Each August that we celebrate Marcus Garvey�s birthday, we should revisit his contributions and study the works of this great African hero. Marcus Garvey left a rich legacy of history for us to study and utilize in our continued quest for independence and liberation as a people.

Over the last 18 years, I have written numerous articles on the contributions and legacy of the great Honorable Marcus Mosiah Garvey.

As we prepare to attend and participate in the historic United Nations World Conference Against Racism that will be held in Durban, South Africa from Aug. 31 through Sept. 7, 2001, it is only fitting that we pay tribute to Garvey for his trail-blazing leadership on behalf of African people in the international arena.

Since the Paris Peace Conference, the founding of the League of Nations and the United Nations, several historic and precedent-setting appeals, petitions, and complaints have been submitted to the international community speaking for Black people in the United States.

 On December 10, 1918, the Honorable Marcus Garvey and the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) convened a mass meeting of more than 7,000 people in the Palace Casino in New York to discuss and ratify nine "peace aims to the Allied Democracies of Europe and America, and to the people of democratic tendencies of the world" assembled at the Paris Peace Conference. Garvey and representatives also attended the founding meeting of the League of Nations in 1920.

It is in the spirit of the pioneering international work of Garvey and the UNIA that the delegation led by the December 12th Movement International Secretariat and the National Black United Front will be traveling to Durban for the World Racism Conference.

The Provisional Government of the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League (ACL); the organization he founded in Kingston, Jamaica in 1914, will again pay tribute to "Mr. Garvey," as he was affectionately called.

Marcus Garvey was born August 17, 1887 in St. Anns Bay, Jamaica to Marcus and Sarah Garvey. Marcus Sr., his father, was a descendent of the Maroons. The Maroons were Africans who managed to escape slavery when they reached western shores by jumping from slave ships, or by fleeing slave plantations and establishing well fortified communities deep in the Jamaican interior. Garvey�s mother, Sarah, was said to be of extraordinary beauty and possessed a gentle personality. She was also said to have been a deeply religious person.

Garvey left school at the age of 14 and became an apprentice printer in Kingston. He worked for a private company and eventually became a foreman. At the age of 20, in 1907, although he was a member of management, Garvey led a newly formed printer�s union strike. The company promised Garvey big rewards and benefits if he would discontinue his union organizing. Garvey refused and was fired and "blacklisted" by the private printing companies of Kingston. This experience intensified Garvey�s political curiosity concerning the condition of African people. It was at this point in 1909, that he formed the National Club and its publication "Our Own."

From this point forward, Garvey decided to devote his life to the upliftment of the race. He published his first newspaper, "The Watchman," which gave him an opportunity to express his emerging political views on the plight of Black people.

While unable to gain support for his organization, Garvey began to travel. He spent time in Costa Rica, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Honduras, Columbia, and Venezuela. These travels gave Garvey an opportunity to observe, that whenever Blacks and whites were in close proximity, Blacks people were on the bottom.

Garvey continued to travel and in 1911 he went to London. He was able to test out his speaking ability on the condition of African people worldwide at the famous Hyde Park Speaker�s Corner. While in London, Garvey met Duse Mohammed Ali, editor of the "African Times" and "Orient Review." Ali, an Egyptian scholar, introduced Garvey to many ideas that played an important role in Garvey�s future thinking.

This background gave Garvey the tools he needed to become one of our true 20th century freedom fighters. Garvey arrived in Harlem, New York on March 16, 1916. By 1919, Garvey was well established as the President General UNIA/ACL, which had a membership of over three million people with more than 300 branches throughout the African World Community.

Perhaps Garvey�s greatest contribution to the uplifting of our people was his ability to find a formula for organizing our people around the African principle: the greatest good for the greatest number. This was reflected in the first International Convention of Negro Peoples of the World in Madison Square Garden, in New York in 1920. Over 25,000 Black people from all over the world witnessed the choosing of Red, Black, and Green as the colors of the Provisional Government.

In this context, Garvey and the UNIA/ACL had established an economic arm�the Negro Factories Corporation, with cooperative stores, restaurants, steam laundry shops, tailor shops, dressmaking shops, millinery stores, a doll factory to manufacture African dolls, and a publishing house. Garvey also formed a Steamship Corporation. The goals and objectives of the UNIA had now become clear to the world. As Shawna Maglangbayan points out, "... the Garvey movement and UNIA had become a threat to the white world."

With the cooperation of anti-Garvey, "Negro leaders," he was eventually charged and convicted of mail fraud for selling stock in the African Star Lines. On Feb. 8, 1925, Marcus Garvey was arrested and convicted for mail fraud and imprisoned in Atlanta, Ga.

With a great movement of support by his followers, Garvey was released from prison in 1927, but immediately following his release he was deported from the United States and was sent back to Jamaica to continue his work. While in London, on June 10, 1940, Garvey lapsed into a coma and made his transition into eternity.

The Garvey movement was one of the greatest mass movements of Black people in the world. Although the external and internal forces and enemies of Garvey caused his demise, the ideas of Garvey and the UNIA/ACL are still alive. We need to revitalize and resurrect the spirit of Marcus Mosiah Garvey. It is needed now, more than ever before. A luta continua�the struggle continues!

(Dr. Conrad Worrill is national chairman of the National Black United Front, located at 12817 South Ashland Avenue, Flr. 1, Calumet Park, Ill. 60827. He can be reached at 708-389-9929, fax 708-389-9819. E-mail: [email protected], webpage www.nbufront.org).

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