Marcus Garvey

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On August 17, 1887 in St.Ann's Bay in the Caribbean island of Jamaica, Marcus Mosiah Garvey was born (Lawler 15). He was the youngest of eleven children that lived in the household. In 1904, after Garvey finished elementary school in St. Ann's bay he moved to Kingston which is Jamaica's capitol to work as a printer. He was pursued to move at the age of fourteen to get a job to help his family financially. After his father died in 1903 he was apprenticed as a printer and earned journeyman and foreman ranks in the trade of printing (Thomas). Garvey's involvement in a typographical union and printers' strike in 1907 and 1908 caused him trouble finding employment in Jamaica (Thomas). Garvey decided to travel and found work in Costa Rica, panama, and other places in South America. In 1912 through 1914 he lived and attended a few college lectures in England. This was a good opportunity for him as it was the place where he first was able to meet native Africans and learn about the horrible conditions in Africa. During his stay in England he became interested on how blacks lived in the United States. It was also there he first began to read the autobiography of Booker T Washington.(Cronon 2) He once said, "I read Up from Slavery by Booker T Washington and then my doom- if I may so call it-of becoming a race leader dawned upon me…I asked: "Where is the black man's government?" "Where is his King and his kingdom?" "Where is his president, his country, and his ambassador, his army, his navy, hid men of big affairs?" I could not find them, and then I declared, "I will help to make them."(Cronon 3) Garvey was also heavily influenced by the West African journalist Casely Hayford's Ethiopia Unbound, and William H. Ferris' The African Aboard. (Thomas) These works caused him to have an interest in the early Pan-African movement. In 1913, Garvey developed an friendship with the Egyptian editor Duse Mohamed Ali, a former actor who had became a journalist and, inspired by the Universal Races Conference held in London in 1911, had founded a monthly magazine called the African Times and Orient Review. (Thomas) Garvey later returned to his homeland with lots of ideas of how he was going to help Jamaicans' and blacks across the world. He arrived back in Jamaica on July 15, 1914; five days later he founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) and African Communities League along with Amy Ashwood.

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