Marcus+Garvey

Marcus Garvey was born in 1887 in a small town in Jamaica. When he was older he moved away from Jamaica to Central America. There he discovered the harsh realities of racial discrimination. As he saw the world ride racism toward Blacks he tried to encourage workers to join unions to fight for better rights. When returning to Jamaica he was deeply distressed about his findings in Central America. Next he began the development of the Universal Negro Improvement Association. Garvey traveled the world, gaining members for the UNIA. In 1916 he moved headquarters to Harlem, New York. People were motivated by his speeches encouraging Blacks to have pride in their race. Marcus Garvey and the UNIA then began contacting officials in Liberia to try and gain land. His main goal for UNIA was to try and gather Blacks from North America, Central America, the Caribbean and South America to move back to Africa. The Liberian government agreed at first but quickly changed their minds before anyone could move over. Garvey also tried to set up a steam ship company called the Black Star Line that would trade goods between Africa and America, but that also failed. For several more years Garvey worked with the UNIA, traveling around meeting with political figures, before dieing in 1940. Garvey is most remembered as a man with great pride in his race. He believed in racial equality but also wanted racial separation. He also believed in the beliefs of the Ku Klux Klan because they also believed in racial separation.

Marcus Garvey was a huge influence on the Harlem Renaissance, the time period in which Zora Neal Hurton’s novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, takes place. All during the 1920’s Garvey campaigned for Black Nationalism. In the novel the characters are proud to be black, hence Black nationalism. A big idea Garvey had was that Blacks should be separate from whites. All during the novel none of the Black communities that Janie is apart includes white members. The towns are all Black. In fact, only once in the book are there white people, during a scene in which Tea Cake is beaten. This shows that perhaps Hurston was a believer in Black separation, and that she did not look too kindly at whites, as they are depicted as horrible people in the novel.