From the moment Marcus
Garvey set foot on North American soil in 1916, he became a threat to a system
that denied the selfhood of New World Africans. Black people knew this. What
other explanation could there be for the exponential growth of the Garvey founded
UNIA from thirteen members in 1916 to over four million in 1919?
One of the first government
officials to recognize Garvey's threat was J. Edgar Hoover, who used all of the
resources of the BOI (predecessor of the FBI) to stop the UNIA and Garvey. On
January 12, 1922, Marcus Garvey was arrested on mail fraud and on June 23,
1923, Garvey was sentenced to five years in prison. But was this prison sentence justified? In "Jailing
a Rainbow" Justin Hansford concludes: "Ultimately,
the unjust trial and conviction of Marcus Garvey was an attempt to silence and
kill the powerful voice of an Outsider."
If Garvey's crime was not
mail fraud as the government alleged and if Hansford's hypothesis is correct,
then Marcus Garvey's imprisonment was predicated on his attempt to create a
counterculture of resistance and his thorough interrogation of Whiteness or White
privilege. This system took many forms: slavery, which automatically granted
superiority to whites and devalued the worth and talents of New World Africans
to Jim Crow laws that denied New World Africans their rights as citizens and to
educational and entrepreneurial opportunities. White privilege essentially
shackled the bodies and minds of New World Africans while granting untrammelled
freedom to whites and honorary whites.
Of course, there were
personal success stories within the African American community, but these
individuals were often seen as the "exceptions that proved the rule"
of Black ignorance and laziness. For whenever, Black communities showed any
promise of success, they were decimated by legal or extralegal methods. How else can
the catalog of Black communities destroyed by white mobs and race riots during the twentieth century (Tulsa through Rosewood and beyond) be explained?
This insidious system was
also maintained by a system of propaganda that conflated the story of America
with whiteness and the status quo.
But America is not white. And neither is its story. Claude
McKay ("America") and Langston Hughes ("I, Too, Sing
America") were two of the more famous poets of the Harlem Renaissance (Garvey's influence on this
historical movement has still
not been fully acknowledged) who sought to correct the effects of this
exclusive metanarrative on the psyche of African Americans.
Marcus Garvey's communal
self-help philosophy challenged the narrative that reduced New World Africans to
chattel, and reminded African Americans that their story did not begin in
slavery, but in the kingdoms of West Africa.
This was, perhaps, Garvey's
most egregious crime. The UNIA's philosophy struck at the core assumptions of
White privilege: only whites were intelligent, beautiful, and hardworking. The additional
challenge that Garvey faced was that many New World Africans believed this propaganda, and were now victims of learned helplessness.
This explains Garvey's mission to change the consciousness of New World
Africans and his frequent exhortations to "emancipate ourselves from
mental slavery. "
Marcus Garvey began a
process that has evolved throughout the years. At the core of Garvey's "African
Fundamentalism" are the
values of pride, confidence that are enhanced by education and industry.
Garvey's false imprisonment effectively stopped the momentum of the UNIA's
"upliftment of the race." This would have a long lasting effect on
the movement not only during Garvey's lifetime, but on his legacy. Garvey's memory has been reduced to repatriation without any reference to the broad political, educational, cultural, and economic aims of the UNIA. As Hansford
asserts:
Both
he and his vision were intentionally and unjustly tarnished, degraded, and
banished from the American narrative almost a century ago—in large part due to
the legal opinion above and the deportation of Marcus Garvey that it
effectuated.
Throughout the ordeal of his
imprisonment, Garvey maintained his innocence and tried unsuccessfully to clear
his good name. When Marcus Garvey died on June 10, 1940, the official records
state a cerebral hemorrhage, but I think it was more from a broken heart.
It is for this reason that I
have signed an online petition to be presented to President Barack Obama for Marcus Garvey's exoneration. Garvey's crime was not mail fraud,
but his challenge to a system that denied the selfhood of New World Africans.
If you would like to join
the cause for clearing the good name of Marcus Garvey, please add your name to
this petition:
Exonerate Marcus Garvey
To be delivered to President Barack Obama
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