Marcus Garvey was done so wrong

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Garvey recognized the influence of the Ku Klux Klan and, after the Black Star Line was closed, sought to engage the South in his activism, since the UNIA now lacked a specific program. In early 1922, he went to Atlanta for a conference with KKK imperial giant Edward Young Clarke, seeking to advance his organization in the South. Garvey made a number of incendiary speeches in the months leading up to that meeting; in some, he thanked the whites for Jim Crow.[46] Garvey once stated:

I regard the Klan, the Anglo-Saxon clubs and White American societies, as far as the Negro is concerned, as better friends of the 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.[36]

After Garvey's entente with the Klan, a number of African-American leaders appealed to U.S. Attorney General Harry M. Daugherty to have Garvey incarcerated.[47]


There are some allegations that the KKK helped fund his "Back to Africa" movement. Marcus Garvey willingly met with the KKK and told them that he was in agreement with many of their strategies. Garvey felt that black people being intimidated by the KKK would force black people to unite and form our own country.

The issue was most Black Americans did/would not support that -- and Mr. Garvey had never visited Africa -- and was trying to encourage AA's to leave and go there. They also felt like he was out of place to be speaking for and about AA's.

Many Black Americans were upset that he met with the KKK - because it was at the height of lynchings -- and Mr. Garvey was not from the U.S. -- nor did he live in the Jim Crow South -- ground zero for extreme white terrorism.

Also, it's a misconception that most AA's during that time knew about Mr. Garvey and his movement -- most Black americans lived in the South -- outside of NYC or DC --- they didn't know who he was if large numbers. You can verify this by looking at Black Newspapers during that time via Newspapers.com -- and the Archives.


Dam garvey was like the goat black leader to me.

U saying he wasnt as big with ados as it seem.

Dam
 

Formerly Black Trash

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We always choose wrong. Dubois over garvey and Booker t Washington. Martin (before he woke up) over Malcolm. Dudes like Deray over dudes like Darren seales.

I forgot who said it, but if u see a black man being championed by white liberals, you need to be wary of that man...
U don’t have to shyt on Martin to support Malcolm
 

xoxodede

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Dam xo i didnt kno that

Someone who was alive and lived in NYC's account. Legendary writer.

Reflections on Black History - Thomas C. Fleming

REFLECTIONS ON BLACK HISTORY
Column 5: Marcus Garvey Comes To Harlem


By Thomas C. Fleming
Marcus Garvey, the leader of the Back to Africa movement, arrived in Harlem in 1916, the same year I did. He was 38, an immigrant from Jamaica, and in a short time he became one of the most famous black men in America.

I was 8 years old and living on 133rd Street in Harlem, right in the middle of where the Garvey movement started.

In my neighborhood, there were probably more West Indian than American-born blacks. They wanted to succeed in America, and were very industrious, both husbands and wives &$150; always trying to start small businesses. They were looking ahead, with the goal of attaining naturalization so they could vote.

mgarvey.jpg
There was some antagonism between the American-born blacks and the West Indian immigrants. They all wanted to come to the United States because they could live better here. One of them told me that just about every house over there had an outhouse, and didn't have gas, electricity or running water. When they wanted to take a bath on a Saturday, they had to heat a big kettle on the stove. In Harlem, all the buildings had running water and gas, and electricity was coming into a lot of places.

These people used to say they were subjects of the king, and would tell you that back there, they could get jobs that blacks weren't getting here. But they were the lowest-paying jobs, such as petty officials. Well, the first thing we asked them was: "If you could do all those things, why did you leave?" I never heard of any American-born blacks wanting to go there.

Garvey never became an American citizen, although he lived in New York for nine years. He started the Universal Negro Improvement Association, which at one time might have had over a million members. But in New York, I think the only ones who considered him to be a leader were the West Indians.

I heard a lot about him, and then I started seeing him. They used to have parades along 7th Avenue frequently. Garvey would always be standing up in a big open-top car with his immediate aides riding with him. He dressed like an admiral. He wore one of those cockade hats that admirals wear, and a uniform. There were marchers in front and behind him, carrying banners. The women were in white dresses, and the men wore suits. They probably started about 125th Street, and marched up to 135th and 7th Avenue.

I didn't understand what it meant then. But I think it was all part of trying to attract more members. The dues weren't very much. A lot of black women joined that thing. And just about every woman I met when I was growing up worked as a domestic. They got very, very low wages.

The first thing Garvey did was take all those dollars and form a steamship company, the Black Star Line. The first ship, an aged tub, was leaky and unseaworthy, and barely made it out of New York harbor. He sold people on the idea: this is the ship that's going to take you back to Africa and carry on commerce between Africa and here. He later added two more ships, but not one of them ever landed in Africa.

His idea was to set up a colony of American blacks in Liberia. The Liberians first went along with this, but then changed their minds and wouldn't let him in, because they were afraid he would take over political power.

The U.S. government wanted to break up the movement because it saw any movement of black people as a threat. The Department of Justice in Washington thought he was trying to start a rebellion, so they accused him of bilking poor working people, and arrested him on several fraud charges for collecting the money to buy the steamers and to start other commercial businesses. He was tried in federal court and jailed in Atlanta, then later deported to Jamaica.

Two of Garvey's biggest enemies were W.E.B. Du Bois, editor of the NAACP's magazine The Crisis, and Philip Randolph, editor of The Messenger, a socialist weekly paper, and founder of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters. They thought the Back to Africa movement was a harebrained idea &$150; just like I think.

The idea didn't occur among any blacks here because Du Bois and all of them saw how utterly ridiculous it was. Garvey was taking advantage of people with low education and low-paying jobs.

Garvey had a dream, but I don't think the Back to Africa movement was ever possible. How was he going to get enough money to move all the blacks back to Africa? And nobody wanted to go over to Africa.

But Garvey still has a lot of supporters today. There are Garvey societies throughout the United States and in other countries, and the biggest park in Harlem has been renamed Marcus Garvey Park.

©1997 by Thomas C. Fleming. Born in 1907, Fleming is a writer for the Sun-Reporter, San Francisco's African American weekly, which he co-founded in 1944. Email and photos: sunreport@aol.com
 
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xoxodede

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Dam garvey was like the goat black leader to me.

U saying he wasnt as big with ados as it seem.

Dam

Sadly, he wasn't.

He became widely known later on -- but during his time here -- he wasn't widely known due to location of the majority of AA's (The South) and because of the lack of AA media/press coverage. And those who learned about him -most did not agree with him saying this wasn't our country -- nor support his acceptance of Jim Crow and KKK tactics against Native Blacks - since they were living in the heart of it.

Sure, Black Americans who migrated North during the Great Migration (1st wave) knew about him -- but his following amongst AA's wasn't as large as many would have you believe today. Some in the South knew him as well -- but his major following was not Native AA's.
 
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xoxodede

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Dam garvey was like the goat black leader to me.

U saying he wasnt as big with ados as it seem.

Dam

They also launched a campaign called "Garvey Must Go"

"Garvey Must Go"
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W. E. B. Du Bois, the NAACP, A. Philip Randolph, Robert S. Abbott (publisher of the Chicago Defender), and several other African-American and Caribbean leaders were quite critical of Garvey, whose objectives they found unrealistic, ridiculous, and full of pageantry. They believed he was a fraud and organized the "Garvey Must Go" campaign. It reached its height after Garvey held a secret meeting with the leader of the Klu Klux Klan in June 1922. Garvey had declared, "This is a white man's country. He found it, he conquered it, and we can't blame him if he wants to keep it. I am not vexed with the white man of the South for Jim-Crowing me, because I am black. . . . I never built any street cars or railroads. The white man built them for his convenience. And if I don't want to ride where he's willing to let me ride then I'd better walk." In a series of articles and public meetings, Randolph and Chandler Owen, secretary of the Friends of Negro Freedom - the organization leading the Garvey Must Go campaign - denounced the UNIA leader: "We know Marcus Garvey was a tool and a traitor. Was he also the white man's spy?" AAME :

Read the Garvey Must Go Letter here: https://cdn.matchfishtank.org/_Garvey_Must_Go__-_letter_20170407_121219.pdf


When Marcus Garvey first arrived in the United States in 1916, he quickly found his way to many of New York's most prominent black radical activists and intellectuals. And, at least briefly, Garvey enjoyed their support.

But by 1920, A. Philip Randolph and other black leaders, some of whom had supported Garvey after his arrival in the United States, came to believe that Garvey's program for black advancement was unsound, and that Garvey himself was a charlatan. Though they admired his skills as a propagandist, these prominent black critics derided Garvey's proposed solutions for the problems of African Americans. They believed that his plans for black progress, including the Black Star Line and the establishment of a pan-African empire, were unrealistic and ill-advised; they considered the Universal Negro Improvement Association's grandiose titles and military regalia to be preposterous; and they thought Garvey, with his assumption of a regal posture under the title "Provisional President of Africa," to be little more than a self-aggrandizing buffoon. A. Philip Randolph, who had introduced Garvey to his first American audience on a Harlem street corner, said Garvey had "succeeded in making the Negro the laughingstock of the world."

Federal investigations into the finances of the Black Star Line, along with a blistering analysis of the shipping line by W.E.B. Du Bois in the NAACP's Crisis magazine, gave fuel to Garvey's black critics. Randolph personally critiqued the economic feasibility of the Black Star Line in The Messenger , an influential magazine he co-edited with Chandler Owen, and accused Garvey of squandering the hard-earned money of his hard-working, poor supporters.

Black opposition to Garvey coalesced into what came to be known as the "Garvey Must Go" Campaign. Supporters of the campaign, known collectively as the Friends of Negro Freedom, intended to unmask Garvey as a fraud before his black supporters. They also appealed to the federal government to step up investigations of irregularities in the Black Star Line, and to look into alleged acts of violence on the part of Garvey's inner circle.

The "Garvey Must Go" Campaign gained momentum after Garvey held a secret meeting with Edward Young Clarke, the leader of the Ku Klux Klan, in June 1922. Immediately afterward, Randolph and Owen's Messenger magazine published an article entitled "Marcus Garvey! The Black Imperial Wizard Becomes Messenger Boy of the White Klu Klux Kleagle." Black leaders were further infuriated when they learned that Garvey, at a speaking engagement in New Orleans, remarked that because black people had not built the railroad system, they should not insist on riding in the same cars with white patrons.

The Messenger vowed to begin a vigorous editorial campaign against Garvey, and promised to "[fire] the opening gun in a campaign to drive Garvey and Garveyism in all its sinister viciousness from the American soil." The campaign from this point on was characterized by vitriolic personal attacks on both sides, and by escalating threats of violence. "Garvey Must Go" meetings were violently dispersed by Garvey's followers. A. Philip Randolph received the severed hand of a white man in the mail. It was accompanied by a note signed by the K.K.K., but Randolph believed the hand had been sent by the U.N.I.A.

On January 15, 1923, a group of eight prominent African Americans petitioned Attorney General Harry M. Daugherty asking the U.S. government to continue its prosecution of Garvey on charges of mail fraud, and to investigate acts of violence attributed to Garvey's followers -- among them, the assassination in early January 1923 in New Orleans of J. W. H. Eason, Garvey's former deputy, who had been expelled from the movement at the August 1922 Convention on charges of personal misconduct. The letter of petition ended by urging the Attorney General to "use his full influence completely to disband and extirpate this vicious movement," and imploring him to "vigorously and speedily push the government's case against Marcus Garvey for using the mails to defraud."

Garvey would eventually be convicted of mail fraud charges in 1923. He was jailed in the Atlanta federal penitentiary in February 1925, where he would serve almost three years of a five-year sentence. And in 1927, Garvey would be deported from the United States, never to return.

Source: American Experience | Marcus Garvey | People & Events
 

xoxodede

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“I interviewed the Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan to find out the Klan’s attitude toward the race. You may believe it or not-I made several statements to him, in which he said this: that the Klan is not organized for the absolute purpose of interfering with Negroes-for the purpose of suppressing Negroes, but the Klan is organized for the purpose of protecting the interests of the white race in America. Now anything that does not spell the interests of the white race in America does not come within the scope of the Ku Klux Klan. I found out, therefore, that the Ku Klux Klan was purely a racial organization standing up in the interests of white folks exclusive of the interests of others. You cannot blame any group of men, whether they are Chinese, Japanese, Anglo-Saxons or Frenchmen, for standing up for their interests or for organizing in their interest. I am not apologizing for the Klan or endeavoring to excuse the existence of the Klan, but I want a proper understanding about the Ku Klux Klan so that there can be no friction between the Negroes in America and the Ku Klux Klan, because it is not going to help.
With all due respect, Mr. Garvey was massively misinformed about the Klan and Black America. It also appears after meeting with them -- he still didn't get it.
 

Formerly Black Trash

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Martin realized what was going on and caught a bullet for it.

The thing about it is, there is no shortcut. You can't vote, march, integrate, or protest your way out of oppression.

Martin Luther King should never be shifted on for the work he did

Never

Criticized ok, but never shytted on
 
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