Rupert Johnson, Contributor All people of African ancestry should celebrate the birthdate of Marcus Mosiah Garvey today, August 17, because he was indeed a trailblazer, who stirred our consciousness and instilled within us a strong feeling of racial pride and self-respect.
To accomplish his mission, he was not content to confine his activities to his native Jamaica, but he travelled extensively throughout Latin America, England, and the United States of America. In his travels, he learned a great deal about the social, economic and political plight of the oppressed black race.
In 1914, Garvey was convinced that the only option for blacks to move forward was through a united universal black community. Thus, he founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association ( UNIA) "to unite all people of African ancestry of the world to one great body to establish a country and absolute government of their race".
In this respect, he was not only the first serious and committed proponent of the Pan-African movement, but the Back-to-Africa movement, to boot.
Secure African homeland
Garvey thought that the only way blacks could take their rightful place in history was in a secure African homeland, where they could develop their own culture and civilisation. He was convinced that blacks would always be dominated by whites if they remained as minority groups scattered throughout white-dominated countries.
Just as the Jews yearned for an ancestral homeland after the European holocaust, so Garvey, before them, is seen as a trailblazer in calling for a homeland for peoples of African origin cut off from their ancestral roots and transplanted to alien environments in the Western Hemisphere.
Marcus Mosiah Garvey was a great source of inspiration to all blacks in that he gave us a feeling of pride and hope. Indeed, it can be said that Garvey's Back-to-Africa movement inspired other movements such as the Rastafarian community and their desire to migrate to the African continent.
He has also had a profound influence on reggae musicians. He is now widely regarded as the mentor of such reggae legends as Bob Marley, Peter Tosh, Burning Spear and Jimmy Cliff.
The popular 1960s slogans: 'Black Is Beautiful' and 'Black Power' all emanated from the Garvey doctrine of black empowerment, and provided inspiration and driving force for the civil rights movement in the United States during that turbulent period.
Garvey's ideas had a profound influence in Africa especially among such leaders as Patrice Lumumba and Kwame Nkrumah. Nkrumah was certainly impressed with Garveyism when he declared: "Of all the literature I studied, the book that did more than any other to fire my enthusiasm was The Philosophy and Opinions of Marcus Garvey written by Garvey's wife, Amy Jacques Garvey.
Unfortunately, Garvey never realised his lifelong dream of establishing an ancestral homeland for all blacks. He died on June 10, 1940 in London, England, at the relatively early age of 53.
National Hero
However, when Jamaica attained independence in 1962, Garvey was declared a national hero, and his remains were brought back to his native island.
It is indeed interesting that the Jamaica Daily Gleaner that reviled Garvey in 1924 by calling him "a Jamaican for whom the island as a whole ... has no use", glorified him in 1962 when his remains landed in Jamaica. The Gleaner stated among other things that Garvey's return was "welcome news for all Jamaicans."
Indeed, Marcus Mosiah Garvey was a great man of African ancestry and anicon in the eyes of millions of black people all over the world.
He, therefore, deserves the tribute bestowed upon him by C.L.R. James, that outstanding Trinidadian literary legend. C.L.R. wrote, "If I were to choose six people, who had the greatest influence on the 20th century, then Marcus Garvey would be one and he wouldn't be the sixth."
Rupert Johnson (email: r.b.johnson@sympatico.ca) writes from Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
