Marcus Garvey

Marcus Garvey was born into an era in which blacks were struggling with questions of identity across the globe. Garvey grew up hearing ideas of pan=Africanism, which was further shaped by his studies in Jamaica, the U.S. and Europe. A revolution had occurred in his home country of Jamaica just 20 years before he was born, so the narrative of the revolution was still fresh in the minds of the Jamaicans. In 1865, when the revolution took place, Jamaica was in horrible shape economically and politically. These poor conditions allowed for the rebellion to take place. Poor, working class black s united together across the island against the oppressive white Jamaican ruler that had been imposed by the British crown. The black majority of the island had grown tired of the white oligarchy that had mistreated them for years. After the revolutions’ success, Jamaica was left trying to figure out how to govern itself. Many British scholars did not believe that blacks could govern themselves, as they viewed them to be an inferior race that needed white intellectual superiority to govern them. This meant that the push for colonial self-governance was controversial in the Caribbean. Other factors, such as the advent of social Darwinism and the increase in African colonialism around the turn of the century, further cemented the idea of African inferiority. This was the chance for Jamaica to prove them wrong.

Western-educated blacks were seen as troublesome to this narrative of African inferiority, as they held views that were not in line with white supremacy over Africa. At the same time that black inferiority was becoming more and more mainstream, blacks across the globe were establishing transnational connections with one another. An Ethiopian church merged with an American one which strengthened transnational relations, as more young blacks around the world were being educated in American colleges. A Pan-African conference was hosted in 1900 in New York in which a shift in views occurred, turning black world politics into a discussion about Africa. The black community continued to look to educated blacks for leadership. Some individuals at the conference viewed Africa as being akin to Japan, which had developed into a powerful nation with its own culture with only some influence from Europe. They believed that this same thing could occur in Africa, with the continent developing its own culture different from that of its contemporary European imperials. At the same time that this conference was occurring, newspapers were founded to address grievances of non-white British colonists in Africa and the Caribbean. This growing pan-African movement shaped black politics across the world, especially in the U.S. where Garvey did much of his work fundraising and spreading awareness of his organization, the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA). The UNIA’s main message was “Africa for the Africans” which called for an end to European colonization in Africa and the creation of a country in Africa that all black people across the globe could live in. This would create a center for black politics and establish black cultural importance and competence.