Marcus Garvey and the “Back-to-Africa” Movement

In Leonard Sykes Jr.’s Milwaukee Journal Sentinel article “Garvey celebration represents a call for peace and unity in community,” the author describes the values held by the Jamaican “Back-to-Africa” activist Marcus Garvey as his birthday was celebrated by the Wisconsin Black Historical Society.

August 17, 2005 marked the day of Marcus Garvey’s birth, and the 17th observance of the Marcus Garvey Day Celebration by the Wisconsin Black Historical Society. Milwaukee’s homicide count was at 87 during that time, up from 55 during the same period the previous year. Sykes says that the “themes [Garvey] espoused” were made tangible through the celebration “in what some contend is a summer of senseless violence and discontent in Milwaukee.”

Just what values did Garvey espouse? According to the article, “peace, unity and equality.” According to a Wikipedia article on Garvey, he launched both the Universal Negro Improvement Association and the African Communities League because he “became convinced that uniting blacks was the only way to improve their condition.”

According to the same article, though, Garvey founded the latter organization to “unite all people of African ancestry of the world to one great body to establish a country and absolutely (sic) government of their own.” This appears to relate to Garvey’s “Back-to-Africa” sentiments.

In the Wikipedia article, Garvey is quoted as saying, “[Black’s] success educationally, industrially, and politically is based upon the protection of a nation founded by ourselves. And the nation can be nowhere else but in Africa.”

While Garvey believed in uniting blacks, he felt that their unity would never be fruitful in a land dominated by whites. Thus, Garvey expressed a segregationist attitude as quoted in Wikipedia: “I regard the Klan . . . As better friends of the [Negro] race than all other groups of hypocritical whites put together. I like honesty and fair play. You may call me a Klansman if you will, but, potentially, every white man is a Klansman, as far as the Negro in competition with whites socially, economically and politically is concerned, and there is no use lying about [it].”

Garvey’s hope for uniting Blacks was correct in principle, but incorrect in practice. The “Back-to-Africa” movement was completely impractical, and that impracticality was mirrored by the movement’s vast unpopularity. Garvey was incorrect in his assumption that blacks could only unite and better their situation in an environment devoid of whites. Perhaps their plight would have been more easily overcome in such an environment, but history has demonstrated that racial progress can be made in a racially mixed society through the diligent activism of civil rights leaders like Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Marcus Garvey’s values of “peace, unity, and equality” were indeed admirable. However, the way that he intended to implement these values was fundamentally flawed. Our country will be well on its way to unfettered equality with the enaction of Garvey’s values without such misguided ideas as the “Back-to-Africa” movement.