Marcus Garvey born - August 17, 1887

On this day in 1887, activist and journalist Marcus Garvey, namesake of the ideology of Garveyism, was born.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
The Day in History Class. It's a production of I
Heart Radio. Hi, I'm Eves and Welcome to this Day
in History Class, a show that uncovers a little bit
more about history every day. Today is August nineteen. The

(00:23):
day was auguste eighty seven. Marcus Mosiah Garvey was born
in Saint Anne's Bay, Jamaica. Garvey was an orator, journalist,
and activists who was a proponent of black nationalism, Pan Africanism,
and segregation. Garvey was the youngest of eleven children. His

(00:45):
dad was a Stonemason and his mother was a servant.
As a child, Garvey developed a love for books. He
went to school in Jamaica until he was fourteen years old,
when he left school and eventually moved to King's In
He became a printer's apprentice, and he also developed speaking, debate,

(01:06):
and journalistic skills. While working in Kingston, he became a
trade unionist and took part in a printer strike. The
strike was unsuccessful, but Garvey became increasingly interested in activism
and politics. In the early nineteen tens, many Jamaican people
facing financial hardship were heading to Central and South America

(01:29):
for work. Garvey was one of them in Costa Rica.
He wrote about the poor conditions that black workers were facing.
In nineteen twelve, after returning to Jamaica briefly, he moved
to London. There he studied law and philosophy at the
University of London's Birkbeck College. He also met with black

(01:52):
intellectuals and laborers who described the treatment they faced under
colonial rule, and he worked for the Pan Africa and
pan Asian journal called African Times and orient Review. Booker T.
Washington's autobiography Up from Slavery influenced his growing racial awareness
and his work on race issues. Garvey went back to

(02:14):
Jamaica in nineteen fourteen with new views on Africa, race,
and European colonization. On August one of that year, he
founded the Universal Negro Improvement and Conservation Association and African
Communities League, or the U n i A. The U
n i A s motto was one God, one Aim,

(02:36):
one destiny. Garvey wanted to build an agricultural and industrial
training school modeled after Booker T. Washington's Tuskegee Institute, but
he was not getting the support he needed in Jamaica,
so he turned to the United States to get the money.
And backing he desired. By the time Garvey got to

(02:57):
New York in nineteen sixteen, Booker T. Washington had died.
Harlem wasn't that receptive of garb speeches in the beginning,
But while he initially had a reformist outlook and advocated
for racial accommodation, once he got to America he became
more revolutionary. The time was characterized by black migration, segregation,

(03:19):
and racial violence. Through Garvey speeches and the U n
i AS publication called The Girl World, the organization's message
of private business and industry spread as he toured the
U s giving lectures. He urged black people to be
proud of their race and to return to Africa. The

(03:40):
U n i A grew rapidly, appealing to Black people
who were tired of colonial rule and racial dispossession. He
established the Negro Factories Corporation and the Black Star Line,
a shipping company. He also launched restaurants, grocery stores, a
publishing house, a millinary, laundries, and a hotel. Garvey sought

(04:03):
to build a nation state in Africa for certain African Americans,
black people migrating north from the South, as well as
black veterans made up a lot of Garvey's audience. At
the nineteen twenty u n i A Convention, Garvey issued
the Declaration of Rights of the Negro Peoples of the World,
which contained a bill of rights, declared black equality, and

(04:27):
had resolutions on creating independent legal and educational systems. But
as the U n i A and Garvey became more
popular worldwide, many people opposed them, including W. E. B.
Du Bois, A, Philip Randolph, and J. Egger Hoover. In
the Bureau of Investigation, Socialists and communist conspiracies were being

(04:50):
tossed around. Garvey's radicalism was worrisome too many, and Garby
was a segregationist who met with the Kool Klux Klan
as they shared views on the issue of racial separation.
Because of debt and mismanagement, the Black Star Line went bankrupt,
and in nineteen two Garvey was convicted of male fraud

(05:12):
and sentenced to five years in prison. President Calvin Coolidge
commuted his sentence under the terms that Garvey would be deported.
He returned to Jamaica, picking back up with his U
n i A efforts and getting involved in local politics.
His movement continued in the United States, but the organization

(05:33):
struggled to gain ground in Jamaica and branches in the
US began to break apart. In nineteen thirty five, Garvey
moved to London, and he continued to write and travel
to conventions. He also established the School of African Philosophy
in Toronto, but he could not find the success he
did in the US. He died in London in nineteen

(05:56):
forty from complications of strokes, never having been to Prica.
Though his legacy is controversial for his advocacy of separatism
and black nationalism, Garvey is also celebrated for his focus
on black freedom and pride. I'm Eve, Jeff Coote and
hopefully you know a little more about history today than

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