MARCUS GARVEY, NATIONAL HERO  

1887-1940

Marcus Garvey, Jamaica's first national hero and son of St. Ann, spoke to a large crowd in Sturge Town in 1932, an event remembered to this day by Hubert Henry,  'Brother Butty'.  Butty was 29 years old at the time and working as a blacksmith at the Llandovery Sugar Estate, east of Runaway Bay.  He was an avid reader of the newspapers, including Garvey's recently launched newspaper  New Jamaican, and was keen to hear the great  Marcus Garvey speak..

 Marcus Garvey was born at 32 Market Street, St. Ann's Bay on August 17, 1887.  Both his grandfather and his father, Marcus Sr., were master stone masons.   His mother  Sarah was a higgler, selling the citrus and pimento from the family's small plot. She gave birth to 11 children but only 2 reached adulthood: Marcus the youngest and his sister Indiana.    Indiana would enter work life as a domestic servant in England.  At age 14 Marcus left school to become a printer's apprentice in the shop of his godfather, Alfred Burrowes.  The shop was on Main Street across from the Court House.  He took the opportunity to read all of the newspapers and books that were produced in the print shop.   In 1906 Marcus moved to Kingston where he worked in several shops including the government print shop and where he experienced the devastation of the  earthquake and fire that ravaged Kingston in 1907.  In 1909 he started a short lived newspaper The Watchman.  The following  year his uncle secured him a job as a timekeeper at a United Fruit Company banana plantation in Costa Rica.  Over the next 2 years he would establish another newspaper, campaign for Caribbean workers' rights and travel throughout Central America.  Garvey would continue throughout his life to combine his political movement and his capitalism,  although he often seemed better at establishing businesses than sustaining them.

Garvey's wanderlust would then take him to England in 1912 where his sister was now a governess.  While in London he wrote for The African Times and for The Orient Express.  He also spent hours in the visitors' gallery at the House of Commons where he heard Lloyd George and others debate the issues of the day and like so many other colonials developed a , “peculiar fondness for England.”   In early 1914 he returned to Jamaica and on August 1, 1914, Emancipation Day, he launched the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA),  His first wife Amy, nee Ashwood, was also a founding director of  UNIA. By 1916 the Garveys had landed in New York, settled into the Harlem neighbourhood and expanded UNIA into the first international mass movement of black people.   He also established  Negro World the official newspaper of UNIA. Marcus urged Jamaicans and African-Americans to be proud of their race and return to Africa.  To facilitate this back to Africa movement he formed a shipping company, the Black Star Line.  Although the company never established service to Africa, at its height it operated four ships carrying passengers and cargo between the US, Cuba, Haiti, Jamaica, Costa Rica and Panama.  Garvey would become an inspirational figure for later civil rights activists. His achievements are remarkable given that during these times the lives of black people world wide were dominated by the massive pressures that an expanding capitalist system and colonial governments had created.  By way of example: in Jamaica over half the available agricultural land was owned by 907 planters and only about 12% of the adult population was eligible to vote. However, as a result a  combination of financial difficulties and a backlash from the political establishment in the US Marcus Garvey was eventually imprisoned and subsequently deported to Jamaica.   In his defence Garvey would say: “My character is as firm as Gibraltar's Rock.  No policeman, nor judges can make me a criminal when I am not!”

 In November 1927 Garvey returned to Jamaica.  The Gleaner wrote: “Mr. Garvey's arrival was perhaps the most historic event that has taken place in the metropolis of the island...no denser crowd has ever been witnessed in Kingston.”  The next year he purchased a large  house with spacious grounds, at Edelweiss Park on Slipe Road, suitable for large gatherings.   In 1931, as a means of raising money for UNIA, he would launch the Edelweiss  Amusement Company on the property, which hosted traditional church, school and folk entertainment as well as dramatic productions, elocution contests, vaudeville shows, dance contests and boxing.  Several Jamaican entertainers who went on to great careers got their start at Edelweiss, including BIM & BAM and Ranny Williams.

 By early 1929, Garvey was again publishing a newspaper, a weekly called The Blackman, which would operate off and on in various forms until 1939.  In September 1929  he founded the People's Political Party (PPP), Jamaica's first political party.   The PPP's 14 point manifesto included a call for an eight hour work day, a minimum  wage, legal aid for the poor and technical schools in each parish.  He was also elected to sit on the Kingston and St. Andrew Corporate Council .  In 1932 Garvey launched yet another newspaper the short lived New Jamaican. 

As Brother Butty recalls, Marcus Garvey arrived by car on that day in 1932.  Richard Fullerton, a lad of 4, recalls his grandmother Nellie taking him to hear Garvey speak.  Teacher Silvestor introduced Garvey.  Garvey spoke to the whole village from under the plum tree at the foot of Baptist Street, presenting himself as an ordinary working man.  Brother Butty  recalls Garvey speaking about the PPP campaign platform, which called for a major land settlement scheme for rural Jamaicans,  irrigation and road projects and proposals  for modest  housing and tourism initiatives as well as  an industrial bank, a national shipping company and a university.  People were impressed with his vision and his oratory.  However, the PPP candidate for St. Ann, Manasseh Scott, lost to Dunbar Theophilus  Wint, who in the heat of the election campaign had labeled Garveyism “a poisonous cult”.

Although he was having increasing difficulty maintaining UNIA and the PPP as viable political organizations, in a March 28, 1933 editorial in the New Jamaican Garvey was one of the first political leaders to denounce the Nazi persecution of Jews.   Ironically Garvey would move his UNIA headquarters to London in 1935, just  three years before the great labour rebellion of 1938 that would give rise to the creation of modern politics in Jamaica.  He would never return to Jamaica.  Marcus Garvey died in London on June 10, 1940.  His body was returned to Jamaica in 1964 and he is buried in Heroes'  Park. 

REFERENCES:

Stein, Judith “The World of Marcus Garvey: Race and Class in Modern Society”  (Louisiana State University Press, 1986)

Hill, Robert  “Marcus Garvey: Life and Lessons “ (University of California Press, Los Angeles, 1987)

Martin, Tony “Marcus Garvey, Hero (The Majority Press, Dover, Massachusetts, 1983)

Marcus Garvey Tree