Black History Month
By: Karlee Kirking
Marcus Garvey
Born in Jamaica, Marcus Garvey (1887-1940) became a leader in the black nationalist movement.
Goals and Achievements
- He arrived in New York in 1916, and he founded the Negro World newspaper, an international shipping company called Black Star Line and the Negro Factories Corporation.
- He aimed to organize blacks everywhere but achieved his greatest impact in the United States, where he tapped into and enhanced the growing black aspirations for justice, wealth, and a sense of community.
- During World War I and the 1920s, his Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) was the largest black secular organization in African-American history. Possibly a million men and women from the United States, the Caribbean, and Africa belonged to it.
Impacts
Garvey’s movement was the first black attempt to join modern urban goals and mass organization. Although most subsequent leaders did not try to create black economic institutions as he had, Garvey had demonstrated to them that the urban masses were a potentially powerful force in the struggle for black freedom.
Bibliography
"Marcus Garvey." History.com. A&E Television Networks, n.d. Web. 13 Jan. 2015.