Urban Word of the Day - 2/25/09

Marcus Garvey Movement –
The Garvey movement was important in the United States as a popular expression of the sentiments of African unity and redemption among working-class blacks. His followers contrasted with the more elite black groups cultivated by Du Bois. Garvey, a Jamaican, founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) in 1914 to promote black pride, political and economic improvements for blacks everywhere, and the repatriation of blacks to Africa (often called the “Back to Africa” movement). The institutional growth of the Garvey movement was swift and international in scope. Garvey’s newspaper, the Negro World, achieved wide distribution, and chapters of UNIA sprung up all over the Americas, as well as in Europe, Australia, and South Africa. Garvey also established a steamship company, the Black Star Line, with which he hoped both to enter international trade and to transport blacks to Africa. Garvey hoped to oversee the repatriation of tens of thousands of American blacks to the West African nation of Liberia, which had been founded by freed American slaves in the early 19th century. The Garvey movement declined when Garvey was arrested and imprisoned in 1925 on charges of mail fraud relating to the operation of the Black Star Line, and his repatriation scheme was never fulfilled.