sakaisettlersocr
sakaisettlersocr
sakaisettlersocr
Create successful ePaper yourself
Turn your PDF publications into a flip-book with our unique Google optimized e-Paper software.
eliance and national independence. If Garveyism suffered<br />
from practical short-comings, nevertheless its imposing<br />
sweep of vision expressed the burning national aspirations<br />
of the suppressed Afrikan peoples (and not only within the<br />
U .S., but worldwide).<br />
Garveyism's great contribution consisted of the<br />
fact that it raised high for all to see a vision of Afrikan life<br />
that was completely self-reliant, built around their own national<br />
economy and culture, that waited on no European<br />
to "accept" them or "emancipate" them, that was dependent<br />
solely on Afrikan energies and will. In this Garveyism<br />
was expressing the strongest desires of the Afrikan masses.<br />
It is no accident that Garveyism and its successor, the Nation<br />
of Islam, were the two largest outbreaks of Afrikan<br />
activity and organization-building within the continental<br />
Empire of our century. Even such a self-admitted "skeptic"<br />
as Richard Wright was profoundly moved by<br />
Garveyism in his youth:<br />
"The one group I met during those exploring days<br />
whose lives enthralled me was the Garveyites, an organization<br />
of black men and women who were forlornly seeking<br />
to return to Africa. Theirs was a passionate rejection of<br />
America, for they sensed with that directness of which only<br />
the simple are capable that they had no chance to live a full<br />
human life in America. Their lives were not cluttered with<br />
ideas in which they could only half believe; they could not<br />
create illusions which made them think they were living<br />
when they were not; their daily lives were too nakedly<br />
harsh to permit of camouflage. I understood their emotions,<br />
for I partly shared them.<br />
"The Garveyites had embraced a totally racialistic<br />
outlook which endowed them with a dignity that I had<br />
never seen before in Negroes. On the walls of their dingy<br />
flats were maps of Africa and India and Japan, pictures of<br />
Japanese generals and admirals, portraits of Marcus<br />
Garvey in gaudy regalia, the faces of colored men and<br />
women from all parts of the world. I gave no credence to<br />
the ideology of Garveyism; it was, rather, the emotional<br />
dynamics of its adherents that evoked my admiration.<br />
Those Garveyites I knew could never understand why I liked<br />
them but would never follow them, and I pitied them<br />
too much to tell them that they could never achieve their<br />
goal.. .<br />
"It was when the Garveyites spoke fervently of<br />
building their own country, of someday living within the<br />
boundaries of a culture of their own making, that I sensed<br />
the passionate hunger of their lives, that I caught a glimpse<br />
of the potential strength of the American Negro."<br />
The Garvey Movement's ambitious economic ventures<br />
- in particular the ill-fated Black Star ship line -<br />
became centers of controversy. There is no doubt,<br />
however, that at the time they were often considered as<br />
very difficult but necessary steps for Afrikan progress.<br />
Even W.E.B. BuBois of the N.A.A.C.P., who was one of<br />
Garvey's favorite targets for scorn as "a white man's nigger,"<br />
initially spoke out in favor of Garvey's program (but<br />
not his personal leadership):<br />
"...the main lines of the Garvey plan are perfectly<br />
feasible. What he is trying to say and do is this: American<br />
Negroes can, by accumulating and ministering their own<br />
capital, organize industry, join the black centers of the<br />
South Atlantic by commercial enterprise and in this way<br />
ultimately redeem Africa as a fit and free home for black<br />
men. This is true. It is feasible ... The plan is not original<br />
with Garvey but he had popularized it, made it a living,<br />
vocal ideal and swept thousands with him with intense<br />
belief in the possible accomplishment of the idea1."(39)<br />
To the extent that Garveyism was naive about<br />
capitalism (which it obviously was) this was a stage of<br />
development widely shared by its critics as well.<br />
Garveyism's weakness was that it saw in capitalism - the<br />
form of social organization of the colonizer - the instruments<br />
that Afrikans could use to free themselves. So<br />
that the essence of nation-building was expressed in forms<br />
precisely paralleling those of European society -<br />
businesses, churches, Black Cross, etc., etc. Garveyism's<br />
predilection for Western titles of nobility ("Duke of<br />
Nigeria") and full-dress European court uniforms was but<br />
a symptom of this. While this made the concept of independent<br />
Afrikan nationhood instantly understandable,<br />
it also was a contradiction and a blind alley.<br />
Millions of Afrikans responded to the call of<br />
Garvey's United Negro Improvement Association<br />
(U.N.I.A.), read its newspaper The Negro World, bought<br />
stock in its Afrikan business ventures, came out to its<br />
meetings and rallies. In 1920 some 50,000 Afrikans marched<br />
in a mass U.N.I.A. rally in Harlem. Garvey claimed 4.5<br />
million members for thc U.N.I.A. His critics charged that<br />
an examination of the U.N.I.A.'s public financial reports<br />
revealed that the Garvey Movement had "only" 90,000<br />
members of whom "only" 20,000 were paid up at that<br />
time in dues. The U.N.I.A. was so overwhelming that its<br />
critics could try to belittle it by saying that it had "only"<br />
90,000 members. (40).<br />
The U.N.I.A.'s international effect was very profound.<br />
Claude McKay reminds us that: "In the interior of<br />
West Africa new legends arose of an African who had been<br />
lost in America, but would return to save his people." (41)<br />
On the Nigerian coast Afrikans would light great bonfires,<br />
sleeping on the beaches, waiting to guide in the ships of<br />
"Moses Garvey." Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana and Ho Chi<br />
Minh of Vietnam both said that Garvey had been an important<br />
"inspiration" for them.<br />
Clements Kadalie, whose 250,000 member Industrial<br />
& Commerical Workers Union (ICU) was the first<br />
Afrikan working class political organization in Azania,<br />
said that he had been much influenced by the U.N.I.A. In<br />
British Kenya the separationist KiKuyu Christians brought<br />
in U.N.I.A. ministers from the U.S. to train and ordain<br />
their own first ministers - and it was from these congregations<br />
that much of the Kenya Land & Freedom Army (called<br />
"Mau-Mau" by the British) would come a generation<br />
later. The Garvey Movement, in Nkrumah's words, "raised<br />
the banner of African liberation" on three continents.<br />
(42)<br />
In Haiti U.S. Marines violently put down the<br />
U.N.I.A. In Costa Rica and Cuba the United Fruit Company<br />
used police power to repress it. George Padmore, a<br />
bitter opponent of Garvey, recounts that:<br />
113 "In certain places the punishment for being seen