The International Impact of Marcus Garvey

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Marcus Garvey first launched the Universal Negro Improvement Association in 1914 in Jamaica. The U.N.I.A. eventually became the largest Pan-African organization in the world. Garvey's vision was to launch an organization to unite all African people around the world. 

He declared: 
We of the Universal Negro Improvement Association are raising the cry of “Africa for the Africans,” those at home and those abroad. There are 400 million Africans in the world who have Negro blood coursing through their veins, and we believe that the time has come to unite these 400 million people toward the one common purpose of bettering their condition. The great problem of the Negro for the last 500 years has been that of disunity. No one or no organization ever succeeded in uniting the Negro race.

Garvey's organization spread from Jamaica and established chapters around the world. The U.N.I.A. had chapters in Trinidad, Barbados, Haiti, Brazil, Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, Guyana, the Bahamas, the United States, Canada, Nigeria, Ghana, Sierra Leone, Liberia, and South Africa to name a few countries which had U.N.I.A. chapters. 

Garvey believed that African people around the world needed to unite for the common goal of liberating African people from oppression. Garvey was particularly concerned with liberating Africa from the colonial powers which controlled Africa at the time. 

He stated: 

We know that Africa cannot be redeemed by mere speeches, by mere editorial articles. We know Africa can only be redeemed by the sacrifice of human blood, and we are prepared to give even the last drop of blood so that one of these days the Red, the Black, and the Green will flutter on the loftiest hilltop of our motherland, Africa.


Garvey's work influenced the African liberation struggle around the world. Kwame Nkrumah, the man who would lead Ghana to its independence, explained, 

I think that of all the literature I studied, the book that did more than any other to fire my enthusiasm was the philosophy of Marcus Garvey published by his wife.

 

The Rastafarian movement which developed in the Caribbean in the 1930s was greatly inspired by Garvey's ideas. Bob Marley, whose music helped to bring greater international attention to Rastafarians, described Garvey as a prophet.


Malcolm X's parents were members of the U.N.I.A. Malcolm would later go on to form an organization known as the Organization of Afro-American Unity, which was influenced by Garvey's vision for global African unity. 


In Kenya, an anti-colonial activists known as Harry Thuku wrote to Garvey for help and advice in 1921.


In South Africa, Garvey's ideas influenced both the African National Congress and the Pan Africanist Congress. In fact, the tricolor flag of the African National Congress was inspired by Garvey's Red, Black, and Green flag. 


In Guyana, the flag of the People's National Congress is also red, black, and green. The national flags of Kenya and Malawi also uses a variant of these colors. These are just examples of the international impact that Garvey's movement had on the African struggle around the world.



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