Achieving Equity and Equality for the Person of the African Diaspora

At the beginning of the seventeenth century, Africans were enslaved and forcibly relocated all throughout the world. Over the course of the next four hundred years, people of African descent all across the world were continuously confronted with economic oppression, injury, or death due to the color of their skin. After slavery legally ended in the United States, intentionally racist policies were put into place to keep African Americans systematically oppressed in the South by the white majority. Equity and equality for African Americans was simply impossible during this era. W.E.B. Du Bois labelled this the “Negro Problem.” Booker T. Washington and Du Bois had vastly different views to solve the “Negro Problem.” Du Bois believed that African Americans would be seen as equal to white Americans through educating the black child and by influencing white liberals through political and fictional literature. Washington, on the other hand, believed that it was the responsibility of African Americans to raise themselves out of poverty, and to be seen as equal to their white compatriots, they must specialize in a trade and work hard. After Washington’s death in 1915, another black activist was gaining popularity with a radically different idea of attaining equity and equality for the people of the African diaspora, that being Marcus Garvey. Garvey believed integration between black and white was impossible, and that segregation should go so far as to bring the people of African descent back to the motherland of Africa and create a grand African nation. This paper will argue that equity and equality for people of the African diaspora could be achieved by using the philosophy and organizations of Marcus Garvey such as black nationalism, the Universal Negro Improvement Association, the Black Star Line, and other nationalist movements that likely influenced Garvey.

Marcus Garvey and W.E.B. Du Bois were both Pan-Africanists but were deeply divided on the method to achieve such an ambitious goal. Pan-Africanism was “a movement, founded around 1900, to secure equal rights, self-government, independence, and unity for African peoples.”[1] Du Bois believed that change occurred from the top levels of government and society down to the bottom echelons of society. He had good reason to hold such a belief. Afterall, slavery was ended by the top person in the United States government, President Lincoln. Garvey had a much different approach. He believed change occurred from the bottom levels of society. He too had good reasons to believe such things. When he was young man, he worked for a printing shop and was fired. His union did not protect him, and he was left unemployed. He travelled out of Jamaica to South America where he experienced continued racism from government officials and business leaders. He believed to overcome racism in a white dominated world, people of African descent must band together and migrate to Africa. Du Bois, on the other hand, became entrenched in the idea that the members of the upper level of Black society could raise the lower level up through programs such as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). The NAACP was a pacifist approach to rid the United States of the “Negro Problem.” In regard to Africa, Du Bois became the American representative to Liberia by the U.S. State Department in 1923. Du Bois’ top-down approach could be clearly seen with how he interacted with the Liberian government elites. He praised the oppressive Liberian government by their heavy handed approached to the indigenous people of Liberia.[2] At this same time, Garvey was in talks with the Liberian government to establish a base of operations for his organization Universal Negro Improvement and Conservation Association and African Communities League (UNIA). This base of operation was Garvey’s launching pad to end European colonialism and presumably American imperialism in Liberia. Liberian officials canceled their agreement with Garvey believing that he would disrupt the order of society through propaganda oriented toward the poor Liberians causing them to rise up against the government. In the end, Du Bois won the fight for Liberia, but Garvey would not back down from his mission to unify the African diaspora and create an African nation.

Garvey believed Black nationalism was the way to accomplish his version of Pan-Africanism. Black nationalism should be understood to be a movement which “sought to acquire economic power and to infuse among blacks a sense of community and group feeling.”[3] This should not be confused with a Black (or African) state, albeit Garvey did advocate for a black state as well. “A state is a political entity with (usually) clearly defined territorial borders,” according to Katharine Adeney, Senior Lecturer in Politics at University of Sheffield. With that in mind, we can now examine what Black nationalism meant to Garvey, and how it applied to his version of Pan-Africanism.  Garvey believed that for the black race to succeed and thrive it had to be completely segregated from the white race, culture, and states. He envisioned all blacks emigrating to Africa and creating a black nation-state. Garvey said, “The only wise thing for us [black people] to do, is to organize the world over, and build up for the race a mighty nation of our own in Africa.”[4] Du Bois was the very opposite of Garvey with how to deal with the “Negro problem.” Du Bois believed that through education the white race and the policies of the United States would influence the broader American culture and peace between the races could be achieved. Garvey strongly disagreed stating, “white and black will learn to respect each other when they cease to be active competitors in the same countries for the same things in politics and society.”[5] In other words, for equity and equality to be achieved, the people of the African diaspora had to leave their current homes and go to Africa where they could live with their own people. This means, as Garvey suggests, that in building a nation, a modern black civilization could, therefore, protect its people as Italy did in 1891 when eleven Italian Americans where lynched.[6] In short, Black nationalism, to Garvey, was the only way that equity and equality for people of the African diaspora could be achieved.

Garvey created two organizations to achieve such a largescale operation: the UNIA and the Black Star Line. First, the UNIA was created “as an organization for the purpose of raising status of the Negro to national expression and general freedom.”[7] The UNIA was really good at recruiting members from the lowest classes of blacks from around the world. Unlike the UNIA, Du Bois’ organization the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People(NAACP) was designed to appeal to white liberals and create change through the United States courts system and through policy change. Where the two organizations separated most was on the topic of segregation. Du Bois’ NAACP sought to end segregation while Garvey’s UNIA sought to unite all members of the black race in a common defense against oppression. The UNIA believed in developing independent “Negro” nations and communities.[8] A segregated black community could hold “political power, economic power and social power in that community.”[9] Garvey was arguing that in order for black citizens to gain power in a white dominated society they must segregate themselves from the white community, “[t]o do otherwise is bad.”[10] Furthermore, the UNIA was not concerned with ending segregation in the United States because Garvey believed that one day the entire continent of Africa would be united into one nation-state. Another difference between the two organizations is that the NAACP was mostly concerned with black citizens of the United States, whereas the UNIA was concerned with all members of the African diaspora and to establish agencies that could protect and represent “all Negros, irrespective of nationality.”[11]  This is likely due to the fact that Garvey was born in Jamaica and travelled the Caribbean and Central America seeing the plight of people with dark skin was similar in each area. Du Bois’ work, meanwhile, was concentrated in the United States, thus the NAACP’s work was mostly concentrated in the United States.

Marcus Garvey wrote eleven “aims and objects of the U.N.I.A.” in his book Message to the People: The Course of African Philosophy.[12] One aim was to civilize the “backward tribes of Africa” and to spread Christianity to the African tribes.[13] Marcus Garvey was a deeply religious man. Most of his writing relates back to his faith or his political ambitions to reclaim Africa as the home of the black race. Unlike Du Bois, who wrote non-fiction and fiction that appealed mostly to the white liberal, Garvey consistently wrote and spoke of political ambitions oriented toward the average black person. Garvey did not feel the need to appeal to any white leader. While he did not hate the white race, he did see the white race as a threat to the future of the black race. Garvey believed that the universities and schools around the world were created by whites to keep the white race supreme. One of his “aims and objects of the U.N.I.A.” was to “establish universities, colleges, academies, and schools for the racial education and culture of the people.”[14] This was important to Garvey’s plan of African nationhood because the “Negro must have an educational system of his own; based upon the history and tradition of his race.”[15] History, being a Western discipline, consistently “discovered” historical things about Africa and claimed that Africa did not have a history before the white man discovered it. To Garvey, this was unacceptable. Garvey believed that in order for the black race to reach its potential it must know its own history taught at black universities and schools. He saw that white education was influencing people such as Du Bois and believed that Africa could not be its own nation if the black race decided to integrate into white culture, especially in the United States.

The UNIA aimed to “conduct a world-wide commercial and industrial intercourse for the good of the people.”[16] When Garvey created the UNIA in 1914, trade between black communities was dominated by white commercial tycoons such as Firestone, the rubber company. Garvey believed that to raise the standard of living for black people was to create a shipping and trading company that was black owned and operated that could take goods all throughout the black world. The Black Star Line (BSL), a response to the British White Star Line, was Garvey’s solution to the exclusion of black people in white economies. The BSL would also provide jobs to black seamen that could otherwise not find work due to discrimination. Beyond trading goods within the African diaspora, the BSL would allow for black people to move from their homes and settle in West Africa. Neither of Garvey’s plans came to fruition. Garvey, although a smart man at mobilizing large groups of people from all over the world, was not a good manager of a shipping company. Many devastating mistakes were made from BSL’s establishment. The creation of such a company, however, shook the colonial powers. The colonial powers went so far as to ban Garvey’s paper the Negro World in the Caribbean. The BSL proved to the white-dominated countries that the black world could rise up on its own without the assistance of white investors or white business leaders. Additionally, the BSL demonstrated that integration was not necessary for black workers to be successful. Although there is no evidence of any direct correlations, it is possible to argue that the BSL influenced future generation of blacks in the United States to create black owned and operated businesses.

It has been argued this far that Garvey’s vision of Pan-Africanism was to create a black nation-state in Africa that could be used to protect black people all over the world, and to unite black people under the common cause of defending black people from white oppression. Black nationalism would have been achieved through the UNIA and BSL. What gave Garvey the idea for nationalism is important to Garvey’s story. When Garvey was advocating for black nationalism and an African nation-state, the Jewish diaspora was arguing for a Jewish state in Palestine. In 1896, the Zionist movement was established to create Israel which would re-establish a Jewish nation-state. The Irish Revolution of 1921 proved to Garvey that segregation of race was the best way for world peace to occur. He stated, “The political re-adjustment of the world means this-that every race must find a home; hence the great cry of Palestine for the Jews—Ireland for the Irish…”[17] If the oppressed Jews and Irish could reclaim their motherland then people of the African diaspora could do the same in Africa which would unite them into one nation, and it allow them to advocate for better treatment of black people worldwide. In 1947, after Garvey’s death, Israel was established in Palestinian territory, which led to a government advocating for better treatment of people of the Jewish diaspora. Irish nationalism differed from black and Jewish nationalism in the sense that the Irish already had a territory they lived in but wanted to separate from the English due to hundreds of years of oppression. This likely influenced Garvey’s view that segregating from the governing power was the way to achieve peace, equity, and equality for the people of a certain race. In Garvey’s lifetime, he saw many “weaker peoples” fight and earn their freedom such as Egyptians, Polish, and Irish. He believed that Africa was then fighting for its freedom against the oppressive colonizers. If the nations, not states, of Zion, Poland, Egypt, and Ireland, could earn their freedom through nationalist movements so too could the people of the African diaspora. The last nationalist movement that greatly influenced Garvey was the Ku Klux Klan. In his lifetime, Garvey was accused by many black leaders as being a KKK sympathizer. That accusation, however, was heavily unwarranted. Garvey never believed that the KKK was a good organization. He simply recognized that the KKK and his idea of black nationalism had a common goal, that being segregation to the fullest extent—a completely white America and a black Africa. Garvey believed that white nationalists and generous white Americans would assist him in his plan to take blacks from the United States and emigrate to Africa.

Marcus Garvey believed that equity and equality could not be achieved in places like the United States as long as blacks were ruled over by whites. Garvey believed his vision of Pan-Africanism would bring peace and prosperity to the black race. To Garvey, the black race had to have its own nationhood in order to survive. He consistently wrote and spoke of black people, as the weakest race, not being able to survive in the future without segregating themselves from every race in the world and creating a nation-state that could advocate for equity and equality throughout the world. Du Bois disagreed, believing that through integration the black person would be seen as equal to the white. Garvey created the UNIA to unite and promote black progression from the bottom-up, whereas Du Bois created the NAACP to promote black progression and to change policy in the United States which took a top-down approach. Garvey had the vision to promote a new black economy by creating the Black Star Line, an organization that would bring goods and people to predominantly black areas which would help to unite the black world. There were many contemporary events and movements that greatly influenced Garvey’s vision of equity and equality for the black race such as the nationalist movements mentioned above. Ultimately, Garvey’s vision of a united Africa and a home for the people of the African diaspora never came to fruition in his short lifetime, but his legacy carried on after his death in 1940. Sadly, Garvey was never able to return home to Jamaica due to World War II. As the war was coming to an end, in 1945, the 5th Pan-African Congress brought together Africans and people of African descent to create a plan for Africa’s future. Garvey’s message of black nationalism was still in the minds of some of the attendees such as Dr. Kwame Nkrumah who “acknowledged his political indebtedness to the political teachings of Marcus Garvey.”[18] If Garvey’s plan of black nationalism in Africa had come to fruition and Africa united into one nation-state perhaps the imperial powers of the United States and the USSR would not have had such a terrible impact during the Cold War. Perhaps equity and equality for black people throughout the world would have been granted because an entire nation of people would have been calling for better treatment of their people.

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———. Message to the People: The Course of African Philosophy. Mineola, New York: Dover Publications, Inc, 2020.

———. The Tragedy of White Injustice. 1935. Reprint, Eastford, Connecticut: Martino Fine Books, 2017.

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[1] Iain Mclean and Alistair Mcmillan, The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Politics, 3rd ed. (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), .

[2] Martin O. IJERE, “W.E.B. Du Bois and Marcus Garvey as Pan-Africanists: A Study in Contrast,” Présence Africaine 89, no. 89 (1974): 188–206, https://www.jstor.org/stable/24349712.

[3] The Editors of Encyclopedia Britannica, “Black Nationalism | United States History,” in Encyclopædia Britannica, December 13, 2016, https://www.britannica.com/event/black-nationalism.

[4] Marcus Garvey, Emancipated from Mental Slavery: Selected Sayings of Marcus Garvey, ed. Nnamdi Azikiwe (Silver Spring, MD: The Mhotep Corporation, 2019), 6.

[5] Marcus Garvey, Emancipated from Mental Slavery: Selected Sayings of Marcus Garvey, 26.

[6] Desmond Jagmohan, “Between Race and Nation: Marcus Garvey and the Politics of Self-Determination,” Political Theory 48, no. 3 (January 6, 2020): 009059171989756, https://doi.org/10.1177/0090591719897569.

[7] Marcus Garvey, Message to the People: The Course of African Philosophy (Mineola, New York: Dover Publications, Inc, 2020), 118.

[8]  Marcus Garvey, Message to the People: The Course of African Philosophy, 23.

[9] Marcus Garvey, 23.

[10] Marcus Garvey, 23.

[11] Garvey, 23.

[12] Ibid, 21.

[13] Ibid, 24.

[14] Ibid, 24.

[15] Ibid, 24.

[16] Ibid, 24.

[17] Marcus Garvey and Amy Jacques Garvey, Philosophy and Opinions of Marcus Garvey. Volume 1. Volume 2 (Mansfield Centre, CT: Martino Publishing, 2014), 34.

[18] Dr. John Henrick Clarke, “The Impact of Marcus Garvey | American Experience | PBS,” www.pbs.org, accessed May 31, 2021, https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/garvey-impact/.