Marcus Garvey — 100 years of the UNIA

BLACK PHILOSOPHY & IDEAS In 1972, newly returned to Jamaica fleeing 8 years of living with racial prejudice in England, I attended an event at the Sheraton Kingston hotel to hear a speech by Evonne Goolagong, an Australian half-Aboriginee girl who had just won Wimbledon. I did not know that whatever admiration I then had for this girl who had just made Black history, would pale by comparison with the eye-opening shock of hearing a frail, 82-year old woman speak about a true Black Hero whose life and philosophy she demanded that we follow. She was Mrs. Amy Jacques Garvey and the man she spoke of was her husband Marcus Mosiah Garvey.

I had never heard of Mr. Garvey before that day. My education in Black History had begun only a few years earlier in England, where racism made me absorb all the “Black is beautiful” information then being spread by American activists of the Black Power movement. I knew about Martin and Malcolm and even Elijah Muhammad, but not Marcus. So it was electrifying for me to hear this small, but fiery woman speak passionately about what Marcus Garvey stood for – the mental as well as physical liberation of the Black mind. This woman’s words led me on the path I am still trodding today. They forced me to read her publication of Garvey’s Philososphy and Opinions and to find how accurately they completed the information necessary for my full mental liberation from slavery.

Of course, in stepping onto the path of Garvey knowledge, I encountered the people who Garvey’s words had inspired to not only seek to return to the African Motherland from which their ancestors had been taken, but – even more importantly – to see Black Divinity in a Crowned African Emperor whose dynasty stretched back in ecclesiastical history to Solomon, the Queen of Sheba, David and Jerusalem, H.I.M. Emperor Haile Selassie whose 122nd birthday was celebrated this week.

Beloved Bongo Time

KEEPERS OF GARVEY’S FLAME          I thus became set firmly on the Rastafari pathway, seeking knowledge where I could. I found the best interpretation of Garvey’s teachings among the Rastafari elders, the true and most faithful keepers of Marcus Garvey’s flame. In true Garveyite principle, Rastafari were always calling Garvey the Prophet who pointed Black people in the West to their African homeland. Rastafari were always the most visible and outspoken Jamaicans speaking out about Garvey at celebrations and events, flying the Black, Red and Green banner of the UNIA next to the Ethiopian Red, Gold and Green. Garvey, Emperor Haile Selassie and EAIBC Priest Prince Emanuel, are depicted in RASTA iconography as the Holy Trinity.

The relationship has not always been a smooth one. There was a recent time when the UNIA and Rastafari were not close, both sides quoting Garvey’s condemnation of Emperor Selassie for leaving Ethiopia for asylum from the Italian invasion. Those days are far gone, as a dreadlocksed, professed Rastafarian is now leader of the Jamaican UNIA. Garvey has become respected by the ‘middle classes’ and even more RASpected than ever by the masses from which Garvey rose and who always followed him.

As for those not of Garvey’s race or mindset who are still uncomfortable about Garvey’s sole focus on race – some even terming it ‘Black racism’ – the ‘race’ puss is well out of the bag, thanks more to a reflection of the gains of the US civil rights movements, than any effort by the UNIA at home and abroad. I am certain that many still think it’s dangerous to teach Black people to take hold of their destiny based solely on their Blackness.

GARVEY IN SCHOOLS               The fight to teach Garvey in Jamaican schools as not just a figure in history but what he said, has not yet been won. It would clearly need a complete re-order of the Jamaican ‘System’, based on Garvey’s teachings. World History would begin in Egypt, not Greece and instead of the Middle Ages, would focus on Africa and the development of the Caribbean through the Slave Trade. Mathematics would be part of a Science curriculum including Engineering. Teaching of the Arts and Literature would be practical, hands-on. Teaching Business Management would begin at Primary level, producing graduates with practical experience seeking to provide Africa with trained development specialists in several fields and thereby providing the home nation with economic and trade alliances with other Black nations and people.

Potential Jamaican leaders often tiptoe around the matter of Race (with a capital ‘R’), pretending it is invisible when 99% of the crowd is African-descended. An enlightened leadership could use Garvey as the captain to steer the ship of State into prosperous waters, with wise communication programmes in which race becomes regarded as a quality of pride on which to restore a nation and people, instead of still being regarded as a negative – despite all the words and hard work of Mr. Marcus Mosiah Garvey.

WHAT IF????                As a close viewer of Jamaican history from Independence to today, I sincerely wonder where Jamaica would be today if Michael Manley and the 1970s PNP had used Garvey to inspire the people to support the good steps he tried to take to change Jamaica, instead of aligning with Castro to support his Democratic Socialism. Perhaps he considered it, because he rode to his 1972 election victory on the simmering Black Power movement the JLP had tried to suppress, and on the Afrocentric music of the rising Rastafari movement. But Race could not have seemed a good hook on which to hang a philosophy then, in place of which there was universal emotion for Fidel and alignment with all the African freedom movements then taking place, that led him to ignore the predictable response of the USA to prevent the success of his political move.

Perhaps the Garvey way would have meant legalizing Ganja and making Jamaica an outlaw state for a few years while the country built some schools, houses, roads, hospitals with the Green Gold. Like the government is trying to do today. Too late, perhaps. Well, it’s the same government, one generation younger. We can never know how serious or how genuine politicians can be when they make promises in speeches. We can only look and see if what they say comes to pass.

MY PERSONAL GARVEY TRIBUTE               Mrs. Amy Jacques Garvey so inspired me to spread the words of Marcus Garvey, that in 1972 I started writing articles about Garvey and his philosophy. Each year on his Birthday I would send a Letter to the GLEANER Editor (then Hector Wynter) that would usually be that paper’s only or main memorial. In 1981, while doing some voluntary PR service for the UNIA, I proposed to the Minister of Foreign Affairs (then Hon. Dudley Thompson) that the Ministry building be re-named the Marcus Garvey Building. He accepted and the name still stands on what is now the Courtleigh Hotel, New Kingston.

In 1986, while serving as an Independent Opposition Senator in the Jamaican Parliament, I led a debate in which I proposed that the upcoming Centenary of the birth of Hon. Marcus Garvey be celebrated as a National holiday. The Government, led by then- Minister of Culture Hon. Olivia Grange, voted against the proposal, saying the country could not afford a holiday. And, my favourite Garvey link of all, was being put in charge of the activities surrounding the 1975 unveiling of Garvey’s statue at the St. Ann Parish Library. After a sunny day and bright afternoon, as soon as the ceremony began Mr. Garvey decided to attend ‘in the whirlwind and storm’ and a thunderous downpour swamped the event, preventing any photographs from capturing the actual unveiling by Michael Manley. Read into that what you will.

These have been the main ways in which I have sought to pay tribute to the freeing of my mind by Mr. Garvey’s philosophy and teachings. They revised my thinking about myself as a Black person and made me proud for the first time to be Black. They gave me a motivation for my future focus and work, and they confirmed that my choice of Rastafari as my life and spiritual pathway is appropriate and totally in keeping with what Mr. Garvey taught. I think Mr. Garvey would be proud to meet me. I, of course, would be BLESSED to meet him.