Log In

Reset Password

Garvey lit a fire that will not be extinguished

Marcus Garvey

Dear Sir,

The issues facing the West Indian blacks in the latter 19th century reverberated all across the region with an exodus of out migrations impacting Cuba, Costa Rica, Panama, the United States and Bermuda.

Fifty-plus years up from slavery, the situation was not good anywhere. Jamaica, in particular, with millions of former slaves, the vast majority being low-level labourers, had a literacy problem with approximately only 20,000 literate persons in and around 1890.

Scarcely two per cent of the masses were able to read and, aside from subsistence, had no institutions such as a bank or a vibrant business community. Thousands migrated looking for opportunity to make money and better their lives while abroad and support for back home. Marcus Garvey was one such immigrant whose life story leads to him becoming the most powerful and influential leader for his time.

The first period of his sojourn was as a discovery where he would, through extensive travel, learn the global position of African people. The environment in which he was born, after 1885 the European nations who collaborated in taking over the African continent except Ethiopia, led to a picture that was dismal everywhere, with no nation or position for the entire race to turn for leadership or support.

After his travels to Central America, where he worked on the docks and then to England, visiting the United States became an eye-opener for Marcus because for the first time he saw blacks running their own businesses and even owning banks. Marcus was a great orator and had developed a message of self-reliance and his American experience put a crown on it. He began to organise and had formed the UNIA, which, inside four years, became the most powerful and influential black organisation in the world.

It had significant branches in Central America, Cuba, Africa and throughout the US. Naturally, much of the core support in most places, as was the case in Harlem, New York, came from the migrant West Indian population.

In America, there was a clash in the ideology of “Garveyism” and the integrationist ideology that had previously become a theory for black progress and supported by persons such as William Dubois and the NAACP. In Bermuda, aside from the natural hatred of Garveyism by the British — as was in all the British colonies — the 19th-century development of native black Bermudians far exceeded that of North America in most cases, hence a natural resistance to any outright separatist movement such as Garveyism.

For example, in 1850 blacks in Bermuda had their own sailboat clubs right within Hamilton Harbour and racing was both a pastime and an industry for tours, which lasted up until the 1970s. By the turn of the century, aside from many, many others, one of the tallest buildings on Front Street in the City of Hamilton was owned by blacks. Self-reliance and entrepreneurship was already part of the DNA of native Bermudians. With a population with near 100 per cent literacy, what they needed was the right to vote that would have led to political power.

The new 19th-century immigrant West Indian community, many of whom were tradesmen and labourers, had more affinity with Garveyism than their fellow Bermudians, albeit that their predicament was different. Much of the firebranded individuals here and abroad who stoked movement in the early 20th century were influenced by Garvey. Ultimately, it was the integrationist ideology that eclipsed in the “I had a dream” speech by Martin Luther King Jr and would be the bedrock for progress.

Garvey’s focus was the condition and subjugation of the African people worldwide. The conditions in Bermuda and many parts of North America were different from the West Indies and required approaches consistent with each need. Yet there were elements of his message such as pride in oneself, and the sense of pan-Africanism and economic togetherness, which were a universal need of the black population. Even though his ideology could not withstand the test of time, what could be said is that he lit a fire that will never be extinguished, as trickles of its rays continue to stimulate the stands of many today.

KHALID WASI