The Marcus Garvey and Universal Negro Improvement Association Papers, Vol. II: August 1919-August 1920

by Marcus Garvey, Robert Abraham Hill (Editor)

Overview

This second volume of Robert A. Hill's monumental ten-volume survey of Marcus Mosiah Garvey's extraordinary mass movement of black social protest covers a period of rapid growth. The Universal Negro Improvement Association, with its "Africa for the Africans" program of racial nationalism, rapidly gained in strength in the aftermath of Garvey's successful meeting in Carnegie Hall in August 1919, and culminated in its spectacular First International Convention of the Negro Peoples of the World in 1920. Hill has compiled a wealth of archival documents and original manuscripts, with descriptive source notes and explanatory footnotes. He provides a fascinating account of the spread of Garvey's movement, which was seen-and feared-by officials in America, Europe, and colonial governments in Africa and the Caribbean as the major ideological force promoting radical consciousness among blacks. Hill continues the comprehensive outline begun in Volume I of Garvey's Black Star Line, the all-black merchant marine, and documents the beginnings of Garvey's proposals for massive loans to the Liberian government. These controversial financial schemes led to Garvey's reputation as a swindler, and Volume II details the first charges of fraud. The federal investigation of Garvey broadened and deepened during 1919--1920, with J. Edgar Hoover--then an assistant to the attorney general--continuing to search tor grounds to deport Garvey. Included here are numerous repons from government agents and informers, which provide a valuable ponrait of day-to-day UNIA operations. Volume II ends with the UNIA's 1920 convention, presented by Garvey as a turning point in the history of black-white relations. The legislation and the elective offices produced by that convention were intended to form a virtual government in exile for Africa, fulfilling Garvey's ambition to practice statecraft and create the symbols of black nationhood and sovereignty. This volume is the second of six that focus on America; the seventh and eighth focus on Africa, and the last two on the Caribbean. Hill has brought together far more than a portrait of a single intriguing historical figure. Garvey's movement was a mass social phenomenon, an Afro-American protest movement with strong links to African and Caribbean nationalism in the first decades of the twentieth century.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780520342231
Publisher:	University of California Press
Publication date:	09/01/2023
Series:	The Marcus Garvey and Universal Negro Improvement Association Papers , #2
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	784
File size:	16 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Robert A. Hill is director of the Marcus Garvey and Universal Negro Improvement Association Papers Project in the African Studies Center at the University of California, Los Angeles, where he is also Associate Professor of History.

Barbara Bair is associate editor of the American series of the Marcus Garvey and Universal Negro Improvement Association Papers Project and associate editor, with Robert Hill, of Marcus Garvey: Life and Lessons, a centennial companion volume to The Marcus Garvey and UNIA Papers.

Read an Excerpt

The Marcus Garvey and Universal Negro Improvement Association Papers, Vol. II

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By Marcus M. Garvey

University of California Press

Copyright © 1983 Marcus M. Garvey
All right reserved.
ISBN: 9780520050914

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W. E. B. Du Bois to Charles Evans Hughes,[en1] U.S. Secretary of StateW. E. B. Du Bois to Charles Evans Hughes,1 U.S. Secretary of State

NEW YORK , June 23, 1921

Sir:

In 1919 there was held in Paris the first Pan-African Congress. I am enclosing the resolutions which were passed by that Congress. These resolutions were brought to the attention of Colonel House of the American Peace Commission and received his general approval.

A second Pan-African Congress will be held in August and September at the time and place indicated by the bulletins enclosed.2 I am writing to appr[i]se you of these facts because of some public misapprehension of our aims and purposes. The Pan-African Congress is for conference, acquaintanceship and general organization. It has nothing to do with the so called Garvey movement and contemplates neither force nor revolution in its program. We have had the cordial cooperation of the French, Belgi[an] and Portuguese governments and we hope to get the attention and sympathy of all colonial powers.

If there is any further information as to our objects and plans which you would wish to have I will be very glad to write further or to come to Washington andconfer with any official whom you might designate. I am, sir, with great respect Very sincerely yours,

W. E. B. DU BOIS

DNA, RG 59, 540C2/original. TLS, recipient's copy. On Crisis stationery.

Enclosure :
Resolutions Passed at the 1919 Pan-African Congress

Paris, 19–21 February 1919

The Negroes of the world in Pan-African Congress assembled at Paris February 19, 20, 21, 1919, demand, in the interest of justice and humanity and for strenghtening the forces of civilisation, that immediate steps be taken to develop the 200[,]000[,]000 of Negroes and Negroids; to this end, they propose:

A.—That the allied and associated Powers establish a code of laws "for the international protection of the natives of Africa," similar to the proposed international code for Labor.

B.—That the League of Nations establish a permanent Bureau charged with the special duty of "overseeing the application of these laws to the political, social and economic welfare of the natives."

The Negroes of the world demand that hereafter the natives of Africa and the Peoples of African descent be "governed according to the following principles."

1.—The Land : The land and its natural resources shall be held in trust for the natives and at all times they shall have effective ownership of as much land as they can profitably develop.

2.—Capital : The investment of capital and granting of concessions shall be so regulated as to prevent the exploitation of the natives and the exhaustion of the natural wealth of the country. Concessions shall always be limited in time and subject to State control. The growing social needs of the natives must be regarded and the profits taxes for the social and material benefit of the natives.

3.—Labor : Slavery and corporal punishment shall be abolished and forced labor except in punishment for crime; and the general conditions of labor shall be prescribed and regulated by the State.

4.—Education : It shall be the right of every native child to learn to read and write his own language, and the language of the trustee nation, at public expense, and to be given technical instruction in some branch of industry. The State shall also educate as large a number of natives as possible in higher technical and cultural training and maintain a corps of native teachers.

5.—Med[i]cine and Hygiene : It shall be recognized that human existence in the tropics calls for special safeguards and a scientific system of public hygiene. The State shall be responsible for medical care and sanitary conditions without discouraging collective and individual initiative. A service created by the State shall provide physicians and hospitals, and shall spread the rules of hygiene by written and spoken word. As fast as possible the State will establish a native medical staff.

6.—The State : The natives of Africa must have the right to participate in the government as fast as their development permits in conformity with the principle

that the government exists for the natives, and not the natives for the government. They shall at once be allowed to participate in local and tribal government according to ancient usage, and this participation shall gradually extend, as education and experience proceeds, to the higher offices of State, to the end that, in time, Africa be ruled by consent of the Africans.

7.—Culture and Religion : No particular religion shall be imposed and no particular form of human culture. There shall be liberty of conscience. The uplift of the natives shall take into consideration their present condition and shall allow the utmost scope to racial genius, social inheritance and individual bent so long as these are not contrary to the best established principles of civilisation.

8.—Civilized Negroes : Wherever persons of African descent are civilized and able to meet the tests of surrounding culture, they shall be accorded the same rights as their fellow citizens; they shall not be denied on account of race or color a voice in their own government, justice before the courts and economic and social equality according to ability and desert.

9.—The League of Nations : Greater security of life and property shall be guaranteed the natives; international labor legislation shall cover the native workers as well as whites; they shall have equitable representation in all the international institutions of the League of Nations, and the participation of the blacks themselves in every domain of indeavour shall be encouraged in accordance with the declared object of article 19 of the League of Nations, to wit: "The well being and the development of these people constitute a sacred mission of civilisation and it is proper in establishing the League of Nations to incorporate therein pledges for the accomplishment of this mission."

Whenever it is proven that African natives are not receiving just treatment at the hands of any State or that any State deliberately excludes its civilized citizens or subjects of Negro descent from its body politic and cultural, it shall be the duty of the League of Nations to bring the matter to the attention of the civilized World.

For the Pan-African Congress, composed of 57 members from 15 countries, inhabited by 85 [,]000 [,]000 Negroes and persons of African descent—to wit :

United States 16 French West Indies and French Guiana 13 Haiti 7 France 7 Liberia 3   46 Spanish Colonies 2 Portuguese Colonies 1 Abyssinia 1

Saint-Domingue 1 England 1   6 English Africa 1 French Africa 1 Algeria 1 Egypt 1 Belgian Congo 1   5 Total 57

W. E. BURGHARDT DU BOIS,
Director[,] National Association for the Advancement of Colored People,
U.S.A., Secretary [of the Congress].

BLAISE DIAGNE,1
Deputy from Senegal, Commissioner
General charged with oversight of French colonial interests, President of the Congress.

DNA, RG 59, 540C2/original. PD. Portions translated from French.

Bulletins announcing the Second Pan-African Congress, March 1921
(Source : DNA, RG 59, Decimal file 540C2/original).

Continues...

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Excerpted from The Marcus Garvey and Universal Negro Improvement Association Papers, Vol. II by Marcus M. Garvey Copyright © 1983 by Marcus M. Garvey. Excerpted by permission.
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