Marcus Garvey

The strike broke, and the union's vice president lost his job for it. Marcus Mosiah Garvey was born at St Ann's Bay in 1887, the youngest surviving child of a stonemason and a domestic servant, and was apprenticed at 14 to his godfather's print shop. In Kingston he became the first Afro-Jamaican foreman at the P. A. Benjamin works, then led the compositors out in November 1908 and was sacked and blacklisted for it. Seven years of moving followed: timekeeper on a Costa Rican banana plantation, newspapers started in Limón and Colón, dock work in London, errands and then articles for Dusé Mohamed Ali's African Times and Orient Review. He founded the UNIA in Kingston in July 1914.

He landed in March 1916 and in four years built the largest Black mass movement the country had seen. A New York UNIA division in May 1917. Negro World, weekly from April 1918, banned in several British West Indian colonies. The Black Star Line in 1919, a shipping company capitalized by small Black shareholders. An estimated 25,000 in Madison Square Garden in August 1920, naming him Provisional President of Africa. Then the line collapsed and a jury convicted him. He was born in Jamaica and died in London. He is here because the movement was built in Harlem.

In June 1922 he spent two hours in the Ku Klux Klan's Atlanta offices with Edward Young Clarke, its acting Imperial Wizard. His separatism and the Klan's agreed on one point, that Black people should have a country of their own in Africa, and he thought the agreement was usable. A. Philip Randolph, Chandler Owen, William Pickens and Robert Bagnall answered with a Garvey Must Go campaign. Du Bois called him a demagogue. In January 1923 eight Black Americans asked the Attorney General to prosecute him, and he already was. Hoover's Bureau had watched him since 1917, had tried to have him deported in 1919 and had an agent inside the UNIA, which is why his defenders have called the case political ever since. The line's own auditors had also found unbalanced books and badly recorded funds.

He read his own obituaries. A stroke in January 1940 left him largely paralysed, and when George Padmore put out word that he was dead, papers ran premature and mostly unkind notices in late May. His secretary said the second stroke came on the second day of reading them, and he died in London on June 10, 1940, at 52. Jamaica brought the body home in 1964 and made him its first National Hero. Kwame Nkrumah named Ghana's shipping line, and the star on its flag, after the Black Star Line. Rastafari treats him as a prophet and the Nation of Islam as a source. On January 19, 2025, Joe Biden pardoned him.

Marcus Garvey's life against the full span of the corpus.

• Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League company
  Founded in Kingston in July 1914 and rebuilt from a New York division in May 1917 1914
• Negro World other
  Weekly paper nearing 10,000 circulation in its first year and banned by several British West Indian colonies 1918
• Black Star Line company
  Named against the White Star Line — 50,000 dollars in stock bought the 30-year-old SS Yarmouth 1919
• Negro Factories Corporation company
  Grocery stores, a restaurant, a steam laundry and a publishing house 1920
• Declaration of the Rights of the Negro Peoples of the World other
  Adopted at the Madison Square Garden convention and aimed at European colonial rule in Africa 1920
• Philosophy and Opinions of Marcus Garvey book
  Speeches collected and edited by his wife Amy Jacques — the book Kwame Nkrumah called his greatest influence 1923

• August 17, 1887 aged 0 Born at St Ann's Bay, Jamaica, the youngest surviving child of a stonemason
• November 1908 aged 21 Sacked and blacklisted after the Kingston printers' strike is broken He was vice president of the compositors' section of the Printers' Union and could not find private-sector work afterward.
• 1913 aged ~26 Hired as a messenger at Dusé Mohamed Ali's African Times and Orient Review in London He took evening law classes at Birkbeck College and read Booker T. Washington in the British Museum library.
• July 1914 aged 26 Founds the Universal Negro Improvement Association in Kingston Its motto was One Aim. One God. One Destiny.
• March 1916 aged 28 Sails for the United States aboard the SS Tallac He lodged with a Jamaican family in Harlem, then lectured across 38 states.
• October 31, 1919 aged 32 The Black Star Line's first ship sails down the Hudson The SS Yarmouth needed 11,000 dollars of repairs after one voyage and was sold for scrap in 1922.
• August 1920 aged 32 An estimated 25,000 fill Madison Square Garden and name him Provisional President of Africa Delegates also adopted the Declaration of the Rights of the Negro Peoples of the World.
• June 1922 aged 34 Meets the Klan's acting Imperial Wizard in Atlanta Two hours with Edward Young Clarke. His biographer Colin Grant calls it the turning point in his popularity.
• June 18, 1923 aged 35 Convicted of mail fraud after ten hours of jury deliberation His three co-defendants were acquitted. Judge Julian Mack gave him five years and a 1,000 dollar fine.
• November 18, 1927 aged 40 Coolidge commutes the sentence on condition of immediate deportation About a thousand supporters saw him onto the SS Saramaca at New Orleans on December 3.

• W.E.B. Du Bois 1868–1963
  Sociologist, historian, and civil rights activist who was the first African American to earn a Harvard doctorate. rival
• Booker T. Washington 1856–1915
  Educator and founder of Tuskegee Institute who advocated for vocational training for African Americans. influenced by
• J. Edgar Hoover 1895–1972
  Longtime FBI director who built a powerful national police institution while conducting extensive political surveillance and abuses. targeted by
• A. Philip Randolph 1889–1979
  Labor and civil-rights leader who pressured presidents to desegregate defense work and the armed forces. opposed by
• Elijah Muhammad 1897–1975
  Leader who built the Nation of Islam into a major religious and Black nationalist movement. influenced
• Malcolm X 1925–1965
  Civil-rights leader whose critique of racism and advocacy of Black dignity reshaped American political thought. influenced