Garvey’s 119th birthday celebration

In TT, the Afrikan Nationalist Patriotic Movement (ANPM) will mark this occasion with a cultural show as well as lectures on August 13 at the Belmont Community Centre, Jerningham Avenue, Belmont, from 3 pm to 8 pm.

According to Modibo Kambon Karamoko of the ANPM, Garvey was one of the most important African figures of the 20th century.

Garvey was born on August 17, 1887 in Jamaica. He was the youngest of 11 children born to Artisan Garvey Snr and his wife Sarah. The philosophy of Pan African nationalism came to Garvey when he saw the impoverished position of his fellow African people in Jamaica and as he travelled to other Caribbean countries, England and America. Garvey died in 1940.

Garvey was inspired by this quote from Booker T washington’s biography which propelled him to form a Negro Movement. washington said, “Come then my doom, if I may so call it, of being a race leader dawned upon me I asked, “Where is the black man’s government? where are his king and his kingdom? Where are his president, his country, and his ambassador, his army, his navy, his men of big affairs?” I could not find them and then I declared, “I will help to make them.”

Without wasting any time, Garvey formed the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) and African Communities League in 1914 and set out to fulfill his dreams. UNIA boasted of a membership of 6,000,000 members internationally. Garvey created in UNIA the Black Cross Nurses to take care of the sick and disabled Africans.

The Negro Factories Co-operation was formed which included a chain of groceries, restaurants, steam laundries, small scale industries and publishing house. The UNIA under the dynamic leadership of the Honourable Marcus Garvey founded two shipping lines, the Black Star Line and later the Black Cross Navigation Company. In order to propagate the philosophy of Pan Afrikan Nationalism, Garvey and the UNIA founded the weekly newspaper The Negro World which was distributed in America, England, Canada, Africa, the entire Caribbean and every corner of the world where Afrikcans lived at that particular point in time.

the UNIA under the leadership of Garvey was seen as a threat and so began to wage a terror campaign against the UNIA and the progressive works done by him.

The UNIA and Garvey told the African Diaspora to assist in the building of a powerful and united Africa, so that Africans the world over will be free and have a sense of international security.

One of Garvey’s statements to African people remains: ‘The greatest weapon against African people is disorganisation.’‘Africa for the Africans those at home and those abroad.’ ‘We have beautiful history, and we shall create another in the future that will astonish the world.’’

‘‘In a world of wolves, one should go armed and one of the most powerful defensive weapons within the reach of Africans is the practice of race first in all parts of the world.’

The two best books written on and about Garvey are Philosophy and Opinions of Marcus Garvey compiled by his second wife Amy Jacques Garvey and Dr Tony Martin’s Race First.

Among the performers scheduled to mark this occasion include: Kwame Bandele Mighty Composer, Brother Cazamba, and Children of Gayap. Lectures will be done by Karamoko and Ralph Cambell.