Marcus Garvey, Date of Birth, Place of Birth, Date of Death

    

Marcus Garvey

Jamaica-born British political activist, Pan-Africanist, orator, and entrepreneur

Date of Birth: 17-Aug-1887

Place of Birth: Saint Ann's Bay, Jamaica, Jamaica

Date of Death: 10-Jun-1940

Profession: politician, entrepreneur, journalist

Nationality: Jamaica

Zodiac Sign: Leo


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About Marcus Garvey

  • Marcus Mosiah Garvey Jr.
  • ONH (17 August 1887 – 10 June 1940) was a Jamaican political activist, publisher, journalist, entrepreneur, and orator.
  • He was the founder and first President-General of the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League (UNIA-ACL, commonly known as UNIA), through which he declared himself Provisional President of Africa.
  • Ideologically a black nationalist and Pan-Africanist, his ideas came to be known as Garveyism. Garvey was born to a moderately prosperous Afro-Jamaican family in Saint Ann's Bay, Colony of Jamaica and apprenticed into the print trade as a teenager.
  • Working in Kingston, he became involved in trade unionism before living briefly in Costa Rica, Panama, and England.
  • Returning to Jamaica, he founded 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 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 many African-Americans should migrate there.
  • Garveyist ideas became increasingly popular and UNIA grew in membership.
  • However, his black separatist views—and his collaboration with white racist groups like the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) to advance their shared interest in racial separatism—divided Garvey from other prominent African-American civil rights activists such as W.
  • E.
  • B.
  • Du Bois who promoted racial integration. Committed to the belief that African-Americans needed to secure financial independence from white-dominant society, Garvey launched various businesses in the U.S., including the Negro Factories Corporation and Negro World newspaper.
  • In 1919, he became President of the Black Star Line shipping and passenger company, designed to forge a link between North America and Africa and facilitate African-American migration to Liberia.
  • In 1923 Garvey was convicted of mail fraud for selling the company's stock and imprisoned in the Atlanta State Penitentiary for nearly two years.
  • Many commentators have argued that the trial was politically motivated; Garvey blamed Jewish people, claiming that they were prejudiced against him because of his links to the KKK.
  • Deported to Jamaica in 1927, where he settled in Kingston with his wife Amy Jacques, Garvey continued his activism and established the People's Political Party in 1929, briefly serving as a city councillor.
  • With UNIA in increasing financial difficulty, in 1935 he relocated to London, where his anti-socialist stance distanced him from many of the city's black activists.
  • He died there in 1940, although in 1964 his body was returned to Jamaica for reburial in Kingston's National Heroes Park. Garvey was a controversial figure.
  • Many in the African diasporic community regarded him as a pretentious demagogue and were highly critical of his collaboration with white supremacists, his violent rhetoric, and his prejudice against mixed-race people and Jews.
  • He nevertheless received praise for encouraging a sense of pride and self-worth among Africans and the African diaspora amid widespread poverty, discrimination, and colonialism.
  • He is seen as a national hero in Jamaica, and his ideas exerted a considerable influence on movements like Rastafari, the Nation of Islam, and the Black Power Movement.

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