Among the more influential contributor to Black history, in general, was Jamaican, Marcus Mosiah Garvey, born in 1887. A printer by profession, and a proponent for worker’s rights, he became involved in trade union activities in Jamaica in 1907, when he was elected vice president of the printer’s union, which after a strike from 1908 to 1909 folded.

On attending Birbeck College in England in 1911, Garvey met and was influenced by other Blacks who were pushing for English colonies with large Black populations to be independent of Britain. Fully inspired, Garvey returned to Jamaica where he formed the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), and initiated the publication of the pamphlet, The Negro Race and its Problems. Garvey, widely read, kept close track of the progress of Blacks in the United States.

In 1916 Garvey, greatly influenced by Booker T. Washington, founder of the Tuskegee Institute, traveled to the United States. His main purpose was to conduct a lecture tour and raise funds to set up a school in Jamaica similar to the Tuskegee Institute. However, soon after arriving in the U.S. he formed a branch of the UNIA, in his quest to “unite all Africa and its Diaspora.” This branch became popular instantly, attracting thousands of members, resulting in the formation of 30 branches. He also embarked on a twelve month speaking tour of 38 states across the country promoting Black pride and African nationalism. To assist in the dissemination of his ideas he also published a newspaper titled The Negro World.

Through the UNIA which had over 2 million members by 1919, Garvey, like many other Black leaders at the time, campaigned against the cruel “Jim Crow” laws of that time which severely segregated Blacks from Whites, and promulgated discrimination against Blacks. He also was very outspoken, as was the NAACP, against the practice of lynching, where Black men and women were hung by nooses from trees all across the southern states of America giving rise to the song Strange Fruit by the legendary jazz singer, Billie Holiday.

Pessimistic that white America would never agree to Blacks being treated as equals with them, Garvey postulated a different solution from those who were striving for equal status. He suggested that Blacks should seek their economic independence, but leave America and repatriate to Africa. It was his opinion that Europe should be for the Europeans, Asia for “Asiatics” and Africa for the Africans “at home and abroad.”

In 1919 Garvey formed the Black Cross Navigation and Trading Company, which operated the Black Star Line. Garvey was the president of the company. Later that year the company acquired its first ship the S.S. Yarmouth which was later dubbed the S.S. Frederick Douglass. After the ship was acquired Garvey was subject to harassment by the Assistant District Attorney in the New York District Attorney’s office. An inquiry was conducted into his activities, but no wrong doing was found. In the meantime Garvey proceeded to sign up passengers who were interested in taking the first voyage back to Africa.

By August 1920, the UNIA membership had grown to four million members and was regarded as the largest Pan African movement existing. In that month the organization held the International Convention of the UNIA at New York’s Madison Square Gardens, attended by over 25,000 delegates from all over the world . At the convention Garvey was the keynote speaker and was enthusiastically received by the audience.

Also in 1920, Garvey launched the Liberia Program, under which the African nation of Liberia was targeted by him as the ideal homeland in Africa for Blacks in the Diaspora. As a result, he sought to develop Liberia, and planned to build colleges, universities, industrial plants, and railroads. However, his plan was aggressively opposed by powerful Europeans who had interests in Liberia, and it was later abandoned by Garvey in the mid-1920s.

In June 1923, on the initiative of J. Edgar Hoover, then the head of the General Intelligence Division of the Bureau of Investigation (later to known as the Federal Bureau of Investigation - FBI), who wanted Garvey deported, he was convicted of mail fraud and sentenced to five years in prison. The allegation was that Garvey and his associates in the Black Star Line had solicited funds through the mail by promoting images of a ship that it did not own. Only Garvey was convicted of the fraud charges. However, after being sentenced Garvey made several appeals of the conviction and was placed on bail during which time he continued to travel the country speaking and organizing the UNIA. Eventually, he lost the appeals and was imprisoned at the Atlanta General Penitentiary in 1935. He had only served half of his sentence when President Calvin Coolidge commuted the remainder of the sentence and he was deported to Jamaica.

Undeterred, Garvey traveled to Geneva in 1928 where he presented the Petition of the Negro Race to the League of Nations, outlining the worldwide abuse of Africans. Back in Jamaica he founded Jamaica’s first modern political party, the People’s Political party in 1929. He was elected Councilor for Allman Town that year. He also founded another newspaper, The Blackman. In 1930 he campaigned for a seat in Jamaica’s colonial legislature but was defeated.

In 1935, Garvey left Jamaica for London where he lived and worked until his death on June 10, 1940, following two strokes. He was buried in London, but in 1964 his remains were exhumed and flown to Jamaica, where he was proclaimed Jamaica’s first national hero by the then government and on November 15, 1964 re-interred with pomp and ceremony at a shrine in Kingston’s National Heroes Park. However, long after his death the life and work of Marcus Garvey continued to influence Black Civil Rights movement and its leaders like Dr. Martin Luther King. Malcolm X and Stokley Carmichael. He is revered by Blacks to this day, and is regarded as a prophet by the Rastafarian movement.

Sources: www.international.ucla.edu/africa; www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAgarvey.htm and www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcus_Garvey