Marcus Garvey's Crime: (Part Two)

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

https://www.causes.com/campaigns/71936-urge-president-obama-to-exonerate-marcus-garvey

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A continuation from Marcus Garvey's Crime (Part One)

One More Reason to Exonerate Marcus Garvey: Gratitude

What goes around…comes around. Both good and bad. In this case, it is my gratitude to Marcus Garvey, who has inspired my writing and the creation of this blog, which has fueled my desire for his exoneration.


I taught Marcus Garvey for many years and the typical response of my students, if they had heard the name Marcus Garvey, was similar to the scene Justin Hansford describes in "Jailing a Rainbow":

Garvey? Oh yeah, that Back to Africa guy, right? Didn’t he have some crazy scheme to put Black people on a ship and send them to Africa to create some empire in the jungle or something? Well, that’s pretty crazy! That’s why it never worked anyway.

The first time, I heard those words or similar sentiments, my blood boiled. But I learned "to keep cool." Marcus would have liked that. They were students--young, inexperienced, innocent. And I was their teacher, so I would have to teach them.


I'd have to teach them that Marcus Garvey's mission was more than the Black Star Line. That the Black Star Line was one of the expressions of Garvey's mission: the upliftment of Africans. I'd have to teach them that Garvey's quest began from an epiphany after he had witnessed the many injustices against New World Africans:

I was determined that the black man would not continue to be kicked about, as I had seen in Central America, and as I read of it in America. Where is the black man's government? Where is his King and his kingdom? Where is his President, his country, his men of big affairs? I could not find them, and then I declared, 'I will help to make them.' My brain was afire.

Garvey recognized the systemic nature of the oppression, which Rastafari would later name as Babylon. It was a s[h]ystem, as Peter Tosh would say that was founded on injustice because it excluded New World Africans from competing for the good and services in the national and world economy. This system was enforced economically and militarily to enslave the bodies of New World Africans. But the most effective method was the insidious propaganda: Africans were inferior to Europeans. In other words, White privilege  was the norm and anything else was, well...not proper.


Not only did Europeans and their descendants promote this propaganda (and why shouldn't they? They were rational agents acting out of self-interest), but Africans and their descendants also believed this and sometimes acted against their own self-interests. Hence, Malcolm X's observation about field slaves and house slaves.


Marcus Garvey sought to establish a counterculture of resistance of European values while at the same time building a solid economic base for New World Africans,which he hoped would increase their self-reliance, self-esteem, and sense of identity. Garvey rightly diagnosed the central challenge within the Black community, which is revealed in how we think about each other and ourselves: As Man Thinks So Is He.


Marcus Garvey's cause was justice, plain and simple. And it is ironic that unjust methods were used to malign his good name and to bring about his eventual imprisonment on fraudulent charges.


Yet, despite the calumnies brought against him, Marcus Garvey continued to work for justice and freedom of Africans. I imagine him every day putting on his suit and his hat and working for the liberation of his people. Some days it was glitzy and glamorous, like speaking to thousands of supporters in Madison Square Garden and on other days, it was dodging stones from misguided children.


But this is the nature of the struggle…a luta continua…. day-by-day, brick by brick…one mind at a time.


Marcus was fighting for something larger than himself and as a teacher who encounters on a daily basis the effects of this lack of identity, lack of self-esteem and self-reliance, the exoneration of Marcus Garvey's name, it is hoped, will  clear the name of a Black man who was unjustly convicted; honor the legacy of  a hero in the struggle for Black identity, and draw attention to the work of Marcus Garvey, especially his ideas about personal responsibility and success, which are sorely needed in our community.


Therefore, we are petitioning President Barack Obama to exonerate Marcus Mosiah Garvey and to clear his good name.

Here is the link to sign the petition:

http://signon.org/sign/exonerate-marcus-garvey?source=c.url&r_by=4631897

SIGNATURES NEEDED BY AUGUST 17, 2012, TO CELEBRATE MARCUS GARVEY'S 125th BIRTHDAY: 5,000