Marcus Garvey - A Brief Insight

Blog | Marcus Garvey – A Brief Insight (William Kadi, Chevening Scholar 2022/2023, University of Aberdeen, Scotland, United Kingdom).

If you’re a reggae music fanatic, you definitely may have come across Marcus Garvey being referenced in many songs by prolific reggae powerhouse names.

But who is he?

Garvey was a man of many characters. To some, he was a freedom fighter, and on the other end of the spectrum some refer to him as a mad man – both arguably true in their own sense.

Garvey was Jamaican by birth and of African heritage. He was born on 17 August 1887 in St. Ann, Jamaica. He was the founder of the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League (UNIA-ACL). He found that movement after moving to the United States of America from Jamaica around 1918/1919.

Garvey advocates strongly as a black nationalist and aims to fulfil his vision of financial freedom for black communities and black people of African heritage living in America and in all the colonies around the Caribbean, particularly Jamaica. He developed the notion of Pan-Africanism.

The UNIA-ACL peaked around the 1920s, however, lack of support from within his own circle and some outrageously radical aspects of his ideas led to his deportation from the United States in 1927 to Jamaica.

His significant achievements include acquisition of a few assets including Liberty Halls in New York and the incorporation of Black Line Stars – a shipping line, with capital investments pumped into the Negros Factories Corporation.

All these investments were also part of the reason that Garvey was drained mentally due to the greed and disunity which emerged from within the UNIA-ACL, during his quest for financial freedom for the black man. Despite his powerful and influential leadership, Garvey was betrayed more so by his own circle in the United States. His return to Jamaica was quite low key compared to his peak days with the UNIA-ACL and he suffered greatly from the loss of the investments in the Black Line Star.

In education, Garvey took evening classes at Birkbeck College, University of London during his time living in the United Kingdom around 1912. He studied law and philosophy but the most notable influence on his writings and ideology were Booker T Washington’s works.

Despite the fall of UNIA-ACL, Garvey’s impact is still evident today, more positively in his writings that instil black pride and giving the negro a sense of dignity and destiny. He was celebrated in Jamaica as the first national hero!

His works are much more embraced today than during his time. Garvey’s writings and ideologies smoothly interweaved with the reggae music culture and black activism.