Gavin B.

Thanks for your kind thoughts, E.

Garvey like any other grass roots leader had his flaws which were often synonmous with his own strengths as a leader. His own seperatist views that were viewed as racist by whites were viewed by Garvey's followers as a strength. Garvey simply refuse to allow whites to define the nature of the struggle of American blacks for racial sovereignty.

I would never support Garvey's repatriation efforts, especially since the only people in the modern USA that would support a Garvey style repatriation are white segregationists. My wife who is Jamaican Creole would wring my neck if I supported sending her back to Africa...LOL She has stated unambiguously to me in her own alluring patios on several occasions, “Deh be no bumba clot bungo mon gwan to repatriate I and I.”

Remember that in Garvey's era, however, there were many black folks who were either born slaves or sons and daughters of slave who really did want to return to their homeland, but that was 100 years ago. The African nation of Liberia was actually founded by former slaves in America who repatriated back Africa.

Early on, freed slaves were assisted with the establishment of Liberia, by the American Colonization Society (ACS). The society was supported by Southerners fearful of organized revolt by free blacks, by Northerners concerned that an influx of black workers would hurt the economic opportunities of indigent whites, by some who opposed slavery but did not favor integration, and by many blacks who saw a return to Africa as the best solution to their troubles.

During that era the ACS was regarded as a liberal and benevolent charity even as their racist intent seems pretty obvious in today's world. For the record, the ACS existed until 1964, so repatriation of blacks to Africa was seen as acceptable social policy in the United States from the end of the Civil War, all the way up to the dawn of the Civil Rights movement.

I wrote my senior thesis on Garvey, which was a great way for me to gain entry and some sort of credibility among Rastafarians and reggae musicians in Jamaica. Some hard core followers of Rasta Fari Makonnen, the founder of the religion, are still black separatists but most 2nd and 3rd generation Rastafarians are racial pluralists who have always preached the gospel of racial unity.

That being said, many of those 2nd and 3rd generation Rastafarians are still have a blind spot on the subject of Garvey and some of his own errors of judgment toward the end of his career because all Rastafarian view Marcus Garvey as a prophet of foretold the coming of Haile Selassie I, the most high. I was very careful to never raise some of the more troubling aspects of Garvey's career with my Rastafarian friends and associates. Most of them simply deny the fact that Garvey had a short lived alliance with the American Ku Klux Klan who supported his repatriation efforts.

Garvey, by the way, was the first the very first political target of J. Edgar Hoover, who was an assistant attorney general in the Justice Department and believed that Garvey was a dangerous foreign national and wanted to deport him. Failing to find any grounds to deport Garvey, Hoover built a trumped up case of mail fraud against Garvey for selling ownership shares in the Black Star Liner Company by mail.

The evidence of fraud was based on a painted picture of a ship on a Black Star Liner investment brochure called the Phyllis Wheatley. Hoover claimed mail fraud had been committed by Garvey because a ship named the Phyllis Wheatley never existed in the Black Star Liner fleet. The ship portrayed in the brochure was a ship called the Orion, which Garvey had planned to rechristen with the name Phyllis Wheatley but never had a chance to do so, because Hoover stepped in and arrested him for mail shortly after he sent the first batch of "Phyllis Wheatley" brochure through the mail.

Hoover's specious charges would have been dismissed by any reasonable modern day judge but this was Jim Crow America in the 1920s.The federal prosecuter spent most of the trail convincing the all white jury that Marcus Garvey was a dangerous man who needed convicted on the mail fraud charges because Garvey and his and his 2 million UNIA followers were a threat to white America.

The rest is history. Garvey was convicted by an all white jury and sent to the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary and was unceremoniously deported by President Calvin Coolidge upon his release in 1927. J. Edgar was rewarded for his efforts on the Garvey prosecution with an appointment as the Director of the newly formed Federal Bureau of Investigation where he spent the next 37 years harassing and falsely prosecuting black political leaders, left wing radicals and any political groups that didn't meet his conservative right wing standards.