Black History Month 2015 - The Harlem Renaissance - Marcus Garvey

Marcus Garvey (image source: wikimedia)

Although Marcus Garvey didn't live in Harlem, he is listed as one of the prominent intellectuals of the era. I'm guessing this is because his ideas greatly influenced many Blacks around the world at that time.  For this reason I am including him in this series.

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From Wikipedia:

Marcus Mosiah Garvey, Jr., ONH (17 August 1887 – 10 June 1940), was a Jamaican political leader, publisher, journalist, entrepreneur, and orator who was a staunch proponent of the Black Nationalism and Pan-Africanism movements, to which end he founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League (UNIA-ACL).[2] He founded the Black Star Line, which promoted the return of the African diaspora to their ancestral lands.

Prior to the twentieth century, leaders such as Prince Hall, Martin Delany, Edward Wilmot Blyden, and Henry Highland Garnet advocated the involvement of the African diaspora in African affairs. Garvey was unique in advancing a Pan-African philosophy to inspire a global mass movement and economic empowerment focusing on Africa known as Garveyism.[2] Promoted by the UNIA as a movement of African Redemption, Garveyism would eventually inspire others, ranging from the Nation of Islam to the Rastafari movement (which proclaims Garvey as a prophet).

Garveyism intended persons of African ancestry in the diaspora to "redeem" the nations of Africa and for the European colonial powers to leave the continent. His essential ideas about Africa were stated in an editorial in the Negro World entitled "African Fundamentalism", where he wrote: "Our union must know no clime, boundary, or nationality… to let us hold together under all climes and in every country…"

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My first hint of hearing about Marcus Garvey was back in the 80s when I was in High School and what I thought I knew was that he was a separatist and had a "Back to Africa" type movement.  I later learned of the Rastafarian view of him in the early 2000s (about 2002 or so).  Having since dated a full on Jamaican style dread-locked Rasta, I have heard a few of the speeches but honestly have never really felt an affinity with the ideology. I guess I am just too American for all that.