August 17, 2013 - Marcus Garvey 128th Birthday

Marcus Mosiah Garvey, Jr., ONH 

(17 August 1887 – 10 June 1940)

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.

Aug. 17, 2012 - Marcus Garvey would be 126 years old 

Garvey's Empire of Ethiopia.
-Marcus Garvey as head of the Universal Negro
Improvement Association and African Communities League of the World, believes
in a world-movement for the unification of political and economic interests of all
negroes everywhere. He believes that as Europe and America are the home of the
white man, and Asia of the yellow man, that Africa should be for the negro race.
This growing race consciousness was stimulated by the participation of two million
negroes in the world-war who now desire liberty and democracy as a race-a thing
for which they claim they were asked to fight in Europe. An international con-
vention composed of three thousand negro delegates met in New York in December
to frame a bill of rights for the negro race. They complained of many grievances such
as lynching, Jim-Crowism, disfranchisement, industrial exploitation, segregation, and
various other kinds of discrimination. The convention elected officials of this new
"supergovernment" of negroes, including Garvey as provisional president of Africa
and Dr. J. W. Eason as leader of the I5,000,000 negroes in the United States who
should obey his orders in all things pertaining to the negro race. The mayor of
Monrovia, the Liberian capital, was made "Pope of the Negro Race" and head of the
religious organization which is adapted from the model provided by the Catholic
church. He would decide, in case of America's entry into another war, whether the
negroes should participate. A $io,ooo,ooo commercial enterprise was also approved
to be called the Black Star Line, which has already bought three steamships to be
operated by negroes, and plying negro freight and passenger trade for the negroes'
own pecuniary benefit, between Africa, the West Indies, America, and later possibly
SouthAmerica.-TrumanHughesTalley, World'sWork, January, I92I. K.E.B.

Source: American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 26, No. 6 (May, 1921)


According to the preamble of the 1929 constitution as amended, the UNIA is a "social, friendly, humanitarian, charitable, educational, institutional, constructive and expansive society, and is founded by persons desiring to do the utmost to work for the general uplift of the people of African ancestry of the world. And the members pledge themselves to do all in their power to conserve the rights of their noble race and to respect the rights of all mankind, believing always in the Brotherhood of Man and the Fatherhood of God.


Marcus Garvey Speech 1921/

See the article;

Fly the Red, Black and Green Flag on Garvey's Birthday
By Ron Daniels