Marcus Garvey plaque unveiling in Atlanta to mark historic moment

Washington DC: A plaque is to be unveiled later this month in Atlanta, Georgia to honour Jamaica’s first national hero, Marcus Mosiah Garvey.

The event is set for March 25 at the Big Bethel AME Church in downtown Atlanta. Historically, Big Bethel AME is where Marcus Garvey made his first appearance and delivered a public lecture in Atlanta on March 25, 1917. The event comes on the heels of the 108th anniversary of this historic lecture.

The unveiling ceremony will form part of the second annual Atlanta Marcus Garvey Lecture, initiated by Steven Golding, symposium founder and president of the Universal Negro Improvement Association in collaboration with the Atlanta Jamaica Association.

Adding to the significance of the event, March 25 is also commemorated by the United Nations as the International Day of Remembrance for the Victims of Slavery and the Trans-Atlantic Trade in Africans.

Golding explained that the plaque – which he and Jamaica’s Ambassador to the United States Audrey P. Marks were slated to jointly unveil – was designed by Nubian Jak, a British Jamaican who has produced more than 100 black history heritage markers (blue plaques) in the United Kingdom of Great Britain since the beginning of the 21st century. Nubian Jak will be on hand at the Atlanta ceremony for his first unveiling in the USA.

Golding further noted that guests will be treated to an exclusive screening of the 40-minute narrative film ‘Mosiah’ – the first movie to depict the life of the Right Excellency Marcus Mosiah Garvey. The movie features Atlanta writer and actor Samuel Lee-Fudge as Garvey. Fudge will appear as a guest at the lecture.

In commending the event organisers, Ambassador Marks expressed that Marcus Mosiah Garvey “emerged as one of the most influential Pan-African leaders of the 20th century, wielding his visionary leadership and magnetism as an orator to awaken a global consciousness among black people.”

As the founder and first president-general of the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League (UNIA-ACL), Garvey built the largest mass movement of black people in history, establishing a powerful framework for economic independence, cultural pride, and political self-determination that reached from the streets of Harlem to the shores of Africa, the Caribbean, and beyond.

Among the invited guests, for the March 25 event, are Andre Dickens, mayor of Atlanta; Oliver Mair, Jamaica consul general for the Southern United States; Dr. Elaine Bryan, Jamaica’s honorary consul in Atlanta; and Evette Taylor-Reynolds, president of the Atlanta Jamaica Association