Marcus Garvey was the first man of color in the history of the United States to lead a develop a mass movement. He was the first man, on mass scale, and level, to give millions of Negroes a sense of dignity and destiny, and make the Negro feel that he was somebody.
The Southern woman who joined the U.N.I.A. (Universal Negro Improvement Association) said, “Garvey is giving my people backbones where they had wishbones.”
To the end of his life he was an advocate of self-education, in 1937 telling an audience in St. Kitts, British West Indies, “Read! read! read! and never stop until you have discovered the knowledge of the universe.
As Garvey put it, he had to make a choice;
“I had to decide whether to please my friends and be one of the “black-whites” of Jamaica, and be reasonably prosperous, or come out openly and defend and help improve and protect the integrity of the black millions and suffer. I decided to do the latter, hence my offense against “colored-black-white” society in the colonies and America.”
“Furthermore, I was a black man and therefore had absolutely no right to lead; in the opinion of the “colored” element, leadership should have been in the hands of a yellow or very light man. On such flimsy prejudices our race has been retarded. There is more bitterness among us Negroes because of the caste of color than there is between any other peoples, not excluding the people of India.”
“Here I found a new and different problem, I immediately visited some of the then so-called Negro leaders, only to discover, after a close study of them, that they had no program, but were mere opportunists who were living off their so-called leadership while the poor people were groping in the dark.”
“Having had the wrong education as a start in his racial career, the Negro has become his own greatest enemy. Most of the trouble I have had in advancing the cause of the race has come from Negroes.”
His most famous and bitter enemy was W.E.B. DuBois, head of the N.A.A.C.P., who characterized Garvey as “without doubt, the most dangerous enemy of the Negro race in America.” Though Garvey was himself Christian, he became more and more critical of the constraints Christianity placed upon the black race.
Garvey correctly states;
“Those who have discouraged you in the past are those who have enslaved you for centuries and it is not expected that they will admit that you have a right to strike out at this late hour for freedom, liberty and democracy.
At no time in the history of the world, for the last five hundred years was there ever a serious attempt made to free Negroes. We have been camouflaged into believing that we were made free by Abraham Lincoln. That we were made free by Victoria of England, but up to now we are still slaves, we are industrial slaves, we are social slaves, we are political slaves, we are industrial slaves, we are social slaves, we are political slaves, and the new Negro desires a freedom that has no boundary, no limits.”
“You will realize that not only individuals, but governments are using their influence against us. But what do we care about the unrighteous influence of any government? Our cause is based on righteousness. And anything that is not righteous we have no respect for………..”
“I trust each and every one of you therefore will realize that you have a duty which is incumbent upon you; a duty that you must performs, because our forebears who suffered, who bled had hopes that are not yet completely realized.”
“God never intended that man should enslave his fellow, and the price of such a sin or such a violation of Heaven’s law must be paid by everyone. As for me, because of the blessed past, because of the history that I know, so long as there is within me the breath of life and the spirit of God, I shall struggle on and urge others of our race to struggle on to see that justice is done to the black peoples of the world. Yes, we appreciate the sorrows of the past, and we are going to work in the present that the sorrows of our generation shall not be perpetuated in the future. On the contrary, we shall strive that by our labors, succeeding generations of our own shall call us blessed, even as we call the generation of the past blessed today. And they indeed were blessed. They were blessed with a patience not yet known to man. A patience that enabled them to endure the tortures and the sufferings of slavery for two hundred fifty years. Why? Was it because they loved slavery so? NO. It was because they loved this generation more. Isn’t it wonderful? Transcendent? What then are you going to do to show your appreciation of this love, what gratitude are you going to manifest in return for what they have done for you?”
It took the Black Power revolution of the 1960s with its revival of Garvey’s red, black, and green, his race pride, his self-reliance, his separatism, his anti-imperialism and his revolutionary nationalism to belatedly return Garvey the recognition he deserves as a major, if not the major black figure of the century. – Selected Writing and Speeches of Marcus Garvey
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