Civil Rights Movement 1963 | American University Washington DC

Civil Rights Movement 1963 | American University Washington DC

Civil Rights Announcement, 1963 . JFK . WGBH American Experience | PBS

Civil Rights Announcement, 1963 . JFK . WGBH American Experience | PBS

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

American Promise Trailer

Hopefully we can rally around Trayvon Martin and bring out voters for the coming elections.

 It's clear to me that while many suppose that the outcry of injustice is coming from African Americans, there are many more voices than just our Black citizens speaking out in protest to the result of this trial. Many of us know that however this trial may have turned out technically that justice was somehow not served.

 We have all been watching this event from the beginning and we remember that the Sanford police were very quick to send Zimmerman home in spite of the fact that they knew that they had told Zimmerman to leave Martin to them and they knew it was Zimmerman who brought the weapon into the equation. In fact, it was only after a certain amout of protest that Zimmerman was brought up on charges. This was long after the opportunity to conduct a truly through investigation had passed. Here we have to ask ourselves, did race enter into the picture in the police investigation (or nonchalance of it)?

 We all can understand that a young person walking through his community minding his own business, is not supposed to wind up shot to death by an armed vigilante. What's worse though, is that somehow the fault for the killing is transfered to the person who was in fact the victim. We can all imagine the fear that Martin felt on discovering that some weird man was following him. What's more difficult is the fear that Zimmerman felt as he stalked Martin to the point of confrontation. So it's hard to believe that it wasn't in fact the unarmed Martin who was fighting in fear of his life. The only real witness to the contrary is the killer. I imagine that the defense lawyers used this lack of witnesses to good advantage but we all know that the instigator of this confrontation was Zimmerman and that somehow he must bare a greater amount of responsibility for the outcome. We all also know, that the chances are, if Martin had been able to disarm and kill Zimmerman a different set of rules would have been applied from the outset.

 In all of the recent protests of this trial, I see many Americans expressing their outrage at this obvious shortcome of justice. These are all people who want to see this broken system undergo a major overhaul so that we can move forward as a nation in an increasingly competetive world, rather than remain crippled by a self-defeating system that divides us and weakens the nation as a whole, by having us work at cross-purposes. Instead of using our resources to strengthen and build national unity among us too many politicians and business interests are serving their own self-interests at the expense of all of us.

 I hope that these protests will translate into voters and representatives that that will be more aware of where we are going in the upcoming elections.
Let's build on the policy of including all and drawing on our collective  strength rather than continuing down the path of death by division.