The unqualified achievement of the
Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities (Imperial)
League (UNIA-ACL) led by Marcus Mosiah
Garvey (1887-1940), the first National Hero of Jamaica,
owed its success to many sources.
One of Garvey’s main influences was Booker T.
Washington, whose vision of self-help through education and economics was the
main impetus behind the movement. However, Garvey’s organizational strategies
for the liberation of people of African descent closely modeled the slogans and
methods employed by Irish nationalists such as Padraig Pearse,
Robert
Emmet, Roger Casement,
and Eamon
de Valera.
In 1914 when Marcus Garvey returned to
Jamaica from England, his heart and mind bursting with ideas for the freedom of
African peoples, one of his first official acts was the creation of the
Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities (Imperial)
League (UNIA-ACL), whose slogan was “Africa
for Africans at home and abroad” an echo of the oft repeated Irish slogan, “The
Irish race at home and abroad.”
Even the choice in
naming of the UNIA-ACL headquarters, Liberty Hall, was a nod to “Liberty
Hall, Dublin, the symbolic seat of the Irish revolution.”
In The
Philosophy and Opinions of Marcus Garvey, he repeated his conviction and
alliance with the Irish cause: “Marcus Garvey has no
fear about going to jail. Like MacSwiney or like Carson, like Roger Casement,
like those who have led the fight for Irish freedom, so Marcus Garvey shall
lead the fight for African freedom” (183).
To
say that the Easter
Rising of 1916 had
a profound effect on Garvey would be understatement. But Garvey’s familiarity with the revolutionary
struggle of the Irish people began long before that fateful week:
As early as 1910, Garvey was assistant secretary of the
National Club of Jamaica, a group whose activities marked the first attempt by
Jamaicans to create a nationalist political platform. The club's founder,
S. A. & G. Cox, absorbed the influence of the Sinn Fein movement while he was enrolled
as a student, beginning in 1905, at the Middle Temple in England…
The
Jamaican historian Richard Hart has pointed out that "for [the National
Club's] newspaper Cox chose the name Our Own, a rough
translation of the Irish nationalists' Sinn Fein."
Indeed, Garvey’s most audacious plan,
the Black Star Line, which led to his imprisonment on trumped up charges
brought by J. Edgar Hoover and the US Justice Department, was another symbolic
nod to the Irish struggle:
RUPERT
LEWIS: The idea comes to Garvey that black people need a shipping
line, and he bases his idea on the fact that the Cunard family has the White
Star Line and the Irish have the Green Star Line, and he says, "Why
shouldn't blacks have the Black Star Line?" So it is a vision of grandeur.
Perhaps the greatest
influence on Garvey’s strategies was the courage of the Irish heroes. As Robert Hill points out:
In July 1919, Garvey announced that "the time [had]
come for the Negro race to offer up its martyrs upon the altar of liberty even
as the Irish [had] given a long list from Robert Emmet to Roger Casement.
Yet it wasn’t only the courage
of the Irish that moved Garvey. During the International Convention of the
Negro Peoples of the World at Madison Square Garden, August 1-31, 1920, Marcus
Garvey gave a speech to thousands of UNIA delegates
from twenty-five countries and accepted the
title of “Provisional President of Africa.” This was not an accident.
During the Easter Rising of 1916, Padraig Pearse had been named “President of
the Provisional Government” before his martyrdom on May 3, 1916.
However,
Garvey’s closest personal relationship with Irish nationalism was with the Hon.
Eamon de Valera. In fact, they had even arranged for a speaking engagement to share the platform:
Come and See the Irish President
Among the Speakers will be
His Excellency Hon. MARCUS GARVEY
Provisional President of Africa
His Excellency Hon. EAMON De VALERA
Provisional President of Ireland
Among the Speakers will be
His Excellency Hon. MARCUS GARVEY
Provisional President of Africa
His Excellency Hon. EAMON De VALERA
Provisional President of Ireland
Although the meeting did not take place,
Garvey continued his relationship and emulation
of de Valera:
The example of de Valera's clandestine travel between
America and Ireland also became an object of emulation for Garvey. In his
speech at Liberty Hall on the evening of 6 January 1921, he alluded to his
impending departure for the Caribbean and Central America: "Two weeks from
this I shall suddenly disappear from you for six or seven weeks," he told
his audience. "You won't hear from me during that time, but don't be
alarmed because we Negroes will have to adopt the system of underground
workings like De Valera.
Marcus Garvey’s meteoric rise to fame and influence was
due to his knowledge of the struggle for Irish freedom. From the outset of his
career, Garvey recognized the kinship of the Irish and Pan-African struggle for
freedom from the British Empire. Garvey’s awareness of the slogans and methods
of Irish nationalists as well as his connection, personal and symbolic, with
Irish revolutionaries, shaped the direction of the UNIA-ACL and provided a
framework for the struggle of Africans at home and abroad. As Garvey said in
his famous Chicago speech in 1919, “Robert Emmet gave his life for Irish independence
. . . and the new negro is ready to give his life for the freedom of
the negro race."
It is no wonder that the historian, William
Ferris, would give this final summation of Garvey’s career: “the same
courage which St. Patrick showed in delving the pagan gods of Ireland Marcus
Garvey shows in defying Anglo-Saxon caste prejudice." Marcus Garvey's life
was a testament to the kinship of Irish and Pan-African freedom fighters in the
liberation of their people.
First Published: 3/17/13 6:35 AM, Eastern Daylight Time
***
http://www.anphoblacht.com/contents/26525
http://www.historyireland.com/20th-century-contemporary-history/robert-emmet-and-1916/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/the-conversation-us/the-easter-rising-100-yea_b_9889158.html
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