Garvey on George Schuyler

Books about Marcus Garvey

Books by Marcus Garvey

Philosophy and Opinions of Marcus Garvey or Africa for the Africans / Marcus Garvey: Life and Lessons (1988)

Selected Writings and Speeches of Marcus Garvey (2005) / The Poetical Works of Marcus Garvey

DVD

The American Experience - Marcus Garvey: Look for Me in the Whirlwind (2001)

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George S. Schuyler Again

By Marcus Garvey

George S. Schuyler is a joke;

His brain must be like sausage pork,

Or he must be a "nutty" ass

To bray at those he cannot pass:

The man, if man he is, is crude;

His very looks is mighty rude,

Hee feeds on what his masters say,

And acts like monkey all at play.

He writes his soppy stuff each week,

The stuff of Journalistic freak:

No one should worry over him,

But pass him with a good "boof, him,"

A Negro man he claims to be,

And that puts us up on a tree:

If he should look at his old face,

He'd see the libel of his race.

1934 Marcus Garvey From the Black Man Magazine (1933-1939)

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Marcus Garvey--born on August 17, 1887 in St. Ann's Bay, Jamaica. He left school at 14, worked as a printer, joined Jamaican nationalist organizations, toured Central America, and spent time in London. Content at first with accommodation, on his return to Jamaica, he aspired to open a Tuskegee-type industrial training school. In 1916 he came to America at Booker T. Washington's invitation, but arrived just after Washington died.

As the leader of the largest organized mass movement in black history and progenitor of the modern "black is beautiful" ideal, Garvey is now best remembered as a champion of the back-to-Africa movement. In his own time he was hailed as a redeemer, a "Black Moses." Though he failed to realize all his objectives, his movement still represents a liberation from the psychological bondage of racial inferiority.

When he settled in New York City, he organized a chapter of the U.N.I.A., which he had earlier founded in Jamaica as a fraternal organization. Drawing on a gift for oratory, he melded Jamaican peasant aspirations for economic and cultural independence with the American gospel of success to create a new gospel of racial pride. "Garveyism" eventually evolved into a religion of success, inspiring millions of black people worldwide who sought relief from racism and colonialism.

By 1920 the U.N.I.A. had hundreds of chapters worldwide; it hosted elaborate international conventions and published The Negro World widely disseminated weekly, though banned in many parts of Africa and the Caribbean. In 1922 the federal government indicted Garvey on mail fraud charges stemming from Black Star Line promotional claims and he suspended all BSL operations. Two years later, the U.N.I.A. created another line, the Black Cross Navigation and Trading Co., but it, too, failed. Garvey was sentenced to prison. The government later commuted his sentence, only to deport him back to Jamaica in November 1927. He never returned to America.

In Jamaica Garvey reconstituted the U.N.I.A. and held conventions there and in Canada, but the heart of his movement stumbled on in America without him.

Garvey remained a keen observer of world events, writing voluminously in his own papers. His final move was to London, in 1935. He settled there shortly before Fascist Italy invaded Ethiopia and his public criticisms of Haile Selassie's behavior after the invasion alienated many of his own remaining followers. Garvey died June 10, 1940.