BlackHistoryMonth200 names weshould knowfolks some in the present,some in thepast worthremembering

[luke1733]

200. Marcus Garvey *Leader* (If you care to know the central nucleus of who the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King stated he received his philosophies from and to who also Malcolm X stated he also received his philosophies from then you will discover that there is no other earlier source of black African American thought that is before the Marcus Garvey. Malcolm X's parents met at a Marcus Garvey convention in Montreal.The man who went head to head with WEB DuBois and convinced him that DuBois was wrong and that he, Garvey was right about the plight blacks should take for sovereignty and self-sufficiency to secure their future in America and beyond. Marcus Garvey wrote a book entitled: The Philosophies and Opinions of Marcus Garvey. I say this word very seriously, but unlike any other book I have read, he states many prophecies on the black race that in his time were not true and in my time have played out exactly as he predicted. It is scary. Marcus Garvey's Universal Negro Improvement Association claimed to have 400,000,000 followers; ironically he also claimed every negro alive was a part of the movement. The approximate membership of his 900 branches was 6,000,000. The UNIA had 65,000 to 75,000 members paying dues to his support and funding. His philosophy is known as Garveyism which intended persons of African ancestry in the diaspora to "redeem" the nations of Africa and for the European colonial powers to leave the continent. His essential ideas about Africa were stated in an editorial in the Negro World entitled "African Fundamentalism", where he wrote: "Our union must know no clime, boundary, or nationality… to let us hold together under all climes and in every country…"

Garvey was born to an affluent Jamaican family. His father Marcus Mosiah Garvey was a mason. As a child he travelled the world to Costa Rica, India, Panama, United States of America, England, London and Africa. All these countries he returned to in his adulthood, including Ethiopia/Abyssinia, Ghana, Geneva, Kenya and Canada.

In Canada, Marcus Garvey Day is held annually on 17 August in Toronto;

Garvey started his own newspaper and circulated it throughout America, Jamaica, West Indies and South Africa. South Africa quickly called to the US and demanded Garvey stop printing his newspaper. His connections were in the lands purchased in Liberia for Blacks around the world to move to to start a new society. Although Garvey was never able to govern this land, the land he purchased was successfully met by blacks in his day who left Jamaica, America and India to attempt to fulfill Garvey's effort.

The difference between Garvey's U.N.I.A and other black organizations was the UNIA sought independence of government, while the other black organizations sought to make the Negro a secondary part of existing governments; thus rendering himself always a second class citizen.

He was a Jamaican political leader, publisher, journalist, entrepreneur, and orator who was a staunch proponent of the Black nationalism and Pan-Africanism movements, to which end he founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League (UNIA-ACL). He founded the Black Star Line, part of the Back-to-Africa movement, which promoted the return of the African diaspora to their ancestral lands.

His criticism against Du Bois was that his staff was either white or very near white; it was an advancement for mulattoes and not Negroes. The Advancement meant that blacks should try to look white and was setting off a trend in the black community for blacks to choose sexual mates that were of the lightest of their race. It is due to Garvey's conversation with Du Bois, that Garvey stated he stayed in America in order to teach black people what racial pride meant due to finding it necessary to combat the ignorance and evil that DuBois was indoctrinating into black people. In DuBois's church no black person could sit in the front. When invited to DuBois's church by DuBois, Garvey sat in the front and was asked to please sit in the back in order to allow whites to sit in the front. Garvey stated the NAACP is a scheme to destroy the Negro race.

In 1919 The Chicago Defender newspaper attempted to entrap Garvey, but Garvey was found innocent and nothing happened to the Chicago Defender's attempt to infiltrate Garvey's organization.

For a people that have had lives taken from them on behalf of a nation's practice of genocide, to a nation making it impossible for the people to leave, to the people that in return gave their lives for the same country to receive it's own independence in the American Revolution, WWI, WWII, Vietnam when they had no independence or rights, to dying for all races to receive human rights, to being unjustly taxed in reference to being represented, to working for free, working as slaves, working as indentured servants, first to be fired, to working to entertain a nation through dancing, singing, playing sports, inventing all to receive nothing but chastisement for the audacity to honestly say the residuals were not fair in comparison to how the nation pays other citizens for their contributions in compensations is a criminal act to deny the negro his payment for so much that he has given to a nation that has systematically been documented to benefit so much economically and universaly from taking from the Negro.

 

[luke1733]

Garvey was shot at for starting a successful newspaper and a company that dealt with Ships called the Black Star Line. Basically this is like an African American today owning a spaceship for Garvey in 1919 to have a Ship. Over 50,000 people packed Madison Square Garden in New York to witness Garvey's Black Star Line. Instantly America's government sent thieves in to his offices to rob his offices of legal papers and office records. Employees that did not work for him were said to work for him and they lied about his business. His ships were destroyed and then the government told Garvey he still had to pay off the loans for his ships and his employees for the very business they destroyed. This resulted in Garvey being indicted by the US for fraud.

After the lawsuits that stole money from Garvey, Garvey continued on and built the Black Cross Navigation and Trading Company ship that sailed to Liberia in December of 1923.

The UNIA held an international convention in 1921 at New York's Madison Square Garden. Also represented at the convention were organizations such as the Universal Black Cross Nurses, the Black Eagle Flying Corps, and the Universal African Legion. Garvey attracted more than 50,000 people to the event and in his cause. The UNIA had 65,000 to 75,000 members paying dues to his support and funding. The national level of support in Jamaica helped Garvey to become one of the most influential leaders of the 20th century on the island.

Garvey worked to develop a program to improve the conditions of ethnic Africans "at home and abroad" under UNIA auspices. On 17 August 1918, he began publishing the Negro World newspaper in New York, which was widely distributed. Garvey worked as an editor without pay until November 1920. He used Negro World as a platform for his views to encourage growth of the UNIA. By June 1919, the membership of the organization had grown to over two million, according to its records.

In the year 1900 Garvey stated:"The trick of the capitalist is to sir up local agitation to draw attention away from his crimes against the masses and common man. The capitalist draws agitation among the nations has them shoot or kill some citizen of the capitalists' country, then he influences the agencies of his Government to call upon the home authorities for military protection. A harsh diplomatic note is sent that inspires an insult or further injury, then an ultimatum is served or a demand made for indemnities or war declared with the hope of arresting from the particular weak, unfortunate country such territories where oil, rubber or other valuable minerals or resources are to be found. This kind of dollar diplomacy is a disgrace to our civilization and for the sake of humanity should be stopped".

Rastafarians consider Garvey to be a religious prophet, and sometimes even the reincarnation of Saint John the Baptist. This is partly because of his frequent statements uttered in speeches throughout the 1920s, usually along the lines of "Look to Africa, when a black king shall be crowned for the day of deliverance is at hand!" Many of Garvey's prophecies have come true such as America's war for oil (which he prophesied would come even though it did not happen until years later), the black prison rate being the option America would use to transition black males from slavery to incarceration, a bomb that could destroy the world being created in the future, a second world war to follow the first world war; to which this prophecy he lived to see.)

Schools, colleges, highways, and buildings in Africa, Europe, the Caribbean, and the United States have been named in his honor. The UNIA red, black, and green flag has been adopted as the Black Liberation Flag. Since 1980, Garvey's bust has been housed in the Organization of American States' Hall of Heroes in Washington, D.C.

During a trip to Jamaica, Martin Luther King and his wife Coretta Scott King visited Garvey's shrine on 20 June 1965 and laid a wreath.In a speech he told the audience that Garvey "was the first man of color to lead and develop a mass movement. He was the first man on a mass scale and level to give millions of Negroes a sense of dignity and destiny. And make the Negro feel he was somebody."

Jamaica honored Marcus Garvey as it's First National Hero. To hear Marcus Garvey go to: )