Marcus Mosiah Garvey, one of the most influential 20th Century black nationalist and Pan-Africanist leaders, was born on August 17, 1887 in St. Ann’s Bay, Jamaica, and died in 1940. Greatly influenced by Booker T. Washington’s autobiography Up From Slavery, Garvey began to support industrial education, economic separatism, and social segregation as strategies that would enable the assent of Blacks.
In 1914, Garvey established the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) in Kingston, Jamaica. UNIA promised black economic uplift via self-reliance, political equality via self-determination, and the “liberation of Africa from European colonialism via a Black army marching under the Red, Black, and Green flag of Black manhood.” Africa’s redemption, according to UNIA supporters was foretold in the messianic Biblical Psalms 68:31 “Princes shall come out of Egypt; Ethiopia shall soon stretch out her hands unto God.” However, it was Garvey’s ability to convey, in his vivid and powerful speeches, the distinct possibility of achieving these goals that led the UNIA to become an organization of millions. Garvey’s most ambitious effort was the establishment of the Black Star Steamship Line. Garvey hoped that this joint stock corporation would develop lucrative commercial networks between the United States, the Caribbean, and the continent of Africa. He also hoped that his three ships would help in the return of millions of blacks in the “Diaspora” to Mother Africa. However, because of heavy debt and mismanagement, the steamship line went bankrupt and Garvey was charged with using the US Mail to defraud stock investors.
Marcus Garvey's son,Julius W. Garvey, M.D., is a NY-based cardiothoracic and vascular surgeon who is leading the Justice4Garvey effort seeking a posthumous presidential pardon from Obama for his father.
The first black agent's name was James Wormley Jones, known as Jack Jones. He was known by the code number "800". His job was to go into Harlem and to infiltrate the Garvey movement and to try and find evidence that could be used to build the legal case for ultimately getting rid of Garvey.
A. Philip Randolph, who had introduced Garvey to his first American audience on a Harlem street corner, said Garvey had "succeeded in making the Negro the laughingstock of the world."
Federal investigations into the finances of the Black Star Line, along with a blistering analysis of the shipping line by W.E.B. Du Bois in the NAACP's Crisis magazine, gave fuel to Garvey's black critics. Randolph personally critiqued the economic feasibility of the Black Star Line in The Messenger , an influential magazine he co-edited with Chandler Owen, and accused Garvey of squandering the hard-earned money of his hard-working, poor supporters.
Black opposition to Garvey coalesced into what came to be known as the "Garvey Must Go" Campaign. Supporters of the campaign, known collectively as the Friends of Negro Freedom, intended to unmask Garvey as a fraud before his black supporters. They also appealed to the federal government to step up investigations of irregularities in the Black Star Line, and to look into alleged acts of violence on the part of Garvey's inner circle.
Garvey would eventually be convicted of mail fraud charges in 1923. He was jailed in the Atlanta federal penitentiary in February 1925, where he would serve almost three years of a five-year sentence. And in 1927, Garvey would be deported from the United States, never to return.
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