Marcus Garvey ‘the greatest black man ever’

THE CAMPAIGN against Marcus Garvey in the US came from the wider community and people within his own organisation. Chief among his detractors were W.E.B. DuBois, Wilfred Adolphus Domingo, and A. Philip Randolph. The latter two had been early associates and supporters of Garvey and the UNIA.

But Garvey’s most powerful enemy was the United States government, which continually harassed himself and other UNIA members. In July 1919, the Bureau of Investigation, a forerunner to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, began to monitor the activities of Garvey and other black radicals.

Head of the Bureau, J. Edgar Hoover, a young government attorney fresh out of law school, was the government’s top expert on radical movements, and he led the government’s campaign against Garvey. In 1921, the Department of State tried to keep Garvey out of the country while he was on a business trip to Central America and the West Indies.

Upon the complaints of the black politicians, Edwin P. Kilroe, at the time a New York county assistant district attorney, started to investigate the UNIA. When Garvey was shot on October 19, 1919, a man named George Tyler claimed that it was Kilroe who had sent him to shoot Garvey.

In January 1922, Marcus Garvey and three officers: Orlando Thompson (vice-president); Elie Garcia (secretary) and George Tobias (treasurer) from the Black Star Line Shipping Company were arrested and charged with mail fraud. Garvey had nine counts against him.

After a four-week trial, on June 18, 1923, the jury that had retired for 10 hours returned with a guilty verdict. Garvey was convicted of one count of mail fraud and sentenced to a maximum of five years in prison. He was also fined $1,000 and ordered to pay the entire cost of the trial. His three co-defendants were cleared of all charges and eventually released.

On November 18, 1927 after serving two years in prison, Garvey had his original sentence commuted by President Calvin Coolidge. Upon his release, he was immediately deported to Jamaica. When he arrived in Kingston on December 10, 1927, he was greeted by a massive crowd. And, for the next eight years, he turned his attention to the constitutional rights of black Jamaicans and, of course, to the messages and objectives of the UNIA.

Garvey established Jamaica’s first modern political party, the People’s Political Party, in December 1928. He also returned to publishing newspapers. Despite all of his many efforts after he returned, financial setbacks, some by way of lawsuits, caused Garvey to lose his printing press, Edelweiss Park, and his family home. He was also frustrated by the aggression and general negative attitudes towards him, and the lack of support from some black and brown people.

Garvey decided to leave Jamaica, once again, and set sail for England on March 16, 1935, in an effort to rebuild the global influence of the UNIA. He left Jamaica a “broken man, broken in spirit, broken in health, and broken in pocket”, in his own words, and vowed never to return. His wife, Amy Jacques Garvey, and their two sons, joined him in 1937.

Eventually, he set off on a lecture and fundraising tour in Canada and the Caribbean. On his last night in Canada, October 1, 1937, in Sydney, Nova Scotia, he gave a speech in which the immortal lines, “We must emancipate ourselves from mental slavery. None but ourselves can free the mind,” was uttered. They were introduced to the world by Bob Marley in Redemption Song.

Because of his elder son’s serious illness, his wife and the boys returned to Jamaica in 1938. Garvey was devastated and heartbroken. He felt quite lonely in London and more isolated than ever. By then, membership in the UNIA had dwindled significantly.

Marcus Garvey had a stroke in January 1940, which seriously affected his speech and left him partially paralysed. Not too long after, George Padmore, a writer for the Chicago Defender, erroneously reported Garvey as dead. Newspapers around the world picked up on that article and falsely announced his death. Garvey was not amused. He suffered a second debilitating stroke. He subsequently fell into a coma from which he did not recover.

Marcus Mosiah Garvey died on June 10, 1940 at age 52. He was buried in St Mary’s Catholic Cemetery in London. Through the initiative of Edward Seaga, then culture minister of Jamaica, the two Garvey wives, and the UNIA, Marcus Mosiah Garvey’s remains arrived in Jamaica on November 10, 1964.

His body lay in state for five days at Holy Trinity Cathedral in Kingston, where thousands came to pay their final respects. Following a state funeral, his remains were re-interred in National Heroes Park. An estimated 30,000 people gathered to witness the reburial of the man that Seaga once referred to as “the greatest black man ever lived”.

From 1926, many efforts have been made to exonerate Garvey. Pardon was denied in September 1926. In February 2023, Democratic Congresswoman Yvette D. Clarke and Georgia Congressman Hank Johnson introduced legislation in the United States House of Representative calling for Garvey’s exoneration and identifying him as a champion for the liberation of people of African descent.

In May of the same year, Clarke, along with 22 of her Congressional colleagues, wrote a letter to President Biden calling for Garvey’s exoneration. In late December 2024, several US legislators, including Congresswoman Clarke, wrote a similar letter to President Joe Biden. Clarke, the daughter of Jamaican immigrants, who represents the 9th Congressional District in Brooklyn, New York, is chair-elect of the Congressional Black Caucus. And so, on Sunday, January 19, 2025, the last day as president, Biden pardoned Garvey. The clemency was welcomed the world over.