Grateful American Kids

Marcus Garvey, founder of the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League

Marcus Mosiah Garvey, Jr. (August 17, 1887 – June 10, 1940), was a Jamaican political leader, publisher, journalist, entrepreneur, and orator who was a proponent of the Pan-Africanism movement, to which end he founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League (UNIA-ACL).

He also founded the Black Star Line, a shipping and passenger line which promoted the return of the African diaspora to their ancestral lands.

  • Prior to the 20th century, leaders such as Prince Hall, Martin Delany, Edward Wilmot Blyden, and Henry Highland Garnet advocated the involvement of the African diaspora in African affairs.
  • Garvey was unique in advancing a Pan-African philosophy to inspire a global mass movement and economic empowerment focusing on Africa known as Garveyism.
  • Promoted by the UNIA as a movement of African Redemption, Garveyism would eventually inspire others, ranging from the Nation of Islam to the Rastafari movement (some sects of which proclaim Garvey as a prophet.)

Garveyism intended persons of African ancestry in the diaspora to “redeem” the nations of Africa and for the European colonial powers to leave the continent.

  • His essential ideas about Africa were stated in an editorial in Negro World entitled “African Fundamentalism.”
  • He wrote: “Our union must know no clime, boundary, or nationality… to let us hold together under all climes and in every country…”

Source: Click here to learn more about Marcus Garvey.

Words of Wisdom

If you have no confidence in self, you are twice defeated in the race of life. With confidence, you have won even before you started.

Partners & Supporters