Edmond David Cronon wrote the first book about the life and activities of Marcus Garvey. The book is informative, interesting, organized, and well-researched. However, because the author uses a traditional historical approach, he ineffectively interprets Garvey's program. The predominant themes that emerge from Cronon’s method of examination are the focus of this review, which include: Garvey's philosophy and world perspective; Garvey's mass appeal; his effect on African Americans; and the idea that the combination of African American leaders and Garvey's social practices caused Garveyism to fail.
Early Years
Marcus Garvey was born in Jamaica on August 17, 1887. His childhood and adolescence were normal, and he had a close relationship with his parents. As Garvey matured, the early social influences that shaped his ethnic pride and societal awareness became apparent. Cronon explains that as a young adult Garvey developed a contemptuous attitude toward the middle class, light-skinned blacks in Jamaica because they supported the minority, white ruling group. Garvey brought this skin-perception attitude to America, which could have hindered his ability to assess African American leadership accurately. Unlike Jamaica, light-skinned blacks in America did not function as a pro-establishment social class.
UNIA/Booker T. Washington
Cronon explains that after Garvey traveled and observed the conditions of black people around the world, he started the Universal Negro Improvement Association in Jamaica, but ran into stiff opposition. Garvey could not procure subsidies because the middle-class blacks stifled his efforts. As resistance to his program increased, Garvey looked to other places for economic support.
Garvey had heard about Booker T. Washington’s self-help program, so Garvey wrote a letter to Washington requesting financial assistance. Washington was happy to accommodate Garvey, but Washington had died by the time Garvey arrived to America in 1916. This unfortunate incident caused Garvey to alter his tactics as he observed that African Americans would join justice-centered organizations. By 1919 Garvey established the UNIA in Harlem and in several other cities. Some writers suggest that he had over 4 million followers, but Cronon disputes this number.
Garvey in Business
As Cronon analyzes Garvey’s business ventures, he primarily discusses the Black Steam-Ship Line Garvey created to upgrade all Africans economically through the Atlantic maritime trade. Cronon indicates that Garvey’s business inexperience caused him to make several bad decisions concerning the purchase of his ships because they were old, deficient vessels. Cronon attributes Garvey’s business mishaps to poor judgment, inadequate book-keeping, incompetent staff, poor management, and an inability to accept constructive criticism. The author depicts Garvey as a glory seeking, non-business minded, stubborn, quick-tempered, over-bearing tyrant.
Black Nationalism
As Cronon moves to the heart of his discussion, he explores Garvey’s Black Nationalism and its effect on African Americans. The author begrudgingly mentions Garvey’s popularity among African Americans because a “quick-tempered, over-bearing tyrant” should not be so popular. The reluctance to examine Garvey’s appeal indicates that Cronon could not reconcile his condescending view of Garvey with the effect Garvey had on the masses.
Although Garvey was astonishingly popular, Cronon surmises that African Americans preferred to live in America, so they dismissed the “African colonization” aspect of Garveyism. To support this assertion, Cronon cites an article from the Houston Post, which states that the “Back to Africa Movement” failed because black people were content to stay in America. Cronon devalues Garvey’s Black Nationalism to “Back to Africa” adventurism. This concept not only promulgates Cronon’s assumption that second-class-treated black citizens love America, but also it reflects the sentiments of the black bourgeoisie. However, Garvey’s Black Nationalism was a historical trend that incited black America’s indecisiveness about either fighting for rights in America or leaving the country.
Cronon misunderstood the “Back to Africa” slogan. Garvey never intended to take African Americans, en mass, out of America to relocate them in Africa. According to Tony Martin, Garvey’s wife, Amy Jacques Garvey, details the “Back to Africa” feature as the gradual settlement of a select number of Western hemisphere African descendants in Africa, specifically Liberia. This plan failed because, as Marcus Garvey, Jr. points out, European imperialists gave the land designated for Garvey “to the white American rubber king Firestone.”
Cronon Views African American Intellectuals
In the chapter, “Echoes and Reverberations,” Cronon explains that from the 1920s to the 1940s most African American intellectuals did not produce comprehensive studies about Garvey. One exception was James Weldon Johnson, who wrote extensively about Garvey in his work Black Manhattan (1930). However, W.E.B. Dubois only mentions Garvey’s popularity in his 1940 book Dusk of Dawn. Cronon appropriately notes that Garvey did not become popular among African American intellectuals until many years after he left America.
Historian John Hope Franklin wrote the forward to Cronon’s book. In Franklin’s 1947 comprehensive study From Slavery to Freedom: A History of Negro Americans, he devotes approximately two pages to Garvey. Franklin is certainly one of Cronon’s Garvey-negligent black intellectuals, but Cronon paternalistically commends Franklin’s brief discussion about Garvey as insightful commentary that explains Garvey’s mass appeal even though Franklin inadequately explains it. Franklin suggests that the Garvey movement was popular because it was “the first… real mass movement among Negroes in the United States…”
Nationalist Trends
Up to the early 20th century, many African American leaders either encouraged emigration or the creation of an independent black state. Wilson Moses explains that in 1815 Paul Cuffee built his own ships and paid the passage of a group of Africans from America to Africa. In 1859 Martin Delany led several conventions of free blacks who planned ways to return to Africa. Henry McNeal Turner (1870), who many refer to as the father of Black Nationalism, promoted emigration to Africa, and he had a large following.
Pat “Moses” Singleton’s resettlement movement in 1879 was not, as Cronon states, “A migration into Kansas.” According to Harold Cruse, Singleton led thousands of African Americans from the South into the Kansas region to establish a black state, and Singleton’s movement was comparable to Garvey’s. In Black American Politics, Manning Marable cites African American writer Arthur A. Anderson. In 1913 Anderson advocated for the creation of “a separate, all-Black state within the continental U.S.” in his insistent document Prophetic Liberator of the Coloured Race.
Nationalist movements were the largest ones historically, and an economic base always accompanied them. Cronon misunderstood that the economic foundation, which enhanced the push for independence, was the main reason the masses followed Garvey. How Capitalism Underdeveloped Black America indicates that neither private industry nor the government would employ African Americans, so they had to create economic opportunities for themselves. Therefore, Garvey’s movement complemented the economic self-help practices of the black community.
Garvey’s Opposition
When Cronon discusses African American leadership and Garvey’s program, he is critical of both. The author not only blames Garvey for what he deems as Garvey’s inability to institute his program successfully, but also ascribes blame to African American leaders, namely W.E.B. Dubois, A. Philip Randolph, and Chandler Owen. The author asserts that the constant opposition from African American leadership greatly contributed to the decline of “Black Moses.”
The “Garvey Must Go” campaign seems to support Cronon’s explanation for Garvey’s decline. This movement developed after the courts indicted Garvey for mail fraud in 1923. Eight prominent African American leaders and business professionals wrote an anti-Garvey letter to Attorney General Harry M. Daugherty. Richard B. Moore indicates that the letter requested Daugherty to “use his full influence… to disband and extirpate this vicious movement and speedily push the government’s case against Marcus Garvey…” Business persons John Nail, Julia Coleman, and Harry Pace signed the letter; NAACP officers William Pickens and Robert Bagnall, and newspaper men George Harris, Robert Abbott, and Chandler Owen helped write it.
Oppression, Racism Misunderstood
Garvey certainly had differences with several African American leaders, but the people loved him so much that he did not need the oppositional black leadership. Furthermore, this group lacked the power to cause Garvey’s decline. For example, although socialist newspaper editor, Chandler Owen, went against his socialistic principles when he asked Daugherty to remove Garvey, Kenneth O’Reilly informs us that J. Edgar Hoover of the General Intelligence Division (GID) also intended to remove Owen. Like Daugherty, Hoover detested any “black dissident who challenged second-class citizenship.” Owen and his cohorts embarrassingly displayed their political naivety by writing that anti-Garvey letter, but it is clear they had no power.
Garvey attracted numerous common, working people as he preached racial pride and cohesiveness. Garvey insisted that all Africans will free themselves from oppression through education and business enterprises. As a result of his mass appeal and emphasis on black independence, Garvey made enemies of those who believed it was their duty to control African Americans. Cronon failed to consider this American cultural trend. The fight to achieve group independence in a society that insists on impeding it has been the ongoing struggle for Africans since they arrived to America.
Cronon Never Considers Government
Although Cronon probably did not have access to government files, he should have understood the function of powerful institutions in an unjust society. According to Kenneth O’Reilly’s Racial Matters – The FBI’s Secret File on Black America…, Garvey’s downfall occurred because of government surveillance programs. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) headed by William J. Burns and J. Edgar Hoover’s GID targeted Garvey. Burns thought of Garvey as “the most prominent Negro agitator in the world…,” and to reassure his superiors he told them: “…we have been ‘on’ him.”
O’Reilly also explains that because Garvey was the most radical black person in America, Hoover decided to place Garvey “where he can peruse his past activities behind the four walls of the Atlanta clime” (jail). Consequently, in 1923, the GID secured an indictment against Garvey on mail fraud with faulty and seemingly planted evidence. The courts found Garvey guilty, and after approximately two years in jail (1925-1927), President Coolidge deported him.
Impact of Garveyism
Although Cronon criticizes Garvey throughout his study, he mentions that several years after Garvey’s deportation, his strongest critics believed he was an honest man, who neither stole money nor received a high income. Until his death in 1940, Garvey tirelessly worked to upgrade people of African descent. He also left a remarkable impression on black America.
According to The Autobiography of Malcolm X, Reverend Earl Little, Malcolm’s father, was a Garveyite. In the book Malcolm recalls the times his father took him to UNIA meetings where members often chanted, “Africa for Africans!” As an adult Malcolm joined the Nation of Islam, an organization that called for a separate, black nation. Molefi Asante, the great philosopher of today, based his theory of Afrocentricity on Garveyism. Asante thinks that Garvey’s program “…was the most perfect… and brilliant ideology of liberation in the first half of the 20th century.”
Sources:
- Asante, Molefi Kete. Afrocentricity. Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, Inc., 1988.
- Cronon, David E. Black Moses: The Story of Marcus Garvey. Madison, Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press, 1987.
- Cruse, Harold. Crisis of the Negro Intellectual. New York: Quill, 1984.
- Garvey, Marcus, Jr. Marcus Garvey and the Vision of Africa. Ed. John Henrik Clarke. New York: Vintage Books, 1974.
- Haley, Alex. The Autobiography of Malcolm X. New York: Ballantine Books, 1964.
- Manning, Marable. Black American Politics. London: Thetford Press, 1985.
- --- How Capitalism Underdeveloped Black America. Boston, Ma: South End Press, 1984.
- Martin, Tony. Marcus Garvey and the Vision of Africa. Ed. John Henrik Clarke. New York: Vintage Books, 1974.
- Moore, Richard B. Marcus Garvey and the Vision of Africa. Ed. John Henrik Clarke. New York: Vintage Books, 1974.
- Moses, Wilson. The Golden Age of Black Nationalism, 1850-1925. NY/Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978.
- O’Reilly, Kenneth. “Racial Matters,” The FBI’s Secret File on Black America, 1960-1972. New York: The Free Press, 1990.
William Cook - Mr. Cook is a graduate of Hunter College of the City University of New York. He is pursuing a Ph.D in History and Education.
