Pan-Africanism is a worldwide movement that aims to encourage and strengthen bonds of solidarity between all indigenous and diasporas of African ancestry. Based on a common goal dating back to the Atlantic slave trade, the movement extends beyond continental Africans with a substantial support base among the African diaspora in the Americas and Europe.
Just like any other movement, pan-Africanism was founded and moved on by individual people who had love for Africa and the African people, especially at a time where African and the African people were passing through a terrible time at the hands of colonialists, many people of African heritage were being exploited at the hands of slave masters.
It took much courage for many African leaders at that time to publicly come and express their support to start a movement that would attend to African interests and Unite all African people as one family. One of those people was Marcus Garvey.
Marcus Mosiah Garvey Jr. was born on 17 August 1887 in Saint Ann’s Bay, a town in the British colony of Jamaica. In the context of colonial Jamaican society, which had a colourist social hierarchy, Garvey was considered at the lowest end, being a black child who was of full African descent.
In later years Marcus Garvey was forced to leave Jamaica because of economic hardships. In mid-1910, Garvey traveled to Costa Rica, where an uncle had secured him employment as a timekeeper on a large banana plantation in the Limón Province owned by the United Fruit Company (UFC).
Although as a timekeeper he was responsible for overseeing the manual workers, he became increasingly angered at how they were treated. After this, he traveled to many countries in the world especially wherever black people were employed and settled. Marcus got obsessed and angered at how black people were being exploited by their slave masters thus he engaged himself more in the liberation struggle to free the African people.
Garvey laid forth a vision for a new world — a world where all people of African origin, on every continent, were united, self-sufficient, and proud. It was the manifestation of an idea known as Pan-Africanism. Garvey began developing this broad sense of the world at an early age.
He founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) in 1914.
UNIA stressed racial pride and self-improvement, much like the views of educator Booker T. Washington, whom Garvey admired. Garvey, however, had greater international ambitions, including the development of worldwide black-owned industries and shipping lines. He also called for the end of white colonial rule in Africa.
In 1920, more than 20,000 people attended Garvey’s first UNIA convention in New York. The convention produced a Declaration of Negro Rights, which denounced lynchings, segregated public transportation, job discrimination, and inferior black public schools. The document also demanded “Africa for the Africans.” Without actually consulting any African people, the convention proclaimed Garvey the “Provisional President of Africa.”
Garvey believed that white society would never accept black Americans as equals. Therefore, he called for the separate self-development of African Americans within the United States.
The UNIA set up many small black-owned businesses such as restaurants, groceries, a publishing house, and even a toy company that made black dolls. Garvey’s goal was to create a separate economy and society run for and by African Americans.
Ultimately, Garvey argued, all black people in the world should return to their homeland in Africa, which should be free of white colonial rule. Garvey had grand plans for settling black Americans in Liberia, the only country in Africa governed by Africans. However, Garvey’s UNIA lacked the necessary funds and few blacks in the United States indicated any interest in going “back to Africa.”
A poor economy and the near-bankruptcy of the Black Star Line caused Garvey to seek more dues-paying members for the UNIA. He launched a recruitment campaign in the South, which he had ignored because of strong white resistance.
Garveyism attracted people from as far as West Africa such as President Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana. In 1958 he appreciated Afro-Americans such as Marcus Garvey and W. E. B. Du Bois for their contributions towards the cause of African freedom and African national and racial equality. Nigeria too came under the influence of Garveyism and a branch of the UNIA was formed in Lagos, Nigeria, in 1920. Nigerians also bought the stock of the Black Star.
Garvey was perceived as a threat by the colonial powers in Africa. This is because of his wide influence and popularity. Popular leaders like Jomo Kenyatta of Kenya, and Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, were influenced by his ideas. Though UNIA had no branches in French colonies, some of the French West Africans attended its meetings and one of them even tried to liberate his country in 1925.
The threat by Garveyism was perceived to be so huge that the colonial administrators in Senegal, Gambia, and Sierra Leone passed laws to restrict the immigration of American blacks. The British banned the circulation of Garvey Negro World and denied Garvey a visa in 1923 when he desired to tour British-controlled areas in Africa
on the personal front, Garvey was essentially a man who symbolized the contradictions of his age.
Different critics perceived him differently. Veteran black journalist John E. Bruce wrote thus of the young Garvey in 1916: “A little sawed-off and hammered down Black Man, with determination written all over his face, and an engaging smile that caught you and compelled you to listen to his story”.
Garvey’s life and the Back to Africa movement reflect the intellectual and political currents of the period in light of the revival of black consciousness. He was a charismatic leader who captured the popular imagination in a huge way and successfully helped move the mass of black people to a new positive outlook.
Unfortunately, Marcus Garvey passed away in 1940 after suffering from two counts of stroke.
Kamukama Rukundo Clinton is a Ugandan pan-Africanist, author, and columnist for 1cananews who can be contacted via +256704393540 or rukundopeter33@gmail.com
