Marcus Mosiah Garvey would be 146 years old today, but his message needs to be heard and internalized.
As we watch the state-sponsored erasing of African American history, freedom fighters like Garvey mustn’t be forgot- ten. You can’t describe it in 147 characters. His likeness rarely graces the pages of Instagram and TikTok. But you need to know his name and the impact he had on the psyche of Black people.
There has never been a large following among Africans in America for Garvey. It’s the price you pay for being an avowed Black Nationalist.
If you wanna scare Negroes, just say you are planning a “back to Africa” movement, and we scurry like insects.
And God, please don’t make such a statement in the same room where White folks may be within earshot.
But Garvey was so much more than a nationalist. My readings reveal him as a prophet, teacher, orator, self-esteem guru, philosopher, and more.
Marcus Garvey studied the is- sue of power on a national and international scale and had a word for the oppressed who terrorized their oppressors.
I’ll let you Google him for a bio, but the short version is enough to prick your interest. Or better yet, go by and visit the Pan-African Connection in Dallas.
The beloved owner and pro- curer of all things African is Akwete Tyehimba. She is as steeped in history as she is beautiful in spirit and stature.
Garvey was born in Jamaica in 1887 and although he didn’t arrive in Harlem until 1916, he quickly diagnosed America’s racial disease and prescribed a cure.
According to a BBC documentary, “To facilitate the re- turn to Africa that he advocated, in 1919 Garvey founded the Black Star Line, to provide transportation to Africa, and the Negro Factories Corporation to encourage Black economic independence.
Garvey also unsuccessfully tried to persuade the government of Liberia in West Africa to grant land on which Black people from America could settle.”
But in the movement, Garvey amassed a litany of liberating literature that would encourage Africans in America to do every- thing from avid reading to entrepreneurship.
Garvey would not confine himself or his movement to the belief that people of a darker hue were doomed to second-class citizenship and dependency on the U.S. Government.
Listen to what he penned on the subject; “How to Read.” “Use every spare minute you have in reading. If you are going on a journey that will take you an hour, carry something with you to read for that hour until you have reached the place.
If you are sitting down waiting for somebody, have something in your pocket to read until the person comes. Don’t waste time. Any time you think you have to waste, put it in reading something. Carry with you a small pocket dictionary and study words whilst waiting or traveling, or a small pocket volume on some particular subject.
Read a chapter from the Bible every day, Old and New Testaments. The greatest wisdom of the age is to be found in the Scriptures. You can always quote from the Scriptures. It is the quickest way of winning approval.”
That singular admonishment to read daily is worth more than gold. But Garvey went on to pen one of my favorite quotes: one that spoke then and speaks now.
“If 400,000,000 Negroes can only get to know themselves, to know that in them is a sovereign power, is an authority that is absolute, then in the next twenty-four hours we would have a new race, we would have a nation, an empire, – resurrected, not from the will of others to see us rise, – but from our own determination to rise, irrespective of what the world thinks.”
Most Africans in America are about as likely to move to Africa as their great-grandparents were in the early 1900s. That part of Garvey’s message is too far-fetched even to imagine. However, the real thrust of his message was and is self-determination.
I don’t expect you to go “back” to Africa for any more than the trivial two-week excursion that White folks enjoy. But can you at least cast a vote in the upcoming elections?
There are almost 2,500,000 voting age African Americans in Texas. My bet is Marcus Garvey would be thrilled to know that they all showed up to the polls!
Vincent L. Hall is an author, activist, and an award-winning columnist.
