded that "If Africa is to be redeemed the Western Negro will have to make a valuable contribution, and there can be no better contribution to African liberty made by us than that which is technical and scientific."[70]
Garvey also envisioned a distinctive and international black "high society," with its own rituals, awards, ceremonies, titles, and receptions. Believing that Negroes associated with whites for the prestige, honors, awards and titles this afforded them--and realizing that whites conferred such boons only upon subservient blacks--Garvey demanded a separate black institutional framework with its own system of rewards. He also insisted that blacks honor each other for racial service rather than for the accumulation of money, which usually won accolades. Accordingly, the UNIA held court receptions, conferred titles such as "knight" and "duke" upon honored members and officials, and evolved elaborate uniforms, ceremonial occasions, and pageants for its members. One UNIA official extolled
gorgeous robing or anything that attracts the eye--anything to lift the people from the stupor of the ages--and expense means nothing to us just now. If we had to hire a man and pay him a hundred dollars a week just to beat a drum and the beating of that drum created the proper impression, we would do it.... Our people have been so destroyed by propaganda that we are taking every possible method to relieve the situation.... Anything that is pompous, grand and gorgeous, while it may not be economical, yet is very effective among any simple people.... So, yes, the robes are rather gorgeous like the gorgeous tail of a rooster, but, there, God let loose his gorgeousness to attract the hens. Seems unnecessary but in the mind of the hen, it plays a very important part....[71]
When critics of both races ridiculed these practices, Garvey responded that "some white people in Europe and America say Mr. Garvey likes colors and robes and titles. Can you tell me where you can find more titles and robes than in Europe?" As usual, Garvey complained, whites and their black allies condemned as ridiculous in blacks behavior that they admired in whites. Citing the English Court and Parliament and the Catholic church as venerable institutions based partly on spectacle, Garvey asked "why then do [whites] tell Negroes not to be spectacular? We want everything they have." Garvey defended titles by asserting that every other empire had recognized and encouraged merit by rewarding it: "Why should we discard that which has made other folks great?"[72]
After Du Bois heaped scorn and ridicule upon the UNIA's titles, Garvey tellingly replied that the NAACP leader "can see and regard honor conferred only by their white masters. If Du Bois was created a Knight Commander of the Bath by the British King, or awarded a similar honor by some white Potentate, he would have advertised it from cover to cover of the Crisis, and he would have written a book and told us how he was recognized above his fellows by such a Potentate." Garvey's point hit home: Du Bois did exult when he or any black wore the uniform of the United States or any other white supremacist nation. (Du Bois had, of course, aimed at a captaincy in the US's Army's Military Intelligence Division himself.) Du Bois's conduct at the PAC Conferences manifested an unseemly worship of power--a respect for glitter, pageanty, and uniforms when backed by white violence.[73]
The Negro World described the First UNIA Court Reception, in August 1921, as "a ceremonial that may correctly be regarded as a revival of the ancient glory, pomp and splendour of Ethiopia in the days of the Queen of Sheba, centuries long ago, of her greatness and world supremacy, comparable to similar state functions held in the ceremonial courts of England, Germany, Italy, France and the United States.... Persons of prominence and note were knighted, as in the days of old, for distinguished service to the race.... Several young misses also presented upon making their social debut." This reception, the Negro World asserted, was not empty glitter like other Negro functions, but a harbinger of Negro achievement in all spheres that set "a high standard of society of their own, devoid of any slavish imitation of the social standards of other races."[74]
Garvey envisioned the UNIA, in short, as an international organization that would meet all of the needs of the Negro masses, presently and in the future. The UNIA would demand full rights for Africans wherever they resided even as it constructed the economic and cultural basis for a future African kingdom in the ancient homeland. Offering a place and a role for everyone of African descent, the UNIA would combine self-help, individual enrichment, and group betterment. Its pageantry, spectacle, uniforms, and demonstration of mass power would engender individual and racial pride, even as its economic enterprises undergirded that pride with a solid material base. The UNIA, Garvey hoped, would combine the eminently practical with the distantly utopian.
[1] MG, Speech in Panama, May 3, 1921, MGP III, 384; MG, Editorial Letter, NW, October 1, 1919, MGP II, 41-42.
Secondary discussions of Garvey include Judith Stein, The World of Marcus Garvey: Race and Class in Modern Society (Baton Rogue, 1986); E. David Cronon, Black Moses: The Story of Marcus Garvey (Madison, 1955), Theodore Vincent, Black Power and the Garvey Movement (Berkeley, 1971); and Tony Martin, Race First: The Ideological and Organizational Struggles of Marcus Garvey and the Universal Negro Improvement Association (Westport, 1976).
[2] MG Speech, January 23 or 24, 1922, MGP IV, 456; MG speech, February 13, 1921 MGP III, 200; MG Speech, September 25, 1920, MGP III, 19.
[3] MG Speech, September 26, 1919, MGP II, 29; MG Speech, September 7, 1921, MGP IV, 34; MG Speech, February 5, 1922, MGP IV, 487; MG, "A Membership Appeal by Marcus Garvey to the Negro Citizens of New York," July 1921, MGP IV, 563; MG, Editorial Letter, November 1, 1921, MGP IV, 160; MG, Editorial Letter, February 2, 1921, MGP III, 159-60.
[4] MG Speech, November 13, 1921, MGP IV, 177-178; MG Speech, September 25, 1920, MGP III, 21; MG Speech, November 27, 1921, MGP IV, 222; MG Speech, February 16, 1921, MGP III, 215-216; MG speech as paraphrased by NW, August 19, 1922, MGP IV, 826. Although some historians have quoted Garvey's remark as evidence of anti-Semitism, it is clear from context that Garvey was praising the Jews as an exemplary race whom blacks should emulate. For a rare example of an historian who understands this, see David Brion Davis, "Jews and Blacks in America," The New York Review of Books, December 2, 1999, pp. 60-61.
The attitude of many Jews toward Garvey depended on their position on Zionism. Unsurprisingly, Zionists hailed Garvey with enthusiasm, while Jewish Socialists favored Randolph and the Messenger. See Hasia Diner, In the Almost Promised Land: American Jews and Blacks, 1915-1935 (Baltimore, 1995), 53-55, 58, 64, 76, 202-227.
[5] MG, "West Indians in the Mirror of Truth," January 1912, MGP I, 197-198; MG Speech, July 14, 1921, MGP III, 530; MG Speech, in the Gleaner, MGP III, 297-298.
[6] MG Speech, July 14, 1921, MGP III, 529-530. By "class" Garvey means that blacks were their own category, or class; in other words, when he here says "class consciousness" he means "race consciousness."
[7] MG Speech, August 1, 1922, MGP IV, 771; MG Speech, September 4, 1921, MGP IV, 25; MG Speech, October 30, 1919, MGP III, 405.
[8] MG Speech, July 13, 1921, MGP III, 528; MG speech, October 2, 1921, MGP IV, 100; MG speech, September 25, 1921, MGP IV, 86.
[9] MG Speech, ca. February 16, 1921, MGP III, 211-214.
[10] MG Speech, July 2 [4], 1921, MGP III, 552; MG in NW, April 10, 1920, MGP III, 410-411; MG Speech, February 1, 1921, MGP III, 154.
[11] MG Speech, July 23, 1922, MGP IV, 746.
[12] MG Speech, July 23, 1922, MGP IV, 745-6.
[13] MG Editorial, June 13, 1922, MGP IV, 674.
[14] MG Speech in NW, October 11, 1919, MGP II, 68.
[15] MG Speech, September 25, 1920, MGP III, 20; MG, "African Redemption Fund Appeal," MGP III, 744; MG Editorial, April 5, 1922, MGP IV, 592-594.
[16] MG Speech, February 5, 1922, MGP IV, 484; MG Speech, November 7, 1920, MGP III, 79; MG Speech, June 5, 1922, MGP IV, 659; MG Speech, May 5, 1921, MGP III, 382.
[17] MG Speech, August 8, 1920, MGP II, 559-560; MG speech, November 7, 1920, MGP III, 79-80.
[18] MG Speech, ca. February 26, 1921, MGP III, 208; MG speech, November 7, 1920, MGP III, 77-79.
[19] MG Speech, February 5, 1922, MGP IV, 485-486; MG speech, september 26, 1920, MGP III, 24.
[20] MG Speech, September 25, 1920, MGP III, 26; MG speech, July 17, 1920, MGP II, 414-415; MG, "A Membership Appeal from Marcus Garvey to the Negro Citizens of New York," July, 1921, MGP III, 561-2.
[21] MG speech, ca. February 16, 1921, MGP III, 211-215.
[22] MG speech, August 25, 1919, MGP I: 503. The government reporter did not capitalize "Negro".
[23] MG speech, March 25, 1919, MGP I, 396; MG, August 25, 1919, MGP I, 502; MG speech, September 25, 1920, MGP III, 21; MG Editorial, NW, November 30, 1918, MGP I, 303; MG speech, January 15, 1922, MGP IV, 367.
[24] MG speech, October 30, 1919, MGP II, 130; MG Editorial, June 27, 1922, MGP IV, 684; MG speech, January 1, 1923, MGP IV, 323; MG, "African Redemption Fund Appeal," MGP III, 745; MG speech, July 24, 1920, MGP II, 455; MG, Editorial, February 2, 1921, MGP III, 161; MG speech, June 15, 1922, MGP II, 658; MG speech, September 26, 1929, MGP III, 25.
[25] MG speech, October 30, 1919, MGP II, 130; MG Editorial, June 27, 1922, MGP IV, 684; MG speech, January 1, 1923, MGP IV, 323; MG, "African Redemption Fund Appeal," MGP III, 745; MG speech, July 24, 1920, MGP II, 455; MG, Editorial, February 2, 1921, MGP III, 161; MG speech, June 15, 1922, MGP II, 658; MG speech, September 26, 1929, MGP III, 25.
[26] "Constitution and Book of Laws," July 1918, MGP I, 257,
[27] MG Editorial, April 18, 1922, MGP 611-612.
[28] ibid.
[29] MG speech, October 24, 1919, MGP II, 116; MG, "A Membership Appeal from Marcus Garvey to the Negro Citizens of New York," ca. July 30, 1921, MGP III, 562. In his October 24 speech, Garvey said that Negro rule would restore "mercy, love, and charity to all."
[30] MG Editorial, NW, December 29, 1920, MGP III, 114; MG speech, November 20, 1921, MGP IV, 211; MG speech, November 7, 1920, MGP III, 80; Rev. Brooks speech, NW, July 25, 1920, MGP II, 442-443; MG speech, May 2, 1921, MGP III, 381; MG speeches, April 27, 1921, MGP III, 370-371.
[31] MG Editorial, March 5, 1921, MGP III, 241; MG speech, September 24, 1920, MGP III, 16; MG speech, September 7, 1921, MGP IV, 38; MG, NW, April 5, 1919, MGP I, 397.
[32] MG speech, October 25, 1919, MGP II, 116; MG speech ca. February 16, 1921, MGP III, 213; MG speech, August 1, 1922, MGP IV, 766-767.
[33] UNIA "Petition to the League of Nations," July 20, 1922, MGP IV, 736-737; UNIA "Petition Against the League of Nations," February 22, 1919, MGP I, 369; MG speech, ca. February 28, 1919, MGP I, 375.
[34] MG speech, March 13, 1920, MGP II, 253; MG speech, February 5, 1922, MGP IV, 488; MG Editorial, April 5, 1922, MGP IV, 595.
[35] MG Editorial, August 17, 1920, MGP II, 600; MG speech, October 25, 1919, MGP II, 120; MG speech, August 1, 1921, MGP III, 581.
[36] MG speech, September 26, 1920, MGP III, 24; MG speech, August 22, 1920, MGP II, 617-618; MG speech, July 17, 1920, MGP II, 416; MG speech, August 3, 1920, MGP II, 500; UNIA "Declaration of Rights," MGP August 1920, II, 577; MG Editorial, September 7, 1920, MGP III, 8-10; MG speech, MGP August 2, 1921, III, 593-594.
[37] MG speech, September 26, 1920, MGP III, 24; MG speech, August 22, 1920, MGP II, 617-618; MG speech, July 17, 1920, MGP II, 416; MG speech, August 3, 1920, MGP II, 500; UNIA Declaration of Rights, MGP August 1920, II, 577; MG Editorial, September 7, 1920, MGP III, 8-10; MG speech, MGP August 2, 1921, III, 593-594.
[38] MG speech, August 13, 1922, MGP IV, 848; MG speech, November 20, 1921, MGP IV, 207.
[39] MG speech, February 1, 1921, MGP III, 150-151.
[40] MG speech, February 1, 1921, MGP III, 150-151; MG speech, January 29, 1922, MGP IV, 466; MG quoted by New York Globe, August 2, 1921, MGP III, 588; MG speech, August 1, 1921, MGP III, 578; MG speech, August 13, 1922, MGP IV, 847.
[41] MG speech, August 14, 1921, MGP III, 664; MG speech, August 31, 1921, MGP III, 735-736; MG Editorial, March 27, 1919, MGP I, 391; MG speech, October 1, 1919, MGP II, 42.
[42] MG speech, ca. February 16, 1921, MGP III, 210; MG speech, November 20, 1921, MGP IV, 206; MG Editorial, October 1, 1919, MGP II, 42.
[43] MG speech, June 5, 1922, MGP 654-655.
[44] MG Speech, March 13, 1920, MGP II, 254; MG speech, January 15, 1922, MGP IV, 364; MG speech, March 12, 1922, MGP IV, 567.
[45] NW quoted in Military Intelligence Division report, April 5, 1919, MGP I, 404; British Military Intelligence report, September 27, 1919, II, 30-31.
[46] MG Editorial, March 27, 1919, MGP I, 391; MG quoted by British Military Intelligence Division report, September 27, 1919, MGP II, 31; MG speech, November 13, 1921, MGP IV, 182-3.
[47] MG speech, ca. February 16, 1921, MGP III, 213.
[48] MG Editorial, April 5, 1922, MGP IV, 595-596.
[49] MG speech, July 13, 1921, MGP III, 528; MG Editorial, April 5, 1922, MGP II, 594; MG speech, April 27, 1921, MGP III, 371.
[50] MG Speech, April 4, 1921, MGP III, 297.
[51] Bureau of Investigation Report, June 25, 1920, MGP II, 401; William Pickens to H. Claude Hudson, June 5, 1922, MGP IV, 651.
[52] MG speech, September 26, 1919, MGP II, 29; MG Editorial, October 11, 1920, MGP III, 50.
[53] MG Editorial, September 7, 1920, MGP III, 9; MG Editorial, May 3, 1920, MGP II, 330; MG Editorial, November 29, 1919, MGP II, 155-156; MG, August 8, 1920, MGP II, 559-560; MG, Editorial, MGP December 3, 1919, MGP II, 160.
[54] The phrase is Herbert J. Seligman's, "Negro Conquest," World Magazine, December 4, 1921, MGP IV, 243. Seligman, an NAACP official, was highly critical of Garvey and the UNIA.
[55] MG speech, February 11, 1921, MGP III, 185; MG Editorial, NW June 4, 1919, MGP I, 413; MG Editorial, July 9, 1919, MGP I, 453; MG speech, February 22, 1921, MGP III, 227; MG speech, May 1, 1920, MGP III, 328.
[56] "To BSL Stockholders," February 27, 1920, MGP II, 225; MG speech, September 26, 1919, MGP II, 28; MG speech, February 22, 1921, MGP III, 225-226; MG Editorial, September 25, 1919, MGP II, 26; MG speech, October 20, 1919, MGP II, 87.
[57] MG speech, August 14, 1922, MGP IV, 867-870.
[58] MG speech, August 14, 1922, MGP IV, 867-870. Some of this is the UNIA's paraphrase of Garvey's speech.
[59] MG speech, September 2, 1922, MGP IV, 1053-1055.
[60] MG speech, September 2, 1922, MGP IV, 1053-1055.
[61] MG speech, September 2, 1922, MGP IV, 1053-1055.
[62] UNIA paraphrase of MG speech, August 8, 1922, MGP IV, 826.
[63] UNIA Declaration of Rights, August 1920, MGP II, 571-578.
[64] ibid.
[65] MG speech, March 26, 1921, MGP III, 282-284; MG speech, February 4, 1921, MGP III, 162; MG speech, September 26, 1920, MGP III, 26. Although whites, in a virtuoso feat of hermenutical ingenuity, claimed that "the curse of Ham" justified perpetual enslavement of Africans, Biblical literalists would note that the Genesis tale has Noah cursing Canaan, Ham's son. Ironically, the Biblical story served to justify conquest and genocide.
[66] MG speech, June 5, 1922, MGP IV, 657; MG speech, July 24, 1920, MGP II, 457; MG speech, September 26, 1920, MGP III, 26.
[67] MG speech, March 29, 1921, MGP III, 292-295; MG speech, May 26, 1921, MGP III, 428; MG speech, February 3, 1921, MGP III, 201; MG in NW, October 25, 1919, MGP II, 103; MG speech, May 2, 1921, MGP III, 382.
[68] MG to the Gleaner, April 5, 1921, MGP III, 337; MG speech, February 4, 1921, MGP III, 161; MG speech, August 25, 1919, MGP I, 507; MG speech, April 21, 1921, MGP III, 319; "Universal Negro Catechism," March 1921, MGP III, 302-320.
[69] UNIA paraphrase of MG speech, August 17, 1922, MGP IV, 897; MG speech, ca. February 16, 1921, MGP III, 215.
[70] MG Editorial, June 13, 1922, MGP IV, 673-674.
[71] J.D. Gordon to John M. Scott, January 31, 1921, MGP III, 148.
[72] MG speech, January 29, 1922, MGP IV, 469; MG speech, August 28, 1922, MGP IV, 1010-1011.
[73] MGP V, February 13, 1923; Lewis, Du Bois, 564-69.
[74] "First UNIA Court Reception," August 27, 1921, MGP III, 698-699.