Marcus Garvey Lives!

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This week we installed a Marcus Garvey quote (African for the Africans...at home and abroad!) over our entrance/exit at Black Food Bookstore and Culture Shop. It is something we had planned for quite some time and we're pleased with the outcome.

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Marcus Mosiah Garvey was born on August 17, 1887 in St. Ann's Bay, Saint Ann, Jamaica. Garvey, more than anyone, contributed to the ideas advancing the existence of African people as a dispersed nation to be liberated from imperialism and served by our own all-African government in Africa.

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In 1914, Garvey organized the Universal Negro Improvement Association in Jamaica. At the time, the UNIA was conceived as a fraternal reform association that would work for the upliftment of African people through the creation of educational institutions and industrial opportunities. However, it was only after his location to Harlem in 1916 that the organization began to achieve rapid growth.

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By 1920, there were more than a thousand UNIA branches and divisions around the world. In August of 1920 at its first convention, held in Madison Square Garden in New York, more than 25,000 Africans from Africa and virtually everywhere else Africans had been forcibly dispersed, came together in a month-long display of unity and organization never before witnessed by Africans or anyone else.

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The UNIA, which would become the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League, was comprised of members and followers who were mostly working class. This was one of the most important reasons for its strength, estimated at being from 6 to 11 million members and followers.

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Source: Burning Spear Newspaper