Marcus Garvey - Jamaican Leader and an Inspirational Figure for Civil Rights Activists

Introduction

In the late 1910s and 1920s, the United States was engulfed in an atmosphere of racial violence. As dire as it sounds, it was one of the worst periods of its time. In these circumstances, the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) was formed by Marcus Garvey, who envisioned an enthusiastic organization of people of African descent all around the world. Following the end of World War I, the movement accelerated its efforts to mobilize African Americans to avoid integration in favor of Black Nationalist goals. The campaign built upon Back-to-Africa movements of the late 1800s, which encouraged people of color to look to Africa both as an ancestral homeland and a hope for a better future (Lewis, 1988).

Marcus Garvey - Jamaican Leader and an Inspirational Figure for Civil Rights Activists

The primary factor that distinguished the UNIA from other civil rights movements was its aim to deliver the message of believing in and having pride in one's identity while advocating separation from white society. As racial pride was an essential factor to consider, this movement also promoted the migration of Africans to the African continent. At its peak, the UNIA owned stores, restaurants, a printing plant, and other businesses mainly in the New York City area and had introduced the Black Star Line, a shipping company formed to trade with Africa and transport passengers to the continent. Unfortunately, Garvey’s movement deteriorated after he was found guilty of mail fraud and served two years in federal prison from 1925 to 1927. He was deported upon his release from prison and sent to London, England, where he spent his last years. While it had been a significant section of a mass movement in the early 1920s, the UNIA continued to deteriorate without Garvey, though it still exists in some form in the twenty-first century (Grant, 2008).

Garvey's Vision for Liberia and the African Economy

Garvey planned for African Americans to settle in Liberia and strengthen the African economy. This idea gained more recognition in 1924 and particularly resonated among his supporters in Arkansas. As the movement needed contributions to excel in its aims and perform effectively, Garvey called for donations for colonization through the African Redemption Fund in 1924. He instantly received fifteen-dollar grants each from UNIA divisions in rural Arkansas. Journalists wrote to the Negro World expressing their beliefs and hopes for the reclamation of Africa. The Blytheville (Mississippi County) divisions of the UNIA sent two representatives to the 1924 international convention in Harlem to investigate the probability of a large party emigrating to Liberia (Hill, 1983).

The Impact of Garvey's Movement in Arkansas and Beyond

The impact of Garvey expanded far beyond the communities that had organized UNIA divisions. The movement’s newspaper, the Negro World, was distributed widely in the black community in Arkansas as early as 1919. The Negro World noted a man in Fort Smith (Sebastian County) as one of the top forty-two distributors of the paper worldwide. When Garvey faced legal trouble and imprisonment, numerous letters, petitions, and telegrams from various locations poured into Washington DC and New York, offering support for Garvey. A count of those attending mass meetings of support for Garvey or signing petitions totaled 28,495 for Arkansas, a number higher than any other Southern state except Louisiana. Hundreds of contributions for Garvey’s legal defense fund came to New York from locations in Arkansas with and without UNIA divisions, with grants varying from five cents to a dollar (Vincent, 1971).

UNIA's Reach into the Southern United States

Most historians have handled the UNIA, with its headquarters in New York’s Harlem neighborhood, initially as a northern and urban movement. They often overlook the reality that many African Americans living in New York, such as in Pennsylvania, Philadelphia; Detroit, Michigan; and Illinois, Chicago in the 1920s, had newly arrived from the rural South. The UNIA, in fact, had significant membership in the South and especially in the cotton-producing states of the Arkansas Delta. The Back-to-Africa movement had been remarkably steady in Arkansas in the late 1800s. Dozens of “Exodus clubs” were established in rural communities, and around 700 black Arkansans emigrated to Liberia. Additionally, in the 1890s and 1900s, more than two dozen black Arkansans left as missionaries to Africa. A period later, the Garvey campaign capitalized on this interest in the African region (Cronon, 1955).

The Organization of UNIA Divisions in Arkansas

Approximately forty-six divisions of the UNIA were organized in Arkansas. Most of them were established in rural areas of the Delta between 1921 and 1924. Monroe County had seven, Mississippi County had eight sections, and Phillips County had six divisions. Other Delta counties had more than one division. In Arkansas, there was one division each in Sebastian, Ouachita, Faulkner, Sevier, and Lincoln counties. Strangely, no divisions were chartered in the counties with black-majority populations in southeastern Arkansas. It seems that the Arkansas UNIA divisions were developed instinctively by local leaders. During his movement, Marcus Garvey never visited the state of Arkansas nor the Mississippi Delta region. Sections were often organized around churches, and a few UNIA leaders were parsons, such as E. B. “Britt” McKinney, who became vice president of the Southern Tenant Farmers’ Union in the 1930s. Other known UNIA leaders were sharecroppers, farm laborers, or tenant farmers (Martin, 1976).

William LeVan Sherrill: A Key Leader in Garvey's Movement

Garvey’s movement flourished, with an additional Arkansas connection in William LeVan Sherrill, one of the critical leaders of the action. Sherrill was born in Altheimer (Jefferson County) and graduated from Philander Smith College in 1917. After his service in the army in World War I, he resided in Chicago and then Baltimore, Maryland, where Garvey heard him speak at a UNIA meeting and made Sherrill a part of the leadership team. At the international UNIA convention of 1922, Sherrill was elected as the organization’s delegate to the League of Nations in Geneva and given the title of Leader of American Negroes and Assistant President General.

Sherrill's Role and Garvey's Legacy

When Garvey went to prison in 1925, Sherrill became the acting president of the UNIA. Garvey later turned on Sherrill for failing to visit him or send money while in prison. In a special meeting of the organization held in March 1926, Garvey charged Sherrill with dishonesty and with wasting the UNIA’s funds, subsequently removing Sherrill from his offices. Ironically, in following years, Sherrill again became the highest official in the UNIA. As Garvey died in 1940, Sherrill gave a panegyric at the unveiling of a bust of Garvey in his Jamaican homeland in 1956. By this time, the campaign had no apparent existence in Arkansas, but its legacy continued to inspire future generations of civil rights activists (Lewis, 1988).

References

• Cronon, E. D. (1955). Black Moses: The Story of Marcus Garvey and the Universal Negro Improvement Association. University of Wisconsin Press.
• Grant, C. (2008). Negro with a Hat: The Rise and Fall of Marcus Garvey. Oxford University Press.
• Hill, R. A. (1983). The Marcus Garvey and Universal Negro Improvement Association Papers. University of California Press.
• Lewis, R. (1988). Marcus Garvey: Anti-Colonial Champion. Taylor & Francis.
• Martin, T. (1976). Race First: The Ideological and Organizational Struggles of Marcus Garvey and the Universal Negro Improvement Association. Majority Press.
• Vincent, T. (1971). Black Power and the Garvey Movement. Ramparts Press.