Marcus+Garvey

African American Rights Marcus Garvey (Marcus Garvey presiding at 1922 convention, Liberty Hall) Marcus Garvey was a black leader who started the "Back to Africa" movement in the U.S. and he also founded the "Black Star Line". He's a nationalist. He was born in a poor family in Jamaica. He had a group of followers who followed him to New York City. In 1920-1925, they used money to set up some all-black businesses. He set up this group because he believed that blacks would never receive justice in countries where most of the people were white. So, they preached that blacks should consider Africa their homeland and they should settle there. He is an important reformer because he started the "Back to Africa" Movement. "Back to Africa" encouraged those people of African descent to return to the African homelands of their ancestors. According to the Encyclopedia of Georgia History and Culture, “as early as 1820, black Americans had begun to return to their ancestral homeland through the auspices of the American Colonization Society” and by 1847, the American Colonization Society founded Liberia and designated it as the land to be colonized by all black people returning from the United States of America.[8] By the decline of the Back to Africa Movement, the American Colonization Society migrated over 13,000 blacks back to Africa. He returned to Jamaica and established the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA). The UNIA  campaigned against lynching, Jim Crow laws, denial of black voting rights and racial discrimination. I don't think he is a successful reformer, because he was arrested and charged with fraud and in 1925 was sentenced to five years imprisonment. He had served half of his sentence when President Calvin Coolidge commuted the rest of his prison term and had him deported to Jamaica. UNIA never recovered from the scandal and had ceased to exist by 1930. Hoover wrote that: "Unfortunately, however, he [Garvey] has not as yet violated any federal law whereby he could be proceeded against on the grounds of being an undesirable alien, from the point of view of deportation."(From Wikipedia), But I still think he has affected our lives today, because he formed U.N.I.A to help many African Americans.

In the Negro World titled “African Fundamentalism” Garvey wrote: "Our union must know no clime, boundary, or nationality… let us hold together under all climes and in every country…"

(People protesting against segregation .) []

Bibliography: Randall M.Miller and Paul A. Cimbala. __AMERICAN Reform and Reformers : a biographical dictionary.__ Westport, Connecticut London, 1996. 180-181. Print. __The World Book Encyclopedia G Volume 8.__ Chicago,IL 47 .2004.