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History
1. Marcus Garvey sits for a portrait in 1920. He arrived in New York with printing industry skills acquired in his native Jamaica and honed on Fleet Street in London at the Africa Times and Orient Review magazine. He worked as a messenger there until an editor promoted him to a writer. He also spent time reading in the library of the British Museum and enrolled in night classes in law at Birkbeck College in Bloomsbury.
2. Marcus Garvey married his second wife, Amy Jacques Garvey in 1922. She was a journalist and activist in her own right. Source: Blackpast.org and Wikipedia
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3. The S.S. Yarmouth was the first ship of the Black Star Line founded by Marcus Garvey in 1919. He hoped the 30-year-old ship would form the basis of a global Black economy and carry manufactured goods and African American and Caribbean passengers to Africa. Source: National Archives and Records Administration
4. Thousands of people gather in New York in August 1920 for the United Negro Improvement Association’s (UNIA) first international conference in Harlem. Delegates at the conference declared Garvey to be the provisional president of Africa—something that angered some of the West Africans who were in attendance.
5. A deputy U.S. marshal and U.S. postal inspector escort Marcus Garvey out of his West 129th Street apartment in New York in 1925. Garvey served a two-year sentence at the Federal Penitentiary in Atlanta for mail fraud in connection with the sale of stock in his Black Star Line steamship company. Source: UCLA African Studies Center, New York Daily News.
6. Black Star Line Inc., stock certificate. In 1919, the Black Star Line (BSL) shipping corporation had a maximum capitalization of $500,000. BSL shares were sold at UNIA conventions at $5 per share.
Don’t Run from History
Re-examine it Learn More:
Marcus Garvey Justice4Garvey.org provides a plethora of history and information about the cultural, social and economic contributions Garvey made to the Pan-African community. For more information about the worldwide effort to clear the Right Honorable Marcus Mosiah Garvey’s name, contact http:// justice4garvey.org/signthe-petition.
Directions for the Exonerate Garvey Campaign: The White House Presidential Pardon link: https://bit.ly/ exonerategarvey Choose: “Contact the President” Fill in: Your Contact Information What Would You Like to Say? Type in: “Exonerate Marcus Garvey.”
BY ANGELA JOHNSON
Righting the wrong committed against the Honorable Marcus Mosiah Garvey was the clarion call activist L.A. City College students issued with their video, which announced a campaign to collect 100,000 signatures demanding exoneration.
This student effort is aligned with a renewed global push for the posthumous presidential pardon of
Garvey by his living descendants and devotees, who assert he was wrongfully convicted of mail fraud in 1923, imprisoned for five years and deported to Jamaica.
Worldwide supporters of the exoneration movement say Garvey was targeted by the U.S. government for the Black nationalism work he did to uplift and unite the African race. J. Edgar Hoover dispatched his agents to sabotage and discredit
Garvey, which official FBI records document.
Garvey arrived in New York with few resources in 1916, but he began to speak on street corners in Harlem, and he later established the Universal Negro Improvement
Association (UNIA), all under the watchful eye of the FBI. He also opened a restaurant and started a newspaper. In 1919, he formed the
Black Star Line, the first Blackowned shipping company in the
U.S., according to the Constitutional
Rights Foundation.
The publicity over the Black
Star Line caused great excitement among Black Americans, many of whom bought stock in it. Garvey organized huge parades to promote this and other UNIA projects.
He often appeared in a colorful uniform, wearing a plumed hat.
In 1920, more than 20,000 people attended Garvey’s first UNIA convention in New York. The convention produced a Declaration of Negro Rights, which denounced lynching, segregated public transportation, job discrimination and inferior Black public schools. The document also demanded “Africa for the Africans.”
Without actually consulting any African people, the convention proclaimed Garvey the “Provisional President of Africa.” The UNIA had six million members worldwide at one point, according to the Marcus Garvey Papers at the UCLA African Studies Center.
Henry Ealy, professor emeritus of LACC’s African American History department says more people should learn about “Garvey’s contributions to our struggles to survive the terror of White America. I support his pardon 100%.”
Aside from the NAACP, Ealy says the UNIA presented other ideas for African Americans at that point in the nation’s history.
“ … A viable option for Black people between World War I and World War II. However, we must understand how the FBI worked with Black leaders who opposed Garvey to get him convicted of mail fraud. He was sent to prison in Atlanta and later deported. He never was able to return to the US”A,” Ealy told the Collegian.
The students’ video, titled “A Liberated Legacy: Exonerate Marcus Garvey,” was screened at the Racial Equity and Social Justice Diaspora Session No. 1 on Feb. 10. Additionally, the virtual event was a tribute to African Heritage Month. Dr. Julius Garvey and Nzinga Garvey, Marcus Garvey’s youngest son and granddaughter, and Muhammad Ali’s grandson, Jacon Ali-Wertheimer were the trio of panelists who spoke passionately about why they are pressing President Biden to remove the 100-year-old stain from Garvey’s reputation. They all paid homage to Garvey and educated the audience about the depth and breadth of his legacy.
“Our students have asked us to do something to right the wrong,” said LACC President Mary Gallagher, “to fix this injustice, and do something where you can make a difference.”
An “Exonerate Garvey” link has been set up that goes directly to the White House, Contact Us webpage. Petition signers are directed to input “Exonerate Marcus Garvey” in the message box. The petition goal is to collect 100,000 signatures to prompt an official action from the Biden-Harris Administration.
Dr. Gallagher signed the petition and received a response directly to her in-box from The Office of Presidential Correspondence. The letter read in part: “Our country faces many challenges, and messages like yours help us better understand how the Biden-Harris Administration can serve American families.”
Alexia Chavez, Kaya Landingin, A. J. Williams and Reuben Boyd are students featured in the video who believe now is particularly important considering “today’s climate, socially, politically and racially,” Boyd said, “and it shows it’s never too late to make right your mistakes.”
The video concludes with a message asking the viewer to “Join us as we petition President Biden to exonerate Marcus Garvey and liberate his legacy.”
They said that the Negro had no initiative; that he was not a business man, but a laborer; that he had not the brain to engineer a corporation, to own and run ships; that he had no knowledge of navigation, therefore the proposition was impossible. Oh! ye of little faith. The Eternal has happened.
—Marcus Garvey, on the launching of the Black Star Line
PHOTO COURTESY HTTPS://ROBROB1.FILES.WORDPRESS.COM/2014/11/IMG011.
Marcus Garvey envisioned an all-Black crew for the voyages of his Black Star Line (BSL), which had three ships. The ships were in poor condition, and one coal transport vessel even sank. But Garvey’s vision and industry inspired people and generated excitement among Black Americans at a time when only limited job opportunities existed for Blacks.
