Marcus Garvey essays

Marcus Garvey essays Marcus Garvey, born in St. Ann, Jamaica in 1887, seemed to have been racially proud since birth. A descendant of the fiercely proud Maroons, Garvey displayed his pride and aided others in developing the same pride in fellow Africans, and also helping to awake Negros. His movements spread throughout the Caribbean and the United States, awakening many Africans to from the boundaries that had kept them under oppression for so long. While Garvey's name has now achieved legendary proportions, and his movement has had an ongoing international impact, Garvey was just another man who embodied the contradictions of his generation. He was seen by his colleagues in a variety of ways, both positive and negative. Despite any controversy, he has come to define both a social phenomenon, organized under the banner of the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) and African Communities League (ACL), and an era of black renaissance, in which Garveyism and the concept of black racial pride became synonymous, (Holly, 132). Garveyism as an ideological movement began in black Harlem in the spring of 1918, and then flourished throughout the black world. Nearly a thousand UNIA divisions were formed, and tens of thousands of members enrolled within the brief period of seven years. The reign of the Garvey movement, as Reverend Adam Clayton Powell, Sr., wrote, "awakened a race consciousness that made Harlem felt around the wor ld," (Holly, 174). Of course, Garveyism is not the only reason that Marcus Garvey is so widely known today. Garveys prized work begins with founding a newspaper in Jamaica entitled The Negro World, following the slogan One God, One Aim, One Destiny. Around 1916, Garvey left his home of Jamaica to spread his ideas to the African Americans. Garvey's farewell address to Jamaicans included the words Look to Africa for the crowning of a Black king; he s ...