Marcus Garvey has a legacy in advocacy, science
Dear Editor,
In the 1960s Marcus Garvey III was a strong advocate for the teaching of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics to young people in Africa and its Diaspora.
He attended Calabar High School and earned an arts degree in his teens and followed it up with a law degree from the University of London. He later successfully pursued a master’s degree in physics from The University of the West Indies in 1968 and migrated to the United States in the 1970s. He went on to become an electrical engineer.
In the 1980s he worked in digital and analog circuit design for optical fibre transmission systems and navigational guidance systems. He became fully engaged in research with the Sylvania Systems Group, GTE and was at his most fulfilled doing cutting-edge scientific work.
He was a pan-africanist with a strong scientific bent. His work as a mathematician, physicist, and electrical engineering is his legacy.
In Jamaica he taught maths and physics to high school students at Kingston College and Kingston Technical High School. He also taught at City College and Hunter College, New York, and encouraged his students to take up careers in science and technology.
He continued his father’s legacy in the era when political independence was achieved in Africa and the Caribbean and the civil rights legislation was enacted in the United States. He admired Kwame Nkrumah and Julius Nyerere and argued that they represented the contemporary expression of Garveyism on the African continent.
During the ‘black power’ era he was active in Kingston, Jamaica, organising the African Nationalist Union and publishing the mimeographed magazine The Black Man from 19691972, from his home, collaborating with his mother Amy Jacques Garvey (1896-1973).
After he retired from scientific research he was elected president general of the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League. In this capacity he toured and lectured in the Caribbean, North America, Europe, and Africa. Alzheimer’s disease put a halt to his activism and he died from pneumonia on December 8, 2020.
He was born on September 7, 1930 and is survived by his wife of 30 years, Jean; younger brother, Dr Julius Garvey; sons Colin and Kylesekou; stepdaughter Michelle Morris; and four grandchildren.