By Dan Rapu
Marcus Mosiah Garvey
Born: August 17, 1887
Died: – June 10, 1940
Jamaican-born Marcus Mosiah Garvey Jr aka “Black Moses” was one of the most influential leaders that the global Black community has ever had.
He was leader of the
Pan-Africanism movement, which sought to unify and connect people of African
descent worldwide. Garvey was the founder and first President-General of the
Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League (UNIA),
through which he declared himself Provisional President of Africa.
In 1920, Garvey established the
Negro Factories Corporation and offered stock for African Americans to buy. He
raised one million dollars for the project.
It generated income and provided jobs by its numerous enterprises, including a chain of grocery stores and restaurants, steam laundry, tailor shop, dressmaking shop, millinery store (clothing, fashion, hats, accessories, etc.), publishing house, and a doll factory.
1. If we as a people realized the greatness from which we came we would be less likely to disrespect ourselves.
2. The world today is indebted to us for the benefits of civilization. They stole our arts and sciences from Africa. Then why should we be ashamed of ourselves?
3. For five years the Universal Negro Improvement Association has been advocating the cause of Africa for the Africans—that is, that the Negro peoples of the world should concentrate upon the object of building up for themselves a great nation in Africa.
4. It falls to our lot to tear off the shackles that bind Mother Africa. Can you do it?
5. Africans are raising the cry of “AFRICA FOR THE AFRICANS”, those at home and those abroad.
6. No one knows when the hour of Africa’s Redemption cometh. It is in the wind. It is coming. One day, like a storm, it will be here.
7. One God, One Aim, One Destiny. (Motto of the UNIA)
8. Let the sky and God be our limit, and Eternity our measurement. There is no height to which we cannot climb by using the active intelligence of our own minds. Mind creates and as much as we desire in nature we can have through the creation of our own minds.
9. Melanin currently worth over $380 a gram more than gold that makes Black people black;
10. If death has power, then count on me in death to be the real person I would like to be. I may come in an earthquake, or 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?
11. Who to tell what tomorrow will bring forth? Did they not laugh at Moses, Christ, and Mohammed? Was there not a Carthage, Greece, and Rome? We see and have changes every day, so pray, work, be steadfast and be not dismayed.
12. Hail! United States of Africa-free! Country of the brave black man’s liberty; State of greater nationhood thou hast won, A new life for the race is just begun.
13. Chance has never yet satisfied the hope of a suffering people.
14. Africa has produced countless numbers of men and women, in war and in peace, whose lustre and bravery outshine that of any other people. Then why not see good and perfection in ourselves?
15. Climb ye the heights of liberty and cease not in well doing until you have planted the banner of the Red, the Black, and the Green on the hilltops of Africa.
16. The Black skin is not a badge of shame, but rather a glorious symbol of national greatness.
17. Ideals of liberty, freedom, and righteousness do not prosper in the 20th century except they coincide with oil, rubber, gold, diamond, coal, iron, sugar, coffee, and such other minerals and products desired by the privileged, capitalists, and leaders who control the system of government.
18. Somebody said (but if it were not said, then I say it now), that the laws of our civilization have but one interpretation for the poor and ignorant and for those of wealth and power, there are many interpretations, hence the poor are generally convicted on the one, while the rich are freed on the many interpretations.
19. 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 me countless millions of black slaves who have died in America and the West Indies.
20. Be defeated; hence to me, to be once defeated is to find cause for an everlasting struggle to reach the top.
21. Every student of political science, every student of political economy, every student of economics knows that the race can only be saved through a solid industrial foundation; that the race can only be saved through political independence. Take away industry from a race, take away political freedom from a race and you have a slave race.
22. Let no voice but your own speak to you from the depths. Let no influence but your own raise you in time of peace and time of war. Hear all, but attend only that which concerns you.
23. Whipped. It annoys me to be defeated; hence to me, to be once defeated is to find cause for an everlasting struggle to reach the top.
24. Was the crying voice from the grave that said, ‘We have suffered for 250 years for your day and for your time; we expect something from you at this hour.’
25. The race needs workers at this time, not plagiarists, sopists and mere imitators; but men and women who are able to create, to originate and improve, and thus make an independent racial contribution to the world and civilisation.
26. There is no strength but that which is destructive, because man has lost his virtues, and only respects force, which he himself cannot counteract.
27. Prohibition is to abstain from intoxicating liquor, as it makes us morbid and sometimes drunk. But we get drunk every day, nevertheless, not so much by the strength of what we sip from the cup, but that which we eat, the water we drink, and the air we inhale, which at fermentation conspire at eventide to make us so drunk and tired that we lose control of ourselves and fall asleep. Everybody is a drunkard, and if we were to enforce real prohibition we should all be dead.
28. To have built up a new organization, which was not purely political, among Negroes in America was a wonderful feat, for the Negro politician does not allow any other kind of organization within his race to thrive.
29. If you have no confidence in self, you are twice defeated in the race of life.
30. With confidence, you have won even before you have started.
31. Men, there is much to live for, and there is much to die for. The man, the race of nation that is not prepared to risk life itself for the possession of an ideal, shall lose that ideal. If you, I repeat, must be free, you yourselves must strike the blow.
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