Marcus Garvey's Use Of Resistance, Social Justice, & Self-Determination

Resistance, Social Justice, and Self Determination are three core values of the African American experience. These values have been used by African Americans in all the years that African Americans have fought for freedoms of all categories. During this time many activist practiced the values with their fight for freedom and civil rights. A black leader who exhibited these values was Marcus Garvey. Garvey's popularity began in 1919 because of his appeal to racial pride during a time when African Americans had little to be proud (Franklin and Moss, 395). Marcus Garvey's want for justice and his black pride helped him to work hard in creating ways for African Americans to gain independence as a minority in the United States and around the world being that he was an advocate for Pan-Africanism.

According to Dr. Leonard Jeffries, resistance has been a central theme in African American history. It began immediately, during the robberies of Africans by Europeans and the ride on the Atlantic Ocean during the middle passage (www.africawithin.com). Africans resisted by trying to run away while still in African or by jumping over board while on the ship, wanting to die instead of continuing the devastating trip to enslavement. Some of those captured and lived made it to the world of enslavement. In notes taken from lectures of Professor Daryl Harris, "resistance is to strive against, to with stand or to be opposition to something." Because the opposition for African Americans has been white supremacists this was who the resistance was towards. John Hope Franklin and Loren Schweninger described in Rebels on the Plantation, Chapter 1: Dissidents in the Conscript Army, resistance on the plantation as disobedience and robberies to undermine masters. Sometimes slaves were careless with work or left work without permission. Some slave even devised plans to conspire against slave masters. These were all ways of resistance. African Americans continued to resist the tactics of white supremacy through the civil rights and black power movement. Resistance can also be seen with African Americans and the refusal to identify with white cultural and the creation of hip hop.

In the Souls of Black Folk, W.E.B Dubois wrote: "It was the ideal of "book learning"; the curiosity, born of compulsory ignorance, to know and test the power of the cabalistic letters of the white man, the longing to know" (5-6). This is a statement concerning social justice, because to learn or to be educated was apart of the ethics and morality for African Americans. The fight for freedoms and equality were concerns of African Americans centered on rightness, ethics, and morality in social affairs. The more educated an African American became the more the fight for social justice. In the struggle for equality African Americans knew ethically it was wrong for the institution of segregation. The Supreme Court decision of Brown v. The Board showed all that segregation was a social injustice, psychologically destroying the minds of young African American children as they were surrounded by the disadvantages they were kept in due to segregation. It was curiosity to learn that took African Americans out of segregation and continued for social justice. Also the church had a lot to do with the social justice. The black church became a way for blacks to resist and have social justice being the pinpoint of ethics and morality of African Americans. The black church was used in a sense against whites. In many cases the teaching in church helped to fight against discrimination and racism through peaceful activities.

In the resistance that was described by John Hope Franklin and Loren Schweninger self- determination was also found. Hired slaves made commands of their masters. Franklin and Schweninger wrote that Charles, a blacksmith and hired slaved refused to move to Mississippi with his master without his wife. This is an example of a slave determining how he will be governed. Due to the laws created by whites with the idea to African Americans had to have a self determination to decide there own fate without asking "master".

Marcus Garvey was born in Jamaica. He was very proficient and was a printer and foreman for a local firm one of the largest (Esedebe, 55). This was an achievement because in Jamaica this was a first class trade. He visited other countries with African descendents and was unhappy with the way blacks moving. "He became determined to end the duplicity of whites once and for all" (Esedebe, 56). Marcus Garvey had the idea to immigrate to West Africa. To build Africa with all of those who were decedents. He wanted to develop Africa industrially, have African American farmers to go with the best techniques for Farming, and he wanted to establish places for higher education in West Africa. "Garvey saw that the Negro was treated like an Animal processing no political and economic rights. Garvey felt a people without authority and power was a race without respect" (Esedebe, 57).

Prior to his fight for African and African Americans Marcus Garvey was already showing his character and his ability of resistance leading a strike with the printers' union (55). Disturbed by the plight of those in the Pan African world Garvey began his global fight. Garvey used self respect and race pride in each value. In order to resist the sense of oppression must be realized. The creation of the UNIA (Universal Negro Improvement Association) was a step into resistance. Garvey said that the "view of the universal disunity existing among the people of the Negro or African race, and the apparent danger which must follow the continuance of such a spirit, it has been deemed fit and opportune to found a Society with a universal program, for the purpose of drawing the people of the race together, hence the organization UNIA" (58).

According to P. Olisanwuche Esedebe one of the goals of UNIA was to promote the spirit of race pride and love. Showing African Americans to be proud of their heritage showed that whites were oppressing them. He knew that the African values had to be rehabilitated before the African peoples could improve themselves. To like who they were African Americans were resisting the idea of being inferior. UNIA also had a goal to establish universal Confraternity among the race. To bring all of African decent together is a social justice. Marcus Garvey wanted to help the race as a whole to uplift the race. This goes with the social affairs of Africans and African Americans. The UNIA wanted to not only promote the spirit of race pride and love they also wanted to reclaim the fallen race. (58) All of the goals of the UNIA created by Garvey helped to promote social justice. It was important to Garvey that the race was uplifted and had confidence in their blackness.

Marcus Garvey started the black star steam line shipping company and the Negro world newspaper. As a black man having businesses was a way to gain high economic status and power. This was something that aided in self-determination because with power one could govern themselves in a way they wanted. Having the shipping company and newspaper Garvey was an example to African Americans. Esedebe noted that Garvey concentrated his energy on demonstrating material and moral benefits that blacks could derive from having their own steam line seeing that they could take care of me after having has a class another student made an accusation towards my favorite night club.

Marcus Garvey was a leader who manifested the three core values of Resistance, Social Justice and self-determination, by trying to help the race uplift its spirit about the race. He is a leader that is amongst others such as W.E.B Dubois, Martin Luther King Jr., and the organization NAACP. Having practiced these core values Marcus Garvey was able to help the continuous fight for rights and freedoms. He was able to unite all decent of African blood and teach blacks to be one. Marcus Garvey was a leader who helped civil rights in the United States and the Pan-African world. He was a voice in the early1900's and the 1920's Marcus Garvey went to help the union of blacks.

Works Cited
Dubois, W.E.B. The Souls of Black Folk. New York. Bantam Books,1989

Esedebe, P. Olisanwuche. Pan-Africanism The Idea and Movement, 1776-1991. 2nd Ed.
Washington, D.C. Howard University Press, 1994

Franklin, John Hope and Alfred A. Moss, Jr. From Slavery to Freedom 8th ed. Boston.
McGraw Hill, 2000

Franklin, John Hope and Loren Schweninger. Rebels on the plantation.

Dr. Leonard Jeffries. Resistance. www.africawithin.com