The UNIA is born

Born in Jamaica in the seaside town of St Ann’s Bay on the north coast on August 17, 1887, Malcus Mosiah Garvey subsequently changed his first name to Marcus. He was born in a humble board house at 32 Market Street which was destroyed by a devastating hurricane in 1944.

While still attending primary school, Garvey became a printer’s apprentice in the shop of his godfather, Alfred E. Burrowes, a highly educated and aware man. At age 14, he left school to continue his work as a printer’s apprentice. He relocated to Kingston shortly after to seek work as a printer to help his mother, who would later join him in Kingston along with his sister, Indianna.

Garvey’s foray into political activism began while he was working in the printing department of P.A. Benjamin Manufacturing Company, where he would eventually rise to the ranks of master printer and foreman. He was 18 years old and began to “yearn for service of some kind”.

He took an interest in the politics and public affairs of the country as he was dissatisfied with the treatment of black people.

“ The politics of my country disgusted me … I saw the injustice being done to my race because it was black,” he lamented in his biography.

In 1906, the Printers’ Union was established as Jamaica’s first trade union. The following year, when Garvey was the vice-president of that union, he became involved in an unsuccessful strike, advocating for better working conditions for himself and his fellow workers. Garvey was fired and branded a troublemaker. After that, he was denied private sector job opportunities. He worked for a brief time with the government printery as he built support among the predominantly black working class.

In 1910, at the age of 23, Garvey left Jamaica for South and Central America in search of better wages. He also wanted to see whether the situation for black people in the Americas was the same as in Jamaica. In every country he went to, there were low wages and deplorable working conditions; racism against blacks was also rife.

Garvey returned to Jamaica near the end of 1911, but soon thereafter departed for England. There, the plight of black workers was no different. In 1913, he toured several countries in Europe, including France, Spain, and The Principality of Monaco. There again he witnessed the poor treatment of black and migrant workers. He also heard about the sorry state of black people in the United States (US).

On June 17, 1914, he departed for Jamaica on the SS Trent at Southampton. He was one of three third-class passengers onboard. The other two were a West Indian missionary returning from Basutoland and his African wife. They struck up a conversation and Garvey was disturbed by the story of their experience in Africa. Right there, on the ship, he came up with the name of an organisation, the Universal Negro Improvement and Conservation Association and African Communities (Imperial) League (UNIA-ACL), that would alleviate the lot of black people the world over.

Marcus Garvey’s trip to Europe was hailed a great achievement for a black Jamaican man. The daily newspapers splashed his journey in their headlines. Within five days of his arrival in Jamaica on July 15, 1914, he established the UNIA-ACL, in collaboration with Enos J. Sloly and four other associates with the mission of uniting all Africans worldwide, and to establish a country and government of their own.

The UNIA-ACL was launched, fittingly, on Emancipation Day, August 1, in Kingston. Its motto was ‘One God! One aim! One destiny!’ Garvey became the president and travelling commissioner of the organisation. Of immediate concern to him was the uplifting of the black people in Jamaica. He invested his own money to help the organisation secure a solid foundation.

Yet, to his great disappointment, he came up against significant resistance from the elites in Jamaica. He, nonetheless, attracted a large following of enthusiastic supporters. Some critics even went as far as to describe this unwavering support as fanaticism.

Even more disappointing to Garvey was that some of the very black people he sought to unite were full of deep-seated prejudice against their own kind. Some believed he did not know his place, and did not want to be called “Negroes”. Others were convinced they were white under the Jamaican social order. Garvey referred to them as the “black whites” of Jamaica, and they opposed him every step of the way.

Yet, Marcus Garvey succeeded, to a significant extent, in establishing the UNIA-ACL in Kingston with help from several individuals, including a Catholic bishop, the governor, the colonial secretary, Reverend William Graham, a Scottish clergyman, and several other prominent white associates.

Garvey looked to Booker T. Washington’s Tuskegee Institute in the US as a template for Jamaica, and he accepted an invitation to the US from Washington after he wrote to him and made him aware of his intentions.

The idea was for the two of them to tour the southern and other states in America to spread the word; however, Washington died in the autumn of 1915. This did not deter Garvey from leaving Jamaica, and his bold decision resulted in the creation of the biggest pan-Africanist movement in the world.

editorial@gleanerjm.com