Garvey’s legacy sparks debate
To much of Black America, Marcus Garvey was a hero, a Jamaican-born leader who advocated for racial equality in the U.S. long before the modern-day civil rights movement.
He founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association in 1914, dedicated to racial pride, economic self-sufficiency and the formation of an independent Black nation in Africa.
But Garvey was a polarizing figure, even within the Black community, and his complex history bubbled up again this week with public officials in Broward County, at a time when racial equality remains an explosive issue nationwide.
County Commissioner Dale Holness, a candidate for Congress, asked the commission to support a congressional resolution exonerating Garvey in a 96-year-old mail fraud case.
The resolution from U.S. Rep. Yvette Clarke, a Democrat from New York, calls on President Joe Biden to “clear his good name.” Three largely Black cities in Broward County — Miramar, Lauderhill and Lauderdale Lakes — have already voted to support the resolution.
Some of Holness’ colleagues were not as willing. They accused Holness of grandstanding in his campaign for the seat of the late Alcee Hastings. They assailed Garvey as a divisive force in American history. And they labeled Garvey a convicted felon who forsook his followers with overtures to the Ku Klux Klan.
In the end, the Broward County resolution failed 7-2 — with the white commissioners opposed and the Black members in favor. Besides Holness, only Barbara Sharief — Holness’ opponent in his congressional race — voted yes.
Such divided sentiments are common when it comes to Marcus Garvey.
His Universal Negro Improvement Association advocated for “separate but equal” status for people of African ancestry. He settled in New York after arriving in the U.S. for a lecture tour and founded the Negro World newspaper.
Garvey also helped establish several businesses in the eastern United States, including grocery stores, a chain of restaurants and the Black Star Line, an all-Black steamship company.
He was not without faults, however.
Garvey was arrested in 1922 on mail fraud charges. The government said he mailed highly exaggerated Black Star advertisements to prospective investors even though the steamship line was in financial trouble.
Garvey was sent to prison in 1925, served two years and was deported in 1927 back to his native Jamaica. He died in 1940.
His eldest son, Marcus Garvey Jr., died in Wellington last year.
According to History.com, Garvey blamed a Jewish judge and Jewish jurors for his conviction, saying that they sought retribution against him after he had agreed to meet with the grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan.
Garvey believed he and the KKK shared similar views on segregation because both wanted a separate state for African Americans, according to the history website.
Anasa Hicks, an assistant professor of Caribbean history at Florida State University, called Garvey “complicated.”
Many considered him a hero because the message of the Universal Negro Improvement Association was “community and dignity and celebrating Blackness and being proud of it,” she said.
He did not espouse integration, she said, because Jim Crow laws and race riots made it a difficult time to be Black in the United States. His eagerness to separate Blacks would be called segregation today, but at the time it was “a response to the widespread hideous treatment from their white counterparts,” Hicks said.
That’s why Garvey reached out to the KKK, “which I will not defend,” Hicks said, “but he felt like the KKK were the only white Americans who were honest about how they felt about Black people.” The KKK wanted a country free of Blacks, so Garvey went to them to say, “I want the same thing you do.
How can we collaborate here?”
As for the anti-Semitic comments: “Marcus Garvey was a complicated person, certainly not perfect,” Hicks said. At the time he was convicted, anti-Semitism ran rampant with erroneous views that Jews controlled the federal government, Hicks said, and Garvey felt he had been targeted by the FBI.
Holness made some of the same arguments to county commissioners this week. He called Garvey a “leader respected around the world.”
Holness was born in Jamaica and is a cousin of Andrew Holness, Jamaica’s prime minister. A Caribbean news website earlier this month called him “one of the leading Caribbean politicians in South Florida” and reported that he had been given the Order of Distinction and would be honored on Jamaica’s National Heroes Day in October.
Holness dismissed Garvey’s mail fraud conviction. “When they can’t get you on anything else, they get you on mail fraud,” he said. “That’s what happened to this man.”
Broward commissioners were not swayed. They said they were elected to represent Broward County and this cause was not theirs.
“I took an oath to help the people of Broward County,” said Vice Mayor Michael Udine. “There’s many things that I’d like to ask the Biden administration to do right now, and exonerating Marcus Garvey is not one of them. That’s not anywhere near the top of my list.”
Broward Mayor Steve Geller suggested he would have been labeled a racist if he had supported someone like Garvey who was accused of cheating Black investors and wanted Blacks “sent back” to Africa. He referred to Garvey as a “megalomaniac.”
Commissioners also said they had no evidence Garvey was innocent of the mail fraud charges that sent him to prison.
Nonetheless, there was precedent for the Broward resolution. In 2007, to mark Garvey’s 120th birthday, Broward County issued a proclamation declaring Aug. 19 as Marcus Mosiah Garvey Appreciation Day. At the same time, a collection of pictures, posters and press clippings depicting Garvey’s life and legacy was on display at a county library in Pembroke Pines.
Some commissioners this week accused Holness of using Garvey’s name to attract support in his congressional campaign. “This item really does smack of political objectives,” said Commissioner Tim Ryan.
“I don’t see why this is an item we should even be considering,” Ryan said, predicting there would be more “political proclamations” would be proposed to “get free media” in the run-up to the November election from Holness.
Holness disputed the accusation of political posturing. “I don’t have to bring this item to get votes,” he said.
Although he acknowledged Garvey was controversial, he said the man lived in a different time. “You can take pieces of his history and frame it as you wish,” he said.
Imani Warren, a historian who lives in Miami, is a member of Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association chapter in Atlanta. She said the county commission would have done better if they had expanded their research to speak with academics, rather than a cursory Google search.
“He represents people improving their lives up from slavery,” she said. His goal at the time, to escape persecution, was ‘if we can’t be free, perhaps we can do it in our motherland of Africa. If America doesn’t want us, we’ll go back to Africa and build.’ ”
Miramar Commissioner Alexandra Davis, who grew up in Jamaica, said the issue is about the “bigger picture of what he represented — there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be proud of our heritage. His purpose was to ensure we were proud of our skin color. There’s a pride in being who we are.”
Anasa Hicks, an assistant professor of Caribbean history at Florida State University, called Garvey “complicated.”
Many considered him a hero because the message of the Universal Negro Improvement Association was “community and dignity and celebrating Blackness and being proud of it,” she said.