History hw

Marcus Garvey’s Speech in Philadelphia, 1919

Jamaican-born Marcus Garvey (1887-1940) had to leave school as a teenager and

trained as a printer. After living for a time in Central America and England, he returned

to Jamaica where he and Amy Ashwood founded the Universal Negro Improvement

Association (UNIA) in 1914. Garvey travelled to the United States hoping to get Booker

T. Washington to support the UNIA’s efforts to build a school like Tuskegee in Jamaica.

Washington’s death and the mass murder of African Americans by white mobs during

World War I caused Garvey to change his strategy. He began establishing UNIA

branches in Harlem and other northern cities with increasingly large black populations

who were fleeing the racist terror of the U.S. south and attracted by the new job

opportunities opened up by the war. Garvey was spectacularly successful in building the

membership of the UNIA, and was especially successful in attracting the support of black

soldiers returning from fighting in the war in Europe. Garvey’s charisma was due in no

small part to his fiery oratory, an example of which appears below in this excerpt from a

speech he gave to his supporters in Philadelphia in 1919, while raising funds for the

launch of a shipping company, The Black Star Line. Garvey was a firm believer in the

idea of black-owned and run enterprises as a means of black advancement. The US

government on the other hand, did not take kindly to Garvey’s activities. J. Edgar Hoover,

head of the FBI, called Garvey, “a dangerous Negro agitator.”

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We have our foe, our ancient foe, puzzled. He does not know what to do with the New

Negro; but the New Negro knows what to do with himself. And the thing that we are

going to do is to blast a way to complete independence and to that democracy which they

denied us even after we left the battlefields of France and Flanders. We, the New Negroes,

say there is no turning back for us now. There is nothing else but a going forward, and if

they squeal in America or anywhere else we are going forward. Why, we are not

organized as four hundred million yet, and they are so scared. Now, what will happen in

the next five years when the entire four hundred million of us will have been organized?

All the lynching in the South will be a thing of the past. We are determined in this

association to bring the white man to his senses. We are not going to fight and kill

anybody because he has more than we have. But if there is anybody taking advantage of

the Negro, whether he be white, red, or blue, we are going to organize to stop him…

I believe in the brotherhood of man. I believe in the fatherhood of God, but as

man sinned and lost his purpose ever since the fall of Adam and Eve, I also realize that

man has lost his closest connection, his closest tie, with his God. And since man is human,

since man has lost his instinct divine, I am not going to trust man. From the attitude of

man, from the action of man today, I can see that everyone is looking out for himself

where the question of race comes in. The white race is looking out for the white race; the

yellow race is looking out for the yellow race or Asiatic race. The time has come when

the Negro should look out for himself and let the others look out for themselves. This is

the new doctrine today. It is the doctrine of Europe. Europe is looking out for the white

man. It is the doctrine of Asia. Asia is looking out for the yellow man. So should Africa

look out for the black man, the Negro. And since they (the whites) have divided up Africa,

having a part in America, a part in Canada, a part in the West Indies, a part in Central

America, a part in South America, and a part remaining in Africa, we are saying that the

time has come that there should be a united Africa. And before a united Africa comes,

Ethiopia, as scattered as she is, must stretch forth her hands unto God…

And I want you men of Africa, you men of the Negro race, to prepare for the day

when Africa will call for a judgment, and that judgment we must have, and it will be a

judgment in favor of four hundred million oppressed people. And the marshal who will

carry out the authority of the court will be the new Toussaint L’Ouverture with the sword

and the banner of the new African Republic. You black men of Philadelphia sit here

tonight as jurors in the case where judgment is to be given in favor of the Negro, and I am

now asking you jurymen: Gentlemen of the jury, what is your verdict? (Cries of: “Africa

Must Be Free!” heard from the crowd) Now, if Africa is to be free it means, therefore,

that Philadelphia has given her verdict as we have in New York. It is now for the judge to

give his finding. The judge will give his finding after all the jurors of the Negro race, four

hundred million, will have given their verdict. And then after the judge gives his finding

he will have to find a marshal to serve the writ, who will require the New Negro to help

him to serve this writ, because the man to whom this writ is to be served is of a desperate

character, because he prefers to shed blood and take lives before he will give up what is

not his. You have to spill blood in Africa before you get what belongs to you.

Therefore, you will realize that the Universal Negro Improvement Association is

no joke. It is a serious movement. It is as serious a movement as the movement of the

Irish today to have a free Ireland; as the determination of the Jew to recover Palestine.

The Negro peoples of the world should be so determined to reclaim Africa and found a

government there, so that if any black man in any part of the world is abused we can call

the mighty power of Africa to come to our aid. Men, a Negro government we had once,

and a Negro government we must have again. Tell me that I must live everlastingly under

the domination of a white man, that I must bequeath to my children white overlordship,

then I say, let me die now, Almighty God. If there is no better future in the world for me

than to be the slave of a white man, I say, take the life you give me. I do not want it. You

would not be my God if you created me to be a slave to other men; but you are my God

and will continue to be my God if you created me an equal of all men…

That is why we want the Black Star Line so as to launch out to the Negro peoples

of the world, and today the richest people of the world are the Negro people of Africa.

Their minerals, their diamonds, their gold and their silver, and their iron have built up the

great English, French, German and Belgian Empires. Men, how long are we going to

allow those parasites to suck the blood out of our children? How long? I answer for those

who are active members of the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African

Communities League, “Not one day longer!” No parasite shall continue to feed off my

body, because I want to have a healthy body. I have not sufficient blood to give to any

parasite, because when I get sick I will need every drop of my blood to sustain me until I

am well, so while I am well I will have to take off that parasite and throw it away. The

time has come for the Negro to exert his energy to the utmost to do so. Men and women

of Philadelphia, the question is now for you to decide. Are you ready tonight or are you

going to wait for two years more to be ready? (Cries of: “We are ready now!” heard from

the crowd) Thank God there are millions of us who are ready already, and when the

Black Star Line sails out, by the demonstration of the Black Star Line, spontaneously and

simultaneously, millions of black people will become wealthy…