Garvey was a Jamaican who revived and extended the Africanist tradition with great flare; he was the great antagonist of du Bois.

Garvey founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association in 1914 in Jamaica, but moved to New York in 1916.

He is credited with coining the phrase "Africa for the Africans", and he certainly made it famous.

He rejected the idea of black people staying in the new world; he argued that whites would never accept the idea of equality or equal rights.

He inaugurated the ‘Back to Africa' movement and created a ‘Government in Exile' in which he was ‘Provisional President of a Racial Empire in Africa'.

The UNIA grew rapidly in cities along the US seaboard and into Nova Scotia as well, at least in Sydney where there was a community of West Indian immigrants.

He collected substantial sums of money to found the Black Star Line of steamships to take blacks back to Africa (he never actually specified a location or talked to Africans about whether they wanted this to happen). In fact, I think he did purchase one rather old steamer, but no migrations were ever attempted. Garvey himself never visited Africa.

In a number of ways, Garvey anticipated the ‘Black power' movement of the 60s & perhaps even more the separatist proposals of Malcolm X; the latter of course thought of creating separate enclaves for black people in the US rather than a return to Africa, but there was the same absence of confidence that equality would be acceptable to whites whose racism was too deeply ingrained; the only option was in separation-an ‘apartheid' solution.

Marcus Garvey founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) in 1914 to promote the improvement of living conditions for Africans and people of African descent in North and South America, the Caribbean, and Europe. In this quote, from a speech given in 1921, Garvey explains the goal of the UNIA. The text of the quote is: "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 for the one common purpose of bettering their condition."

Garvey had a meteoric rise and a similar fall as a result of financial mismanagement and US government harassment. He was charged and convicted of fraud and misappropriation of funds in 1925; his sentence was commuted by Pres. Coolidge in 1927 and Garvey was deported to Jamaica.

Nevertheless, Garvey's ideas had continuing influence; some black churches with a Garveyite orientation had been formed and continued to exist. Later, some even sent missionaries to Africa and thus spread Garveyite ideas there (however, this influence was rather small as the numbers were not large; black churches were too poor to send large numbers of missionaries).

Of more significance were African students studying in the US. One of these was Kwame Nkrumah who later said that Garvey was a more important influence on him than was du Bois.

This should not be too surprising. Outside South Africa (which we'll discuss in more detail later), the dilemmas facing diaspora blacks were not very relevant to Africans. Most diaspora blacks were part of multiracial societies and most were minorities dominated and discriminated against; although Africans were a majority in South Africa, their position was pretty much the same. In South Africa, the same split in objectives occurred. What should black people strive for in a multiracial society?

Du Bois and the ‘equality' or non-racial tradition works for an end to discrimination and for complete equality; they want to end ‘race' as a factor in determining rights and status.

Garvey and the Africanist tradition reject the possibility of a society based on equality and non-racialism. The only alternatives, therefore, are to go back to Africa or create some sort of separate state for black people.

For most of Africa under colonial rule, this was not really the problem; there were not sufficient whites to create a multiracial society. Thus, the issue was simply whether Africans would control political decision-making. Garvey's slogan "Africa for the Africans" was tailor-made for their aspirations.

As noted, Garvey never visited Africa, knew little about it and certainly never consulted Africans about whether or not they wanted millions of assimilated black people of the diaspora to come back to Africa. Where would they go? What would their impact be on African culture? No migrations took place so these questions never had to be faced. Below are some of excerpts from a book written by Garvey.