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the whole Afrikan population within the U.S. So a petitbourgeois Afrikan national leadership had been created which was, in fact, both employed by and solely picked by the imperialist government.(38) At this time the most prominent Afrikan in these circles, standing in reality even above the "Black Cabinet," was Booker T. Washington of Tuskegee Institute. Washington was viewed by the imperialists as their chief Afrikan advisor, and served them as a leading propagandist and apologist for white supremacy and colonialism. In return, any Afrikan who sought position or funds from the imperialists had to be approved by him. During the Theodore Roosevelt and Taft Administrations even the "Black Cabinet" appointments were cleared first with him. Washington had great fame and, acting for the Empire, some influence over Afrikan education, newspapers, community institutions, and so on. But, of course, neither he nor the other imperialist-selected Afrikan leaders represented the will of the masses. At the end of World War I an anti-colonial movement of incredible vigor burst forth - seemingly almost overnight - that rejected both the U.S. Empire and the bourgeois leadership that it had installed for Afrikans. This was the historic movement touched off and led by the Jamaican Marcus Garvey. Even its enemies conceded that the Afrikan masses were expressing their deep desires through this rebellious movement of Afrikan nationalism. The Garvey movement at its peak in the early 1920s was the greatest outbreak of Afrikan political activity since the Civil War. It said that Afrikans could find their liberation in building a new, modern Afrikan Nation of their own back on the soil of the Afrikan continent. The proposed Nation would eventually unite and protect Afrikans everywhere - in the U.S. Empire and the West Indies as well as on the Afrikan continent itself. This new nation would expand to liberate all Afrika from colonialism and unite it into one continental Afrikan Power. There Afrikans would shape their own destiny in great industries, universities, .agricultural cooperatives and cultural institutions of their own. As a beginning toward the day, Garveyism organized national institutions here in all spheres of life. However modest, these medical, religious, military. economic and other organizations were designed to develop Afrikan self- Booker T. Washington in his ofice at Tuskegee Institute (1906).
eliance and national independence. If Garveyism suffered from practical short-comings, nevertheless its imposing sweep of vision expressed the burning national aspirations of the suppressed Afrikan peoples (and not only within the U .S., but worldwide). Garveyism's great contribution consisted of the fact that it raised high for all to see a vision of Afrikan life that was completely self-reliant, built around their own national economy and culture, that waited on no European to "accept" them or "emancipate" them, that was dependent solely on Afrikan energies and will. In this Garveyism was expressing the strongest desires of the Afrikan masses. It is no accident that Garveyism and its successor, the Nation of Islam, were the two largest outbreaks of Afrikan activity and organization-building within the continental Empire of our century. Even such a self-admitted "skeptic" as Richard Wright was profoundly moved by Garveyism in his youth: "The one group I met during those exploring days whose lives enthralled me was the Garveyites, an organization of black men and women who were forlornly seeking to return to Africa. Theirs was a passionate rejection of America, for they sensed with that directness of which only the simple are capable that they had no chance to live a full human life in America. Their lives were not cluttered with ideas in which they could only half believe; they could not create illusions which made them think they were living when they were not; their daily lives were too nakedly harsh to permit of camouflage. I understood their emotions, for I partly shared them. "The Garveyites had embraced a totally racialistic outlook which endowed them with a dignity that I had never seen before in Negroes. On the walls of their dingy flats were maps of Africa and India and Japan, pictures of Japanese generals and admirals, portraits of Marcus Garvey in gaudy regalia, the faces of colored men and women from all parts of the world. I gave no credence to the ideology of Garveyism; it was, rather, the emotional dynamics of its adherents that evoked my admiration. Those Garveyites I knew could never understand why I liked them but would never follow them, and I pitied them too much to tell them that they could never achieve their goal.. . "It was when the Garveyites spoke fervently of building their own country, of someday living within the boundaries of a culture of their own making, that I sensed the passionate hunger of their lives, that I caught a glimpse of the potential strength of the American Negro." The Garvey Movement's ambitious economic ventures - in particular the ill-fated Black Star ship line - became centers of controversy. There is no doubt, however, that at the time they were often considered as very difficult but necessary steps for Afrikan progress. Even W.E.B. BuBois of the N.A.A.C.P., who was one of Garvey's favorite targets for scorn as "a white man's nigger," initially spoke out in favor of Garvey's program (but not his personal leadership): "...the main lines of the Garvey plan are perfectly feasible. What he is trying to say and do is this: American Negroes can, by accumulating and ministering their own capital, organize industry, join the black centers of the South Atlantic by commercial enterprise and in this way ultimately redeem Africa as a fit and free home for black men. This is true. It is feasible ... The plan is not original with Garvey but he had popularized it, made it a living, vocal ideal and swept thousands with him with intense belief in the possible accomplishment of the idea1."(39) To the extent that Garveyism was naive about capitalism (which it obviously was) this was a stage of development widely shared by its critics as well. Garveyism's weakness was that it saw in capitalism - the form of social organization of the colonizer - the instruments that Afrikans could use to free themselves. So that the essence of nation-building was expressed in forms precisely paralleling those of European society - businesses, churches, Black Cross, etc., etc. Garveyism's predilection for Western titles of nobility ("Duke of Nigeria") and full-dress European court uniforms was but a symptom of this. While this made the concept of independent Afrikan nationhood instantly understandable, it also was a contradiction and a blind alley. Millions of Afrikans responded to the call of Garvey's United Negro Improvement Association (U.N.I.A.), read its newspaper The Negro World, bought stock in its Afrikan business ventures, came out to its meetings and rallies. In 1920 some 50,000 Afrikans marched in a mass U.N.I.A. rally in Harlem. Garvey claimed 4.5 million members for thc U.N.I.A. His critics charged that an examination of the U.N.I.A.'s public financial reports revealed that the Garvey Movement had "only" 90,000 members of whom "only" 20,000 were paid up at that time in dues. The U.N.I.A. was so overwhelming that its critics could try to belittle it by saying that it had "only" 90,000 members. (40). The U.N.I.A.'s international effect was very profound. Claude McKay reminds us that: "In the interior of West Africa new legends arose of an African who had been lost in America, but would return to save his people." (41) On the Nigerian coast Afrikans would light great bonfires, sleeping on the beaches, waiting to guide in the ships of "Moses Garvey." Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana and Ho Chi Minh of Vietnam both said that Garvey had been an important "inspiration" for them. Clements Kadalie, whose 250,000 member Industrial & Commerical Workers Union (ICU) was the first Afrikan working class political organization in Azania, said that he had been much influenced by the U.N.I.A. In British Kenya the separationist KiKuyu Christians brought in U.N.I.A. ministers from the U.S. to train and ordain their own first ministers - and it was from these congregations that much of the Kenya Land & Freedom Army (called "Mau-Mau" by the British) would come a generation later. The Garvey Movement, in Nkrumah's words, "raised the banner of African liberation" on three continents. (42) In Haiti U.S. Marines violently put down the U.N.I.A. In Costa Rica and Cuba the United Fruit Company used police power to repress it. George Padmore, a bitter opponent of Garvey, recounts that: 113 "In certain places the punishment for being seen
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The minority puts a dogmatic view i
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U.S. imperialism would rather that
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The final point we must make is tha
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carpenter would earn in a day. When
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while the evil planter and the Lond
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society of settlers. The large majo
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11. STRUGGLES & ALLIANCES The popul
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, . , in short what wee did in that
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more nearly fascistic. Bacon was th
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"democracy" through wresting their
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111. THE CONTRADICTIONS OF NATION &
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The Charleston conspiracy of 1822,
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IV. SETTLER TRADE- UNIONISM 1. The
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Cherokee Nation on "Trail of Tears
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taxation and other measures to give
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gospel truth by most settlers that
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their places as barbers and servant
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is a historic engineering achieveme
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Chinaman always have something to e
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While marching through a region, th
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off the former plantations at bayon
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hostility, can be expected of two-t
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the early 1830's, continued and gat
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dustries, trades, and nationalities
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Irish, (2) German, and (3) many sma
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On the other hand, there is the ten
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ed bribery: "The truth is this: dur
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narionally-disrincf strata (literal
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2. Settler Opposition To Imperialis
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His political thought was that wher
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fine and resumed his post as U.S. c
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Page 68 and 69: While the I.W.W. was backward in ma
Page 70 and 71: As the Great Powers were drawn into
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Page 74 and 75: Magon once angrily wrote his brothe
Page 76 and 77: The authorities did not move to "re
Page 78 and 79: VII. BREAKTHROUGH OF THE C.I.O. It
Page 80 and 81: danger, because alcohol was needed
Page 82 and 83: Millions of settlers believed that
Page 84 and 85: President Roosvelt privately said i
Page 86 and 87: importantly, to break up the rising
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Page 92 and 93: VIII. IMPERIALIST WAR & THE NEW AME
Page 94 and 95: This remarkable editorial was accur
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Page 98 and 99: tler reunification. The stormy conf
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Page 102 and 103: strategy to its limits, the U.S. Em
Page 104 and 105: I t I In 1921 the African Blood Bro
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Page 108 and 109: Negro is the goat of the STFU. " Al
Page 110 and 111: The support movement took many form
Page 112 and 113: These agricultural workers paid $8.
Page 116 and 117: with a Negro World was five years a
Page 118 and 119: "(5) The U.N.I.A. is chiefly compos
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Page 122 and 123: workers would have to wear an arm b
Page 124 and 125: strike down the Afrikan Nation - an
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Page 128 and 129: and resisters. But this popular cur
Page 130 and 131: who had once started it. In the ear
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Page 134 and 135: Campos. Afterwards, Foster wrote a
Page 136 and 137: Toure related this to the fact that
Page 138 and 139: XII. THE GLOBAL PLANTATION 1. The P
Page 140 and 141: presidents..five secretaries did th
Page 142 and 143: The maquilas do not constitute any
Page 144 and 145: The shortfall only exists because a
Page 146 and 147: For Every Party, There's a Morning
Page 148 and 149: While there are numbers of Euro-Ame
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Page 152 and 153: estricted crafts rose at a rate 3 t
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Page 156 and 157: children. For them the flavor is so
Page 158 and 159: XIV. TACTICAL & STRATEGIC The settl
Page 160 and 161: Since Afrikan miners were perhaps 2
Page 162 and 163: man, would ask of you to dispel1 ai
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Coal From South Africa Apartheid in
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Besides, he continued, to be overly
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INTRODUCTION 1. AU references to di
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26. ROGER W. SHUGG. Origins of Clas
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162-166. 16. FRANCIS PERKINS. The R
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6. New York Times. September 18, 19
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BALTIMORE, APRIL, 1968 - I'm not go
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