Marcus Garvey’s Black Nationalism

2,171 words

Tony Martin
Race First: The Ideological and Organizational Struggles of Marcus Garvey and the United Negro Improvement Association
Westport: Greenwood Press, 1976

The late nineteenth century saw a collapse of black political power and sovereignty, both in America and in Africa. Contrary to the wishes of far-sighted men such as Thomas Jefferson, James Monroe, and Abraham Lincoln, freedmen were not given their own territory outside the boundaries of the United States after their emancipation. Instead, there was a brief period of black political power in the South during Reconstruction followed by a harsh reaction on the part of white Southerners. Whites were now burdened by an unwanted alien population that competed with them for jobs, as well as by the substantial criminal element among the black population. Hostility between the races reached a fever pitch, and anti-black riots and lynchings became routine occurrences. With the Reconstruction regimes having been dismantled, reconciliation between Northern and Southern whites was well under way and the grievances of blacks fell on deaf ears. Meanwhile, the colonization of Africa by Europeans meant that blacks lost control of nearly the entire continent, with the exceptions of Ethiopia and Liberia.

Quite naturally, nationalistic resistance by Africans sprang up wherever the black race was subject to white rule. The most famous Black Nationalist of the era was Marcus Garvey, a Jamaican-born writer and orator who dreamed of a pan-African state that would serve as the homeland for his race. He rejected integration and preached black independence and self-sufficiency. Garvey’s organization, the United Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) had branches across the world, but its largest base of power was in the United States. In 1920, a crowd of 25,000 blacks came to hear Garvey speak in New York, and by 1926, America had more than 700 UNIA branches. Yet, despite the vast influence Garvey had during his lifetime, he is now something of a forgotten figure. The dominant narrative of Afro-American history centers around the “civil rights” movement and pro-integration efforts, with white supporters of segregation always portrayed as the primary enemies of blacks. Indeed, one could be forgiven for assuming that integration had the overwhelming support of the black masses from emancipation onward. The enthusiasm that millions of blacks felt for Garvey and his separatist doctrine call this assumption into question.

A notable black academic who devoted years of study to Garvey and his ideas was the late Tony Martin (1942-2013). Martin hailed from the small Caribbean state of Trinidad and Tobagao, which at the time of his birth was a colonial holding of the British Empire. An author, barrister, and accomplished academic, Martin spent several decades as a Black Studies professor at Wellesley College in Massachusetts. He is best known for assigning to one of his classes readings from The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews, a controversial volume published by Louis Farrakhan’s Nation of Islam which argued that Jewish involvement in the Trans-Atlantic slave trade was more extensive than is generally known. As a result, Jewish groups including the Anti-Defamation League tried to sabotage his career, an experience that he chronicled in his 1993 book The Jewish Onslaught, reviewed last year at The Occidental Observer. In 2002, Martin gave a talk at the Institute for Historical Review on “The Tactics of Organized Jewry in Suppressing Free Speech.”

Prior to his battles with Jewry, Martin distinguished himself as a leading authority on Marcus Garvey. He has written biographies of Garvey and his first wife Amy Ashwood Garvey, as well as multiple other books about Garvey’s impact on black art. But Martin’s first book, and the subject of this review, is Race First: The Ideological and Organizational Struggles of Marcus Garvey and the United Negro Improvement Association. Here, Martin focuses on Garvey’s political program for black liberation, and how Garvey applied his principles to his activism throughout the course of his political career. Martin’s copious research shows that Garvey was a formidable thinker who, far from being a charlatan or a crank, approached the difficulties facing his race with the moral seriousness and courage that was required.

Marcus Garvey was a highly motivated and intelligent individual who came from a middle- class Jamaican background. He traveled widely as a young man, and was dismayed that wherever he encountered fellow blacks, they tended to be poor and exploited. He became a nationalist and was inspired to start a black advocacy organization, which he did in 1914.

Two years later, he settled in the Harlem neighborhood of New York City. Garvey was a supremely confident and charismatic orator who never failed to attract a crowd. A cult of personality formed around Garvey, and many blacks viewed him as a quasi-messianic figure. Progress was nothing short of astonishing, leading Martin to remark that:

By 1921, Garvey was unquestionably the leader of the largest organization of its type in the history of the race. He had succeeded as no one else had in gathering up the worldwide feelings of dismay at the loss of independence and defiance against colonialism and oppression, which characterized the “New Negro” spirit of the age.

In contrast to black integrationists, Garvey did not believe that a harmonious multiracial society was possible or desirable. He was proud of being black, and detested the thought of racial mixing. He wanted blacks, and all other races, to have total sovereignty over their own affairs. He was unapologetically “race first” but not any sort of supremacist. Unlike black “civil rights” organizations like the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), Garvey restricted membership in the UNIA to blacks only and rejected any financial aid from sympathetic whites. Garvey was unwavering in his belief that the formation of a black nation-state must be brought about solely by the efforts of blacks. Thus, Martin wrote that “Garvey’s race-first doctrine was essentially a stratagem to ensure self- reliance and equality for the downtrodden African race” and that “The urgency Garvey felt for racial independence and self-reliance led him to argue that in independent endeavor lay the only hope of eventual solution to the problem of race prejudice.” A major roadblock to this vision was the reliance of many blacks on white-owned businesses. This meant that building a separate black economy was placed at the top of the UNIA agenda. Once again, Garvey wasted no time in meeting the challenge head-on, and succeeding. Martin notes that:

Between 1918 and the early 1920s Garvey’s headquarters in the New York City area sprouted a large assortment of UNIA businesses. The Black Star Line was incorporated in 1919. The Negro factories corporation followed not long afterward. Under its aegis there appeared Universal Laundries, a Universal military store, Universal Restaurants, Universal Grocery Stores, as well as a hotel, tailoring establishment, doll factory, and printing press.

Garvey was not always complementary towards whites, but he should be viewed as a friend of White Nationalism rather than a foe. His grievance was with those who believed whites were worthy of their own sovereign states, but that blacks were not. This is an exact parallel to one of the primary White Nationalist criticisms of Jews, which is the view held by many Jews that ethnonationalism is legitimate in the case of Israel but not for white nations. Garvey was also justifiably angry about white violence against blacks. All of us who abhor black-on-white violence today should be able to sympathize with Garvey on this point.

Moreover, if Garvey had gotten his way, there would not be any white-on- black or black- on-white violence in the United States because the two races would no longer be sharing the same territory. We should also keep in mind that as soon as the first slave ship arrived in Virginia, discord between blacks and whites became an inevitability. By the same token, if and when a racial separation is affected on this continent, there should no longer be any reason for animosity between the races.

One of the unique aspects of Garvey’s activism was his willingness to cooperate with white supporters of racial segregation. His time in the United States coincided with the zenith of the Second Ku Klux Klan. Garvey had an amicable relationship with Klan leader Edward Young Clarke, and this drew the fury of black advocates for integration. Garvey was also on good terms with White Nationalist Earnest Sevier Cox. Furthermore, he collaborated with former Klansman and Mississippi Senator Theodore Bilbo to promote Bilbo’s proposed Greater Liberia Act, which would have allocated federal funds toward repatriating blacks to Liberia.

The UNIA was a grassroots effort not financed or bankrolled by any government. Its program was a threat to the status quo, which made Garvey no shortage of enemies. The long list of opponents of the UNIA included several black groups as well as white ones. As Martin describes:

Garvey’s unparalleled success had the effect of arraying against him a most powerful array of hostile forces. The United States government was against him because they considered all black radicals subversive; European governments were against him because he was a threat to the stability of their colonies; the Communists were against him because he had successfully kept black workers out of their grasp; the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and other integrationist institutions were against him because he argued that white segregationists were the true spokesmen for white America and because he in turn advocated black separatism. His organization also had to contend with unscrupulous opportunists who were not above sabotaging its workings for personal gain.

The “unscrupulous opportunists” and saboteurs in question brought about the ruin of the Black Star Line, a shipping company formed by the UNIA that was funded by black shareholders. To put it bluntly, the enterprise was an utter failure, and debts quickly piled up. Garvey knew little about the shipping industry and made extremely poor staffing decisions. “The greatest blow to all of his shipping ventures” wrote Martin “came from the graft, thievery, and sabotage of many of his employees.”

The United States government had been engaged in lawfare against Garvey almost from the moment he arrived, and the debts of the Black Star Line offered a convenient excuse to intensify those efforts. Mail fraud charges were brought against Garvey on the dubious grounds that he was deliberately defrauding Black Star Line’s black investors. However, the state’s true motivation was to imprison and ultimately deport Garvey. Several prominent black integrationists, including some involved with the NAACP, were delighted by the charges against Garvey. Martin provides readers with a detailed chronology of the battles between Garvey’s UNIA and W.E.B. DuBois of the NAACP.

Garvey and DuBois were the two most prominent black political leaders of the era, and they had a long-running feud due to their diametrically opposed perspectives on the best course of action for Afro-Americans, with Garvey being a committed nationalist while DuBois, himself of mixed racial origin, promoted integration. Interestingly, DuBois would later leave the NAACP and adopt many of the separatist positions for which he had once criticized Garvey. Other lesser-known black rivals of Garvey included socialists A. Phillip Randolph and Chandler Owen, author James Weldon Johnson, and NAACP officials William Pickens and Robert W. Bagnall. Some of these men went so far as to sign a letter to the Attorney General condemning Garvey. Martin is of the opinion that “a major portion of the responsibility for Garvey’s imprisonment and deportation must be attributed to the integrationist onslaught, especially as manifested in the campaigns of DuBois and the NAACP, and the black Socialists Owen and Randolph.”

The trial itself was a farce, with the presiding judge, a Jew by the name of Julian Mack, also being a benefactor of the NAACP. Garvey was convicted in 1923 and a five-year prison sentence was handed down. In 1927, Garvey was deported. He returned to Jamaica and entered electoral politics there, even starting his own political party. He also continued as the head of the UNIA, but was never allowed back into the United States. Garvey died in 1940 at the age of 52.

What should we make of Garvey’s legacy? Although “Back to Africa” never came to fruition, his career was not without its triumphs. Garvey’s greatest skill was in promoting nationalism to the masses, and his work ethic appears to have been second to none. It is a terrible tragedy that the United States government opposed Garvey when his aims for Afro- Americans were consistent with those of Jefferson and Lincoln. By the time Garvey arrived on the scene, White America had, for the most part, abandoned any hope of colonizing the country’s black population. And yet, the growth of the UNIA demonstrated that millions of blacks were not only open to but enthusiastic about the prospect of separation and independence from the United States. If equally “race first” whites had been in control of the federal government at the time, it seems entirely possible that cooperation between Black and White Nationalists would have finally brought America’s race problem to a satisfactory resolution. The persecution of Garvey and the UNIA represents a missed opportunity for both blacks and whites.