DEPARTMENT OF POLITICAL SCIENCES
COURSE TITLE: AFRICA POLITICAL SCIENCE
COURSE CODE POL 321
ASSIGMENT
QUESTION
EXAMINE THE POLITICAL IDEAS OF MARCUS GARVEY ON AFRICA
POLITICAL THOUGHT
GROUP MEMBERS
S/N NAME REG. NO
1 ANNA IBRAHIM EZ/19/SOSPOL/082
2 PAUL JENNEFER EZ/19/SOSPOL/029
3 AYUBA DONALTUS EZ/19/SOSPOL/037
4 MICAH JATAU EZ/19/SOSPOL/078
5 JEREMIAH GESA EZ/19/SOSPOL/010
LECTURER NAME: DR.IBRAHIM AHMED LADI
NOVERMBER 2022
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HISTORY OF MARCUS GARVEY
Garvey was born into a moderately prosperous Afro-Jamaican family in Saint Ann's
Bay and he was apprenticed into the print trade as a teenager. Working in Kingston, he
got involved in trade unionism before he lived briefly in Costa Rica, Panama,
and England. After he returned to Jamaica, he founded the UNIA in 1914. In 1916, he
moved to the United States and established a UNIA branch in New York
City's Harlem district. Emphasising unity between Africans and the African diaspora, he
campaigned for an end to European colonial rule across Africa and advocated the
political unification of the continent. He envisioned a unified Africa as a one-party state,
governed by himself, that would enact laws to ensure black racial purity. Although he
never visited the continent, he was committed to the Back-to-Africa movement, arguing
that part of the diaspora should migrate there. Garveyist ideas became increasingly
popular and the UNIA grew in membership. However, his black separatist views—and
his relationship with white racists like the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) in the interest of
advancing their shared goal of racial separatism—caused a division between Garvey and
other prominent African-American civil rights activists such as W. E. B. Du Bois who
promoted racial integration.
INTRODUCTION
Marcus Garvey promoted a pan-African philosophy to generate a sense of empowerment
amongst descendants of the African diaspora. This is more widely known as Garveyism –
a form of African redemption which encourages Africans to be proud of who they are.
Garveyism calls upon people of African ancestry in the diaspora to redeem the nations of
Africa and force colonial powers to leave the continent. Highly active within political
life, Garvey founded the Black Star Line which favoured the return of the African
diaspora to their ancestral home. Garvey also created the Universal Negro Improvement
Association to promote unity amongst African Americans.
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Garveyism was a highly influential political idea that later shaped the nascent Nation of
Islam. This militant approach may be contrasted with the non-violent philosophy
advocated by Martin Luther King. Garveyism was also influential within the Rastafari
movement. According to Rastafarianism, true believers are held captive in Babylon
(Western society) waiting for salvation from Haile Selassie to lead them home to Zion
(Ethiopia). Garvey himself had prophesised the emerge of Selassie when he told his
followers “Look to Africa when a black King shall be crowned, for the day of deliverance
is near.” At its peak, Garveyites numbered in the millions with members in the
Caribbean, Central America, North America and Africa. It offered a message of
empowerment and unification amongst those who have faces centuries of discrimination
and prejudice.
Garvey also offered several insights into a communist economic system. For instance, he
reasoned that it would be more beneficial for white people as it enabled them to solve
their own political and economic issues. However, it offered nothing whatsoever to black
people. Garvey even claimed that the Communist Party sought to manipulate the African-
American vote to overthrow the capitalist system. Garvey concluded that communists
were just white men seeking to control the black population and keep them subjugated.
Communism would merely place power into the hands of ignorant whites, and would
therefore maintain a structure of oppression against blacks.
TRAVELS ABROAD OF MARCUS GARVEY
Economic hardship in Jamaica led to growing emigration from the island. In mid-1910,
Garvey travelled to Costa Rica, where an uncle had secured him employment as a
timekeeper on a large banana plantation in the Limón Province owned by the United Fruit
Company (UFC). Shortly after his arrival, the area experienced strikes and unrest in
opposition to the UFC's attempts to cut its workers' wages. Although as a timekeeper he
was responsible for overseeing the manual workers, he became increasingly angered at
how they were treated. In the spring of 1911 he launched a bilingual
newspaper, Nation/La Nación, which criticised the actions of the UFC and upset many of
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the dominant strata of Costa Rican society in Limón. His coverage of a local fire, in
which he questioned the motives of the fire brigade, resulted in him being brought in for
police questioning. After his printing press broke, he was unable to replace the faulty part
and terminated the newspaper.
In London, Garvey spent time in the Reading Room of the British Museum.
Garvey then travelled through Central America, undertaking casual work as he made his
way through Honduras, Ecuador, Colombia, and Venezuela While in the port of Colón in
Panama, he set up a new newspaper, La Prensa ("The Press") In 1911, he became
seriously ill with a bacterial infection and decided to return to Kingston. He then decided
to travel to London, the administrative centre of the British Empire, in the hope of
advancing his informal education. In the spring of 1912 he sailed to England. Renting a
room along Borough High Street in South London, he visited the House of Commons,
where he was impressed by the politician David Lloyd George. He also visited Speakers'
Corner in Hyde Park and began making speeches there. There were only a few thousand
black people in London at the time, and they were often viewed as exotic; most worked
as labourers. Garvey initially gained piecemeal work labouring in the city's docks. In
August 1912, his sister Indiana joined him in London, where she worked as a domestic
servant.
In early 1913 he was employed as a messenger and handyman for the African Times and
Orient Review, a magazine based in Fleet Street that was edited by Dusé Mohamed
Ali. The magazine advocated Ethiopianism and home rule for British-ruled Egypt. In
1914, Mohamed Ali began employing Garvey's services as a writer for the
magazine. Garvey also took several evening classes in law at Birkbeck
College in Bloomsbury. He planned a tour of Europe, spending time in Glasgow, Paris,
Monte Carlo, Boulogne, and Madrid.
Back in London, he wrote an article on Jamaica for the Tourist magazine and spent time
reading in the library of the British Museum. There he discovered Up from Slavery, a
book by the African-American entrepreneur and activist Booker T.
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Washington. Washington's book heavily influenced Garvey. Now almost financially
destitute and deciding to return to Jamaica, he unsuccessfully asked both the Colonial
Office and the Anti-Slavery and Aborigines' Protection Society to pay for his
journey. After managing to save the funds for a fare, he boarded the SS Trent in June
1914 for a three-week journey across the Atlantic. ] En route home, Garvey talked with
an Afro-Caribbean missionary who had spent time in Basutoland and taken a Basuto
wife. Discovering more about colonial Africa from this man, Garvey began to envision a
movement that would politically unify black people of African descent across the world
GARVEY PERSONALITY AND PERSONAL LIFE
Physically, Garvey was short and stocky. He suffered from asthma, and was prone to
lung infections; and throughout his adult life, he was affected by bouts
of pneumonia Tony Martin called Garvey a "restless young man", while Grant thought
that Garvey had a "naïve but determined personality" in his early years. Grant noted that
Garvey "possessed a single-mindedness of purpose that left no room for the kind of
spectacular failure that was always a possibility".
He was an eloquent orator, with Cronon suggesting that his "peculiar gift of oratory"
stemmed from "a combination of bombast and stirring heroics".[ Grant described
Garvey's public speeches as "strange and eclectic - part evangelical partly formal King's
English, and part lilting Caribbean speechifying". Garvey enjoyed arguing with
people,and he wanted to be seen as a learned man; he read widely, particularly in history.
Cronon suggested that "Garvey's florid style of writing and speaking, his fondness for
appearing in a richly colored cap and gown, and his use of the honorary degree initials
"D.C.L." after his name were crude attempts to compensate" for his lack of formal
academic qualifications. Grant thought that Garvey was an "extraordinary salesman
who'd developed a philosophy where punters weren't just buying into a business but were
placing a down payment on future black redemption." Even his enemies acknowledged
that he was a skilled organiser and promoter.
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For Grant, Garvey was "a man of grand, purposeful gestures". He thought that the black
nationalist leader was an "ascetic" who had "conservative tastes". Garvey was
a teetotaller who believed that alcohol consumption was morally reprehensible; he
collected antique ceramics and enjoyed going around antique shops and flea markets and
searching for items to add to his collection. He placed value on courtesy and respect,
discouraging his supporters from being loutish.
Garvey enjoyed dressing up in military costumes, and he also adored regal pomp and
ceremony; he believed that pageantry would stir the black masses out of their apathy,
despite the accusations of buffoonery which were made by members of the African-
American intelligentsia. Grant noted that Garvey had a "tendency to overstate his
achievements", but Cronon thought that Garvey tended to surround himself with
sycophants rather than more competent advisors. In 1947, the Jamaican historian J. A.
Rogers included Garvey in his book, the World's Great Men of Colour, where he noted
that "had [Garvey] ever come to power, he would have been another Robespierre",
resorting to violence and terror to enforce his ideas.
Garvey was a Catholic. In 1919, he married Amy Ashwood in a Catholic ceremony, but
they separated after three months The New York court did not grant Garvey a divorce,
but later, he obtained a divorce in Jackson County, Missouri Ashwood contested the
legitimacy of this divorce, and for the rest of her life, she claimed that she was Garvey's
legitimate spouse His first son, Marcus Garvey III (1930 – 8 December 2020), became
an electrical engineer and served as the seventh president-general of the UNIA-ACL His
second son, Julius Garvey, (born 1933) became a vascular surgeon and he is currently
based in Flushing, New York.
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SOME OF GARVEY MARCUS CONTRIBUTION.
BLACK PRIDE
Garvey encouraged African people around the world to be proud of their race and to see
beauty in their own kind. His central belief was that African people in every part of the
world were one people and that they would never progress if they did not put aside their
cultural and ethnic differences. Garvey's ultimate dream was for the creation of a United
States of Africa. Garvey set the precedent for subsequent Black Nationalist and Pan-
Africanist thought.
· PAN-AFRICANISM:
Garvey advanced a Pan-African philosophy. He wished to inspire a global mass-
movement and-economic empowerment focusing on Africa, where he sought to end
imperialist rule and create modern societies. He argued that black people would be
respected only when they were economically strong and proposed an independent black
economy. He connected black communities on three continents with his newspaper the
Negro World and formed the Black Star Line shipping company to provide transport and
to encourage trade among black businesses of Africa and the Americas.
·SEPARATISM
Although Garvey was a supporter of racial separatism, he believed that humans were all
equal and did not wish to create a hostile atmosphere with white people. The purpose of
separatism was to empower black people and to enable them to find an identity.
ECONOMIC VIEWS
We must prepare now by organizing ourselves all over the world, by building businesses,
stores and factories to sustain our people and free ourselves.
— Marcus Garvey
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Garvey believed in economic independence for the African diaspora and through the
UNIA, he attempted to achieve it by forming ventures like the Black Star Line and the
Negro Factories Corporation. In Garvey's opinion, "without commerce and industry, a
people perish economically. The Negro is perishing because he has no economic
system". In his view, European-American employers would always favor European-
American employees, so to gain more security, African Americans needed to form their
own businesses. In his words, "the Negro must become independent of white capital and
white employers if he wants salvation. He believed that financial independence for the
African-American community would ensure greater protection from discrimination, and
provide the foundation for social justice.
Economically, Garvey supported capitalism, stating that "capitalism is necessary to the
progress of the world, and those who unreasonably and wantonly oppose it or fight
against it are enemies of human advancement. In the U.S., Garvey promoted a capitalistic
ethos for the economic development of the African-American community,
advocating black capitalism. His emphasis on capitalist ventures meant, according to
Grant, that Garvey "was making a straight pitch to the petit-bourgeois capitalist instinct
of the majority of black folk.
He admired Booker T. Washington's economic endeavours but criticized his focus on
individualism: Garvey believed that African-American interests would best be advanced
if businesses included collective decision-making and group profit-sharing His advocacy
of capitalistic wealth distribution was a more equitable view of capitalism than the view
of capitalism which was then prevalent in the U.S.; he believed that some restrictions
should be imposed on individuals and businesses in order to prevent them from acquiring
too much wealth, in his view, no individual should be allowed to control more than one
million dollars and no company should be allowed to control more than five million
dollars. While he was living in Harlem, he envisioned the formation of a global network
of black people who would trade among themselves, believing that his Black Star Line
would contribute to the achievement of this aim.
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BLACK CHRISTIANITY
Whilst our God has no color, yet it is human to see everything through one's own
spectacles, and since the white people have seen their God through white spectacles, we
have only now started out (late though it be) to see our God through our own spectacles.
— Garvey, on viewing God as black, 1923
Grant noted that "Garveyism would always remain a secular movement with a strong
under-tow of religion" Garvey envisioned a form of Christianity which would specifically
be designed for black African people a sort of black religion. Reflecting his own view of
religion, he wanted this black-centric Christianity to be as close to Catholicism as
possible.
Even so, he attended the foundation ceremony of the African Orthodox Church in
Chicago in 1921. According to Graves, this Church preached "the orthodox Christian
tradition with emphasis on racism", and Cronon suggested that Garvey promoted "racist
ideas about religion".
Garvey emphasised the idea of black people worshipping a God who was also depicted as
black. In his words, "If the white man has the idea of a white God, let him worship his
God as he desires. Since the white people have seen their God through white spectacles,
we have only now started out to see our God through our own spectacles we shall
worship Him through the spectacles of Ethiopia." He called for black people to worship
images of Jesus of Nazareth and the Virgin Mary that depicted these figures as black
African
. In doing so, he did not make use of pre-existing forms of black-dominated religions.
Garvey had little experience with them, because he had attended a white-
run Wesleyan congregation when he was a child, and later, he converted to Catholicism.[
INFLUENCE ON POLITICAL MOVEMENTS
In the Colony of Jamaica, Garvey was largely forgotten in the years after his death, but
interest in him was revived by the Rastafari religious movement. Jacques wrote a book
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about her late husband, Garvey and Garveyism, and after finding that no publishers were
interested in it she self-published the volume in 1963. In 1962, when Jamaica became
independent, the government hailed Garvey as a hero. In 1969, he was posthumously
conferred with the Order of the National Hero by the Jamaican government. In 1975
the reggae artist Burning Spear released the album Marcus Garvey.
Interest in Garvey's ideas would also be revived in the 1960s through the growth of
independent states across Africa and the emergence of the Black Power movement in the
United States. Mark Christian suggested that Garveyism gave an important psychological
boost to African leaders campaigning for independence from European colonial
rule, while Claudius Fergus proposed that it played an important role in encouraging
Africans to see the African diaspora as an "integral constituent of their own political
destiny.
In his autobiography, Kwame Nkrumah, the prominent Pan-Africanist activist who
became Ghana's first president, acknowledged Garvey's influence on him The flag that
Ghana adopted when it became independent adopted the colours of UNIA. ] In November
1964, Garvey's body was removed from West Kensal Green Cemetery and taken to
Jamaica. There, it lay in state in Kingston's Catholic Cathedral before a motorcade took it
to King George VI Memorial Park, where it was re-buried.
During a trip to Jamaica, Martin Luther King Jr. 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 to give millions of Negroes a sense of dignity and destiny on a mass scale and
level. And he was the first man to make the Negro feel that he was somebody." The
Vietnamese Communist revolutionary Ho Chi Minh said that Garvey and Korean
nationalists shaped his political outlook during his stay in America. Thandeka K.
Chapman believed that Garveyism contributed to the formation of the multicultural
education movement during the 1960s. Chapman believed that both "Garveyism and
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multicultural education share the desire to see students of color learning and achieving
academic success", and both allotted significant attention to generating racial pride.
INFLUENCE ON RELIGIOUS MOVEMENTS
Garvey never regarded himself as a religious visionary but he was perceived as such by
some of his followers. Various Bedwardites for example regarded him as the
reincarnation of Moses. The Moorish Science Temple of America regarded Garvey as a
prophet akin to John the Baptist in relation to their prophet Noble Drew Ali, whom they
regarded as a Jesus figure. Garvey's ideas were a significant influence on the Nation of
Islam, a religious group for African Americans established in the U.S. in 1930.
Garvey and Garveyism was a key influence on Rastafari, a new religious movement that
appeared in 1930 Jamaica. According to the scholar of religion Maboula Soumahoro,
Rastafari "emerged from the socio-political ferment inaugurated by Marcus Garvey",
while for the sociologist Ernest Cashmore, Garvey was the "most important" precursor of
the Rastafari movement. Rastafari does not promote all of the views that Garvey
espoused, nevertheless, it shares many of them. Garvey knew of the Rastas from his time
in Jamaica during the 1930s but his view of them, according to the scholar Barry
Chevannes, "bordered on scorn".
According to Chevannes, Garvey would have regarded the Rastas' belief in the divinity of
Haile Selassie as blasphemy. Many Rastas regard Garvey as a prophet, believing that he
prophesied the crowning of Haile Selassie in a manner which was similar to how John the
Baptist prophesied the coming of Jesus Christ. Many legends and tales are told about him
within Jamaica's Rasta community.Many attribute him with supernatural attributes, for
instance there is a tale told about him—and also independently told about the pioneering
Rasta Leonard Howell—that Garvey miraculously knew that his bath had been poisoned
and refused to get into it. Other stories among Jamaica's Rastas hold that Garvey never
really died and remained alive, perhaps living in Africa. Some Rastas also organise
meetings, known as Nyabinghi Issemblies, to mark Garvey's birthday
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REFERENCES
1. Cronon 1955, p. 4; Hart 1967, p. 218; Martin 1983, p. 8; Grant 2008, pp. 8, 9.
2. ^ Cronon 1955, p. 5; Grant 2008, p. 55.
3. ^ "DNA used to reveal MLK and Garvey's European Lineage". The Gio. 13
January 2011. Retrieved 16 May 2019.
4. ^ Jump up to:a b Grant 2008, p. 168.
5. ^ Grant 2008, p. 8.
6. ^ Grant 2008, pp. 8–9.
7. ^ Jump up to:a b Grant 2008, p. 9.
8. ^ Moses 1972, p. 38; Martin 1983, p. 8; Grant 2008, p. 9.
9. ^ Jump up to:a b c Moses 1972, p. 39.
10. ^ Cronon 1955, pp. 6–7; Grant 2008, p. 12.
11. ^ Cronon 1955, p. 7; Grant 2008, p. 9.
12. ^ Moses 1972, p. 38; Grant 2008, p. 9.S
13. ^ Grant 2008, p. 10.
14. ^ Martin 1983, p. 8.
15. ^ Grant 2008, p. 13.
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