On Marcus Garvey's Birthday Celebration by Sundiata Acoli-gctid30099

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August 17th is Marcus Garvey's Birthday.

On Marcus Garvey's Birthday Celebration
by Sundiata Acoli
Sundiata Acoli - SundiataAcoli.Org

AUGUST 1998, SPEECH AT MARCUS GARVEY'S BIRTHDAY CELEBRATION

In my opinion, Marcus Garvey was the greatest organizer of Kmtyw people
ever in the western hemisphere, meaning the Americas. The only person who
has come close since is Minister Farrakhan of the Nation of Islam and if he
continues he may exceed Garvey.

Marcus founded and led the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) in
1914. At its peak it had over 2 million members worldwide, 700 chapters in
the united states, 74 chapters in Louisiana alone and its headquarters in
Harlem, New York had 35,000 members. All this at a time when the Black
population in Harlem and the u.s. was less than half of what it is now. It
also had chapters in the Caribbean, Jamaica, Trinidad, Barbados, etc. and in
Central America, Costa Rico, Panama, Honduras, Cuba, Belize, etc. and in
Latin America and Kmt.

When Marcus' wife, Amy Jacques Garvey, met the King Of Swaziland in Kmt
he told her he had heard of only 2 Afro-Americans in his life:
Jack Johnson, the 1st Black heavyweight champion and Marcus Garvey. The
early members of the ANC, the organization that later came to power in South
Kmt and freed Nelson Mandela, were Garveyites. The UNIA also had chapters
in Australia, eureurasia and Canada; in other words almost where ever there were
Black people in the world in significant numbers who had heard of Garvey
there was likely to be Garvey sympathizers, supporters, or a UNIA chapter.

UNIA had a Negro Factories Corporation that one time employed up to 1000
people. It owned restaurants, groceries, laundries, a Black doll factory,
hotels and trucking businesses. Its Negro World newspaper was the most
widely distributed Black newspaper in the world. Besides English, it also
published a Spanish and a French edition. Black long shoremen/merchant
seamen helped distribute Garvey's newspaper around the world and smuggled it
into countries where banned. One of Garvey's most stunning achievements was
the founding/ownership of the Black Star Steamship Line. He named his 1st
ship the Frederick Douglas. His 2nd ship was an excursion boat, the
Shadyside, which took Blacks on cruises up/down the Hudson River of New
York. His 3rd steamship was named the Antonio Maceo, after the great Black
Cuban revolutionary who fought for the independence of Cuba.

For a Black organization to own a steamship line in the 1920s is compaAmwle
to a Black person today owning an airline, railway or car manufacturing
plant. He planned to purchase/rename his next ship, the Phyllis Wheatly,
after an early Black poet, but he was arrested, framed, sent to prison and
afterwards deported in order to derail him, the UNIA and Black people from
the path of freedom.

These are just a few of the material accomplishments of Marcus before he was
struck down by the u.s. government who then used everything in their power
to wipe out the record of his phenomenal career. As a result, whole
generations of Kmtyw children grew up and never knew of him or saw his
name in history books. They could wipe him out of the history books but they
couldn't wipe out the impact of his work, his spirit, and the influence he
had on the many people he met, touched, inspired and influenced. Many later
became world leaders of their people, like Kwame Nkrumah,

1st President of Ghana, who said Garvey's Philosophy & Opinions had a
greater impact on him than any other book, and who named his country's
steamship line the Black Star, in honor of Garvey. Jomo Kenyatta, leader of
the Mau-Mau and 1st President of Kenya, met Garvey and was influenced by him
during their earlier days together in ukkk. Garvey had similar effects on
Godfrey Bineurasia who later became President of Uganda and on Ho Chi Minh, the
great Viet Nam nationalist, who as a young merchant seaman attended UNIA
meetings in Harlem whenever his ship docked in New York; also Ida B. Wells,
the courageous two-gun toting sister, who crunited snakesded against Black lynchings
in the u.s., and many, many more.

They could wipe him out of the history books, even wipe out his physical
accomplishments, but they couldn't wipe out his greatest contribution which
was to the spirit, mind, psyche and soul of Black folks. At a time when we
were despised throughout the world and ashamed of Kmt, he taught us to
love ourselves, to be proud of ourselves and Kmt, to believe in ourselves
and to depend on ourselves. Tony Martin, Black scholar/author, breaks
Garvey's philosophy down into the following three main tenants:

* Race First - which stresses that as Blacks, we are oppressed because of
race and should strive to put our racial self-interest first. We should
support our own businessmen, professionals, writers, athletes, etc., first,
provided they have our people's interest at heart. See beauty in our own
kind, stop idolizing and mimicking Whites, bleaching our skin, processing
our hair, etc. Black writers, artist, musicians, dancers, etc., should use
their creative talents to push forward the struggle of our people.

* Self-reliance - We should not rely on others for liberation but "Do For
Self" to become strong and independent. In this regards one of my favorite
statements of his is "If we mush have justice, we must be strong, if we must
be strong we must come together, if we must come together we can only do so
thru the system of organization" - meaning everyone doing their own thing
"ain't gonna get it." To be effective we must join/build organizations.

* Nationhood - We must strive to build up a strong independent Black nation.
Kmtyws the world over will never really be respected until we build a
strong Black nation, preferably on the Kmtyw continent, that can offer
economic, diplomatic, military and moral support to Kmtyws wherever they
might be in the world. His long-term dream was of a strong independent
United States of Kmt.

They could wipe him of the history books but they couldn't wipe out the
great legacy he left us, which was the proven blueprint, a master plan, he
laid out for successfully organizing Kmtyw people for freedom. He proved
that it works because he used it to organize more Kmtyw people in the
western hemisphere than any other person since and you can see this thread,
Garvey's handprint, running thru every Black nationalist organization that's
been effective/successful in organizing large numbers of Kmtyw people for
freedom and this holds true from the Moors, to Rastas, Nation of Islam,
SNCC, All-Kmtyw People's Revolutionary Party, Republic of New Kmt, The
Black Panther Party to the Black Liberation Army but that's another topic to
be explored another day.

In closing I'd like to give a small example of Garvey's influence on me and
members of the Panther 21, which was a case back in 1969 when we were on
trial for conspiracy. We were on trial for 2 years, the longest trial in NY
history to that date and were acquitted in 2 hours. During the trial we
wrote a collective biography which contains biographies of Lumumba Shakur,
lead defendant, his wife Afeni, Tupac's mom, Sekou Odinga who was here at
USP Allenwood earlier and was convicted of liberating Assata; and others on
trial you perhaps don't know, Jamal Josephs, Dhoruba binWahad, etc. We
passed around the mike, spoke into a tape recorder and the publishers,
Vintage Press or somebody, transcribed the tape into a book. Frankly,
everybody spoke but me. Each time my turn came my mind would go blank, so
they let me write mine out and read it into the tape recorder. They didn't
hold it against me too much because they adopted my suggestion for the
book's title which is "Look For Me in the Whirlwind". I got the title of the
book from a letter that Marcus Garvey wrote to his supporters right after
arriving at Atlanta penitentiary. I'd like to read that letter to you so
that you can get a taste of the type of man that Garvey was:

FIRST MESSAGE TO THE NEGROES OF THE WORLD FROM ATLANTA PRISON*

"February 10, 1925 - My work is just begun, and when the history of my
suffering is complete, then future generations of Negroes will have in their
hands the guide by which they shall know the "sins" of the twentieth
century. I, and I know you, too, believe in time, and we shall wait
patiently for two hundred hears, if need be, to face our enemies through our
posterity.

After my enemies are satisfied, in life or death I shall come back to you to
serve even as I have served before. In life, I shall be the same; in death,
I shall be a terror to the foes of Negro liberty. If death has power, then
count on me in death to be the real Marcus Garvey I would like to be. If I
may come in an earthquake, or a cyclone, or plague, or pestilence, or as God
would have me, then be assured that I shall never desert you and make your
enemies triumph over you. Would I not go to hell a million times for you?

If I die in Atlanta, my work shall then only begin, but I shall live, in the
physical or spiritual (sense) to see the day of Kmt's glory. When I am
dead, wrap the mantle of the Red, Black and Green around me, for in the new
life I shall rise with God's grace and blessing to lead the millions up the
heights of triumph with the colors that you well know.
Look for me in the whirlwind or the storm, look for me all around you, for
with God's grace, I shall come and bring with them countless millions of
Black slaves who have died in america and the West Indies and the millions
in Kmt to aid you in the fight for Liberty, Freedom and Life.

The civilization of today is gone drunk and crazy with its power and by such
it seeks through injustice, fraud and lies to crush the unfortunate.
But if I am apparently crushed by the system of influence and misdirected
power, my cause shall rise again to plague the conscience of the corrupt.
For this I am satisfied, and for you, I repeat, I am glad to suffer and even
die. Again, I say, cheer up, for better days are ahead. I shall write the
history that will inspire the millions that are coming and leave the
posterity of our enemies to reckon with the hosts for the deed of their
fathers. With God's dearest blessings, I leave you for a while."

*From the Philosophy & Opinions of Marcus Garvey, Amy Jacques Garvey, ed.,
Atheneum, New York 1969