Filed under: News, Politics, Race and Civil Rights
It's great that Jamaican officials plan to buy the childhood home of civil rights icon Marcus Mosiah Garvey and turn it into a memorial/museum, but the announcement begs just one question: What the hell took y'all so long?
Garvey would have celebrated his 123rd birthday last week, and while he is recalled as one of the most overlooked black civil rights heroes, it's hard to imagine that Garvey's childhood home wasn't restored as a monument in some way in the nation of his birth.
Garvey was born in St. Ann Parish and moved to the United States in 1916 to lead one of the largest and most important black civil rights groups, the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), ever, which was devoted to "the general uplift of the people of African ancestry of the world."
With black Americans just a few generations out of slavery, the UNIA doctrine of self-help, self-reliance and nation building provided important food for the soul and spirit of black people in America and beyond.
At its height, UNIA had more that 1,000 divisions in more than 40 countries. Its first international convention at Madison Square Garden in 1920 lasted one month and drew more than 20,000 members.
Think of the NAACP on some serious steroids and you have UNIA.
Less impressive was UNIA's business record. Garvey's main goal was to repatriate blacks who wanted to return to Africa on his Black Star Line fleet of rickety steamships.
Though the Black Star Line has been immortalized in song by the classic reggae group Culture (listen below), it was mostly a failure that helped hasten the demise of the UNIA as an influential civil rights group.
Garvey's devotion to bringing black people back to Africa also led him to forge alliances with people he should have left alone - like the Ku Klux Klan, who shared Garvey's dream of returning black people to Africa.
Want to see something weird? Visit the website of the Knights Party, USA, and you will see a page devoted to "Marcus Garvey: A Black Moses."
Talk about strange bedfellows!
The fact that the Klan has a page devoted to one of my heroes leaves me slightly nauseous.
But Garvey wasn't pressed from a mold or cookie-cutter. Marcus Mosiah Garvey was a one-of-a-kind leader, and to me, his flaws add depth and texture to his legacy.
I look forward to learning more about the good and the not-so-good of Marcus Garvey when his museum opens in Jamaica.