The American Branch Of The United Negro Improvement Association

Marcus Garvey spoke of having pride in African history and culture therefore a crowd of 25,000 people from all over the world came to hear him say his speech. Many found his words inspiring, and encouraging but not everyone. Some established black leaders found his separatist philosophy dangerous. W.E.B Du Bois, a prominent black leader and officer of the N.A.A.C.P. called Garvey,” the most dangerous enemy of the Negro race in American”. Garvey felt that Du Bois was an agent of the white elites so he felt that he was a enemy. But under surveillance W.E.B Du Bois wasn’t the worst or good adversary of Garvey. Soon history would reveal F.B.I fixation on ruining everything Garvey has build for his radical ideas. Hoover felt threatened by him, fearing he was inciting blacks across the country to stand up in militant defiance. That’s when Hoover referred Garvey as a “Notorious negro agitator” out of fear. Several desperately years finding ways to find personal information on him, eventually going so far to find a black F.B.I agent in 1919 in order to infiltrate Garvey’s ranks to spy on him. They placed spies (traps) in the U.N.I.A to get them scared. They sabotaged the Black Star Line by damaging the engines

Washington’s Up From Slavery, Garvey pledged to organize Blacks throughout the world with an agenda of Black unity and pride. Moreover, Garvey achieved his greatest influence in the Untied States where there was a growing ambition among Blacks for justice, wealth, and a sense of community. From the time of World War I, up until the mid-1920’s, Gravey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association(UNIA) was the largest Black organization in African-American history. An estimated million men and women from the United States, the Caribbean, and

African-Americans attempted to establish themselves and prove to whites that they were capable citizens. Marcus Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association emphasized racial pride and economic self-help, and Booker T. Washington, leading spokesperson for the plight of African-Americans, told blacks to ignore racial slurs and inferiority comments while working to build self-dignity and worth. Washington believed that in order to identify themselves, they had to cooperate with whites and gain respect over time. In Addition, many African-Americans began to define themselves as a race in the nineteenth century by leaving white churches and creating their own. They worshiped according to their own customs, chose leaders, managed religious affairs, and established a lifestyle of their own. The African-Americans as a race attempted to define themselves as dignified, economically independent citizens.

By 1919 the UNIA reached its peek with about 2,000,000 members and hundreds of branches worldwide. Marcus also founded the Negro Factories Corporation (NFC) which its purpose was to promote black economic independence by providing money and labor to black business owners. It also helped to build factories in the United States, Africa, Central America, and the West Indies. He also founded the first and, to this day, the largest black-owned multinational businesses, the Black Star Line (BSL), which focused on purchasing boats and serving an international shipping triangle that would return black people to their homeland of Africa. The shipping triangle revolved around the United States, West Indies, and Africa. Marcus Garvey not only founded companies or groups, but he also founded the Negro World in 1918, which was the leading black weekly and soon had 50,000 readers in the United States, Latin America, the West Indies, and Africa. Due to it’s content of black equality and freedom, the British and the French banned it from their African colonies. Even leaders who did not agree with Garvey’s ideas appreciated his efforts to build black pride and political independence (Kranz, Koslow 86).

The African American Music Association, Inc. (AAMA) was established to preserve, protect, promote and to foster the continued development of African American music and the legacy of those who compose, record and perform the music. The AAMA is a tax-exempt, 501(c) (3) entity. It is organized exclusively for charitable, cultural and educational purposes. Its primary goal is to offer programs and activities to the community that will assure a better quality of life for persons pursuing performing arts as a career or avocation. The “total well-being” of the artist, through human and personal development is the overall goal.

According to Marcus Garvey, the “Negro’s greatest enemy” were white people and politicians. Essentially, politicians, of every race, were blocking his efforts. Garvey communicated that there was no solution to this problem, unless black people created their own country. This would have given them economical and social freedom. Since God was their inspiration, it was always intended that everyone was free, and not was not to be enslaved by others. Garvey thought that no one should ever feel superior, when it came to race. Although, Garvey did not outright convey who the “enemy” was, it can be interpreted that white people were the enemy.

The NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) was founded in the year of 1909 in New York City. This association is considered the nation’s biggest and oldest civil rights organizations. It was formed in response to the continuing terrible practice of lynching during that period. Lynching was being practiced during this time and affected many people just because of their skin color. The NAACP was made by white and black citizens “[fought] for social justice” (NAACP History).

The 1920’s were a time of change for African Americans. They were beginning to retain a sense of pride in their background and culture, were becoming more independent socially and economically, and were becoming more militant. Part of this was because of the Great Migration, in which a proliferation of African Americans moved from the Southern states to the Northern states, and the excessive levels of racism and prejudice they faced during the process. African Americans were really starting to make their voices and identities prevalent, especially through movements like the Harlem Renaissance and Marcus Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA). This mentality of independence and militance that African Americans adopted which is represented through the actions of Ossian Sweet is what makes up the 1920s cultural construct of the “New Negro” which allowed me to understand the realness and effectiveness of cultural constructs.

In 2010, the University of North Carolina (the “University”) launched an investigation into the department of African and Afro-American (AFAM) studies, in which several athletes were given special treatment in “paper classes” (Hartlyn and Andrews 1). In July of 2011, a student athlete, Michael McAdoo, filed a lawsuit against the University and the NCAA due to his ineligibility to play football. In the complaint, the student attached a paper for his Swahili 403 course in which evidence of plagiarism was found (“Evidence of Academic”). In addition, some players had been receiving grades in classes that did not exist in the AFAM department (Lyall). This fraudulent activity attracted media attention to the University and Karen Gil, the Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, launched an investigation to analyze the previous academic years ranging from 2007 to 2011 (“Evidence of Academic”). The findings from the review committee included unauthorized grade changes, forged faculty signatures on grade rolls and limited to no class time (the “Crisis”).

During the postwar transformation in racial demands, African Americans were starting to voice their discontent and demanded dignity. Through the long years of slavery and racial segregation, white Southerners produced and promoted cruel stereotypes about African Americans. For example, white Southerners would describe African Americans as inferior, rapist, unclean, unintelligent, and oversexed. White Southerners often defined African Americans as “inherently different from Caucasians and […] this hereditary inferiority, rendered them unsuitable for free association with white society” (McMillen 1971, 161). African Americans were considered either clowns or savages, with no area in between. Simply put, African Americans were deemed profoundly

After reviewing the materials provide on Marcus Garvey, I have concluded that Marcus Garvey had an huge impact on the African American community. After viewing the video, I was able to form a visual picture of how Garvey form into a charismatic leader that we learn about in history. During childhood, Garvey was taught that he was very special from his mother and that you are on his own in the world by his father. As a teenager, Garvey inspired racial inequality when the father of his white friend refused to let them see each other again.

The social equality development was a battle by African Americans in the mid-1950's to late 1960's to accomplish Civil Rights equivalent to those of whites, incorporating break even with circumstance in livelihood, lodging, and training, and in addition the privilege to vote, the privilege of equivalent access to open offices, and the privilege to be free of racial segregation. No social or political development of the twentieth century has had as significant an impact on the lawful and political foundations of the United States. This development looked to reestablish to African Americans the privileges of citizenship ensured by the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, which had been dissolved by segregationist Jim Crow Laws in the South. It

In many ways it could be argued that Marcus Garvey was the most significant African American civil rights leader of this time because of his role in tackling the social issues African American’s faced. He aimed to improve the lives of African Americans by encouraging them to take control of their own affairs and education. His role surrounding this issue is illustrated by his founding of the UNIA. This Universal Negro Improvement Association was an organisation dedicated to racial pride, economic self sufficiency and the formation of an independent black nation in Africa. Through this and the magazine the ‘Negro World’ he urged African Americans to be proud of their race, and argued “a people without the knowledge of their past history, origin and culture is like a tree without roots”. It has been said that through Garvey’s dedication to social improvement for his race he managed to capture the imagination of many blacks for whom the American Dream was a dirty joke.

However, his influences helped form Halem into the social and cultural characteristics during the 20th century. Overtime, another eminent African-American leader, Martin Luther King Jr. emerged to lead the Civil Rights Movement. Garvey and King had similar intentions to help Africans. King and others advocated social changes through non-violent ways to conquer segregation and end racism. “U.N.I.A. still survives today and Garvey left a legacy of racial pride and identification with a glorious African heritage for African Americans” (Jibrillant 2015).

Marcus Garvey was important because he aided in inspiring a mass movement amongst African Americans. Garvey make efforts to show African Americans economic empowerment meanwhile sharing the importance of taking part in politics and have greater impacts. Along with these many accomplishments, his biggest accomplishment was becoming the founder of the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League in Jamaica. Garvey came to the United States in 1916 and launched the New York Division of the UNIA the following year. This association started off with merely thirteen members and exponentially grew to approximately 3500 members. Garvey has reached new heights of power within his career in the late 1920s when he headed an international convention in Liberty Hall, containing frequent delegates in attendance from 25 countries. Garvey also led a parade of over 50,000 throughout all of Harlem.