Lance Neita | Up you mighty race

Former US President Joe Biden’s granting of a posthumous pardon to Marcus Garvey was a welcome breath of fresh air for Jamaicans.

The timing could not have been better, as it was announced one day before Martin Luther King Day in America, and one day before the ‘coronation’ of Donald Trump.

The news reached most Jamaicans while in church and prompted an unorthodox ‘hallelujah’ from the back bench as cell phones were whipped out, causing the pastor to pause his sermon and ponder the unlikely event that the West Indies had just won a Test match.

Garvey’s incarceration on foreign shores on what we have always considered to be trumped-up charges, has been a stain on his legacy and has been the subject of numerous efforts and attempts to have the US government reverse his conviction record.

In just a few short years, from 1916 to 1923, he built up a following and a mass movement that led Martin Luther King to declare that “he was the first man of colour in the history of the United States to lead and develop a mass movement, and to give millions of Negroes a sense of dignity and destiny”.

But our man Garvey was a born international. As articulated by Edward Seaga in his remembrance at the re-interment of the hero at National Heroes Park on November 22, 1964, Garvey stood on a pedestal of his own, which made his influence felt not only in Jamaica, nor in the US, but across the continents of the world.

“His movement,” said Seaga, “grew out of a burning passion to overcome the beliefs, prejudices, distortions, bigotry, half-truths, fears, conceits and propaganda of vested interests, which had progressively threatened and denied the humanity of people of African descent in this region for some 400 years.”

RACIAL PRIDE

He hammered home the idea of racial pride by celebrating the African past and encouraging African Americans to be proud of their heritage and of the way they looked. Garvey proclaimed ‘Black is beautiful’ long before it became popular in the 1960s.

In an earlier column, I claimed that Garvey was the inspiration for the Black Lives Matter movement. Today, that movement continues the struggle led by the civil rights movement. It is amazing that 100 years after Garvey, and some 60 years after King left the stage and President Lynden Johnson signed the Civil Rights Bill, there is still so much uncertainty and fears about the citizenship rights of the black race in the US.

But all is not lost. I got a fresh perspective of what Marcus Garvey means to the younger generation when I attended a St. Ann Heritage and Homecoming Schools Elocution Competition, staged at the St Ann Parish Library in St Ann’s Bay a few years ago.

The foundation keeps Garvey’s name alive with the establishment of a Marcus Garvey Resource Centre at the library. It also hosts an annual Garvey Lecture co-sponsored by Discovery Bauxite, with a landmark lecture presented by the company’s general manager, Delroy Dell, in 2023.

The schools had been given a Garvey quotation on which to build their five-minute speech. “A people without knowledge of their past history, origin and culture, is like a tree without roots.”

Here is what Bianca Rose of Discovery Bay High School had to say: “Just as important as the roots are to the tree, so is the knowledge of our history, culture and origin to us. We are sustained, supported and exist out of the knowledge of our ancestry.

“A Yoruba proverb reads, ‘If we stand tall, it’s because we stand on the backs of those who came before us.’

“Therefore”, asked little Bianca as she stared her audience in the eye, “how can we children of African descent stand tall with so little knowledge of our past?”

The audience was all smiles. Were Garvey’s words coming to pass? But hold the applause. There was more to come, as Drew-Gayle Fletcher of Steer Town Primary and Junior High had her own light to shed on the subject.

“Let us delve into our own history and strive to understand where we came from. Let us embrace every aspect of our culture, so that the message of our ancestors will forever occupy a space in our hearts and in our minds.”

My goodness, these young visionaries of the 21st century, born some 60 years after Garvey’s death, were telling us that they recognised Garvey as one of their ancestors, a man whose inspirational quotations have helped to give them a positive outlook on life.

It took the eventual winner, Ajanae Boswell, from Columbus Prep, to seal the issue for us when she told us why.

“Marcus” she was saying, “does not want his African brothers and sisters to forget their roots. He envisioned the rise of his African brother and sister as world-beaters not only in athletics and music, but also as philosophers, scientists, writers, and innovators.”

She closed with Garvey’s original words: “So why should the black man not be aware of his roots? This is Garvey’s message to our generation. Without our roots we may become squatters because we don’t know we have royal blood running through our veins. Don’t allow yourselves to be trampled under the feet of your competitors. Stand firm.”

I left the hall satisfied. Garvey is not a dinosaur.

Lance Neita is a public relations veteran, historian and author. Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com and lanceneita@hotmail.com.