By Alvaro Sanchez Cordero
Just like Venezuelan national hero Francisco de Miranda, Marcus Garvey also had three ships (I refuse to use the example of Christopher Columbus).
And like Miranda, Garvey also had a decolonizing plan. As you can see, the example of Columbus would have been inappropriate.
The ship analogy doesn’t end there. It was also on a ship, owned by the despicable United Fruit Company, that Garvey was deported from the US back to Jamaica in 1927, thus cracking the vast social, nationalist and pan-Africanist movement that he had developed in Harlem, as well as other towns and regions in the US.
But let’s save this piece from becoming a ship battle and let’s put our feet on the ground. Well, actually, Garvey’s ships were his grounding feet.
Before Garvey, several African-American leaders and intellectuals had contemplated African nationalism as a means to get back to the African roots. However, Garvey went a step further and developed an actual blueprint on how to achieve such a noble goal. Indeed, a very important component in Garvey’s plan included a business operation that would generate enough revenue for him and his followers to go to Africa and settle there in order to develop such huge continent.
In a nutshell, this is the story behind Garvey’s ships and the Black Star Line, the commercial wing of Garvey’s social movement, the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA). This was how Garvey planned to carry Blacks from the Americas “back” to Africa.
Nonetheless, it wasn’t just about making trips and (hopefully) making money. It was about content. And this was the other side of the coin that propelled Garvey to success and stardom. Garvey brought pride to his followers. He uplifted masses of African-Americans in the US and other countries by awakening their race consciousness while cultivating in them important values, such as education, culture and reading, instrumental in going to Africa to rid it from colonialism.
Garvey’s plan was indeed beautiful. However, let’s not fool ourselves. He was operating in the United States of America. Hence, it would be a matter of time before the US Government would try to break both the man and his ideas.
The US official assigned to do that job was the first ever Director of the FBI J. Edgar Hoover, an individual who would spend the next 48 years in charge of that department, so Garvey was his first major case in “cheating and lying” (using the words of the current US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo when he described the duties of the CIA, not far off from the irresponsible behaviour of its cousin the FBI).
You can imagine all the hideous things that Hoover did to Garvey. He infiltrated his organization, harassed him and literally sabotaged his business ventures. At the end, Hoover made sure that Garvey went to prison and later got deported.
In spite of all this, Hoover couldn’t fully destroy Garvey, for Garvey’s legacy remained in so many people, including historical figures, such as: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, Malcolm X, Nelson Mandela, Kwame Nkrumah, Louis Farrakhan and Bob Marley, among others.
Jamaican national hero and Rastafarian prophet, Garvey will shine forever in the national flag of Ghana.
In celebration of the 132nd anniversary of this pan-Africanist champion and leader, let’s pay tribute to Garvey by allowing our ships of liberation to freely navigate through the seas of union and equality.
~ Alvaro Sanchez Cordero is the Charge D’ Affaires of the Venezuelan Embassy to Barbados. ~
