Garvey the Duality of Garveyism

Garvey

The Duality of Garveyism in the Civil Rights Era

Marcus Garvey served as the template for the two most prominent archetypes of the American Civil Rights Era, with his bold Pan-Africanism providing the framework for the radical nationalist ideologies of Malcolm X and his dignified statesmanship and political objectivity providing the model for Martin Luther King.

At the time of his death, Marcus Garvey had already commanded an enormous influence over the identify of black Americans. With the stroke that claimed his life in 1940, Garvey would leave behind him a substantial legacy through his insertion into the public consciousness of ideas and actions precipitated upon the ambition to help free the United States from the deeply unequal system that had evolved in slavery's place. Segregation and the implied and explicit vitriol which were shown to African-Americans in the decades following abolition would be counterintuitive to the philosophical grounding, scholarly background and psychological makeup of the young Garvey. That he would soon be a firebrand in the early movement to gain political unification and shared cultural identity for African-Americans is a product of personality and inflection point.

The distinct qualities of boldness, eccentricity and compromise which delivered Garvey to his visible role in the pre-Civil Rights Era would also be directly relevant in rendering him a figure as criticized and feared as he was respected and lauded. Garvey's ideals of political organization and black self-determination would be among the key revelations precipitating the Civil Rights Era that would unfold in the years following his death. But so too would his ideals about Pan-Africanism and black separatist nationalism factor heavily into the beliefs and practices of many of his successors. In the intercession between these two aspects of his legacy, Garvey would deliver both the extremely positive and, as time would prove, effective methods of political orientation and organization to the black American community but he would also provide a philosophical basis for some of the more destructive and violent impulses of the black community. Ultimately, it becomes clear that Marcus Garvey served as the template for the two most prominent archetypes of the American Civil Rights Era, with his bold Pan-Africanism providing the framework for the radical nationalist ideologies of Malcolm X and his dignified statesmanship and political objectivity providing the model for Martin Luther King.

Malcolm X and Martin Luther King function -- like Garvey -- as symbols to a specific ideology. In this context, Malcolm X and King are to be seen as two distinct bookends to a widely splintered movement. In the various bold and frequently radical objectives and experiments by Garvey, King's unity and Malcolm X's tendency toward fractiousness would both find patronage. And as this argument proceeds to trace a clear path from the activities and ideals of Garvey to the diverse elements of activism in the Civil Rights era, Garvey is ultimately revealed as being as individually responsible as any figure in African-American history for working with such marked success at stimulating unity through central leadership and, simultaneously, is demonstrated to be as individually responsible for the splintering into disparate factions of the Civil Rights movement due to the mounting manifestation of his explicitly stated fundamentalist principles.

Of primary importance to making this conclusion is the generous set of his own words which the well-read Garvey would insert into the discourse over America's grossly unequal treatment of African-Americans. These may perhaps be best initiated with a sentiment that suggests Garvey's own precocious awareness of the duality within his own ideology. In the text by Edward (1996), Garvey reports of his father that "he was severe, firm, determined, bold and strong, refusing to yield even to superior forces if he believed he was right. My mother, on the other hand, was always willing to return a smile for a blow, and ever ready to bestow charity upon her enemy. Of this strange combination I was born thirty-six years ago, and ushered into a world of sin, the flesh and the devil." (Edward, 169)

Without necessarily providing him a direct set of objectives in achieving personal freedom, the figures in his upbringing would help to render Garvey a man aware of the implications of racial disparity in the world. As one of the very first post-abolition activists with the resource, intellect, charisma and sheer bravery to achieve the level of visibility which he did, Garvey would approach the issue of black inequality with something that must be described as creativity and dynamism. For indeed, in contrast to the deeply ideologically rigid successors that would drive different engines in the Civil Rights movement, Garvey would persist in a time with little in the way of a template. In the early decades of the 20th century, individuals such as Mahatma Gandhai were still putting to practice the Enlightenment principles of Natural Rights toward human dignity and self-determination. Concurrently, figures such as Garvey reflected the nature of this struggle against occupation and racial subjugation in the Americas.

Perhaps few words could be seen as so prophetic as that offered by Amy Jacques Garvey (1967), who contended in her unblemished recording of her husband's words in Philosophy and Opinions of Marcus Garvey, that "the history of a movement, the history of a nation, the history of a race is the guide-post of that movement's destiny, that nation's destiny, that race's destiny. What you do today that is worthwhile, inspires others to act at some future time." (Garvey, 1) This is a proverb in which Garvey forecasts that his commitment to active recruitment and organization around the centering premise of black self-determination will produce others in his wake with the same ambitions and a blueprint through his own martyrdom. Even without consideration to the categorical differences in approach between those who aligned with King and those who aligned with Malcolm X through the 1950s and 1960s height of Civil Rights activism and policy change, it becomes clear that Garvey spoke, wrote and acted with the probable expectation that his ideas and tactics would ultimately be extrapolated and applied by others in his wake.

Certainly, to all of the Civil Rights figures to come after, Garvey would cast a long shadow for the grandness of his ambition and for the brazen optimism with which he pursued it. However, in his own words above, there emerges strong support to the premise that though King and Malcolm *** generation later would channel Garvey's expectations into the believe that they might both live to see black men as equals to whites in the eyes of the law, Garvey would expect to see that his very difficult work would be carried on with his passing. To take this a step further, the notion of worthwhile actions in the history of the race inspiring bold action at some future time applies to a continuum that now includes such figures as baseball player Jackie Robinson, Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall and current U.S. President Barrack Obama. Before denoting the splintering effect which Garvey's radicalism would produce in the future Civil Rights movement, it thus bears noting that in many ways explicitly recognized by King and Malcolm in their respective lifetimes, all movements to the extension of black freedoms could be traced to Garveyism, whether radical, rational or something of a combination.

Quite to the point, Garvey may be most certainly regarded as the embodiment of an inflection point for his race and for the future of the Americas. And yet, there is inbuilt to this statement and his own sentiments the understanding that Garvey would fail in some regard as his most immediate ambitions, at least in their concrete forms. Garveyism as a movement is most directly associated to the argument in favor of Pan-Africanism. Inbuilt to this conception were a number of beliefs underscored by the precept that Africans had been living in a Diaspora from their homeland and that in large part the success of black freedom and self-determination would dependent upon a return from this Diaspora. This biblically-couched belief would be one of the building blocks for the founding of Garvey's groundbreaking political group, "organized under the banner of the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) and African Communities League (ACL), and an era of black renaissance, in which Garveyism and the concept of black racial pride became synonymous. Before white America fell enraptured before the spell of what Claude McKay termed 'the hot syncopated fascination of Harlem' in the Jazz Age, black America had already traversed the age of Garvey and the New Negro." (UCLA-ASC, 1)

Central to the figure and canon found in Garvey as these would impact his activist successors would be an unflinching assertion of the black man's entitlement to pride, opportunity and self-betterment. The establishment of his organization would be guided both by the set of political objectives which he would pursue throughout his lifetime and the demand to black men and women to begin viewing themselves with a greater sense of entitlement and dignity. In a statement which he entitled African Fundamentalism, Garvey would contend several decades ahead of the Civil Rights movement that "the time has come for the African to forget and cast behind him his hero worship and adoration of other races, and to start out immediately, to create and emulate heroes of his own. We must canonize our own saints, create our own martyrs, and elevate to positions of fame and honor black women and men who have made their distinct contributions to our history." (Garvey1, 1)

Taken in itself and absent the implications to African repatriation that we will address hereafter, this is a statement which seems to project itself upon both Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, mutually driven as they would be by a belief that African men had been deprived of a humanity which it was their duty to see restored. But it is here that we can also begin to observe the elements of Garvey's rather poetic and frequently biblical rhetoric as producing multifarious responses in its future champions. Certainly, the greatest and most daunting common ground between King and Malcolm X in this instance is in their mutual 'creation' of 'martyrs.' They would both sacrifice themselves to the cause. In both Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, Garvey's core philosophical ideals are on clear display, though channeled through markedly different moral postures. The inchoate qualities of the Civil Rights movement at most points in its history would be indicative of the approach taken by Garvey, which may almost be described as a speculative investigation of the potential resolutions to the problems of black Americans.

To the point, one of the greatest advantages afforded to the activists of the Civil Rights era was the set of missteps, failures and proposed ambitions that had been Garvey's. In his widely visible, often revered and commonly criticized life's work, he left us with significant evidence of his ingenuity and yet of his failure. Indeed, Pan-Africanism may be seen as one of the loftiest and most highly desirable of ideas to stem from his philosophy. And yet, its service to the Civil Rights era could be almost entirely viewed as symbolic rather than practical. Such is well captured in a consideration of the African nation of Liberia, which to the view of Garvey and of its founders before him was representative of this dream of a return from the Diaspora.

Accordingly, "Liberia, 'founded' by returnees from the African Diaspora in the early nineteenth century, seemed to meet all the desiderata of a national home, a land of 'strong bronze men, or regal black.' However, sadly, it was in the Black Republic that the poesy of trans-Atlantic longing ran headlong into African sociopolitical reality -- including slavery. Garvey's plan to merge the image and the reality of African foundered in a sea of disillusionment." (Sundiata, 2) With Liberia falling into poverty and internal despair, and eventually into Civil War by the end of the 20th century, one of the most practically applied of the principles of Garveyism could be deemed a failure. But given that this movement would ultimately translate into the principles of black nationalism that formulated the militant sects of the Civil Rights movement, it is important to note that the theoretical aspects of this mission would be the elements most fundamentally preserved and passed on to future generations of leaders. Though Garvey clearly had intended to leave for his successors a truly self-ruled and unified African continent, in retrospect, we must settle for the theory induced and the symbolic connection to a homeland which he emphasized.

During the Civil Rights movement, the embrace of African roots would be significant to the identity forged by many in the Black Power, Black Panther and Nation of Islam camps typically affiliated with more radical action. This would rarely be defined as an actual, physical return to or propagation of a black-ruled Africa, but would instead be reflected in style of dress, choice of cultural identification and, as Garvey would stress, adoption of heroes and historical figures with which to identify. Essentially, Garvey's concrete attempts and realizing this connection would be manifested thereafter in a distinct attempt by many African-American nationalists or separatists to be visibly and organizationally identified with something separate that American culture and its white, European heritage.

Therefore, it is with due credit that we recognize Garvey to have been better reflected in the ideas which would be assimilated by his successors than in his own successes. According to Gillian (2005), "it is on the shoulders of Garvey that tenets of political, social and economic self-determination for Africans and the creation of a global African nation were built. In fact the widespread influence of Garveyism as a Pan-Africanist and liberation ideology far outstripped his actual achievements in his lifetime." (Gillian, 1) Most distinctly, Garvey would not live to see the evolution of the two successors most prominently identified here and, further, would not live to see their mutual contributions to the achievement of Civil Rights advancements in the United States. But in the boldness of his activities and the sheer controversy surrounding some of his tactics, we can deduce that Garvey anticipated that his influence would live past him to see some such graduation of opportunity.

Of course, in spite of this self-awareness, Garvey would make himself an individual of extreme intrigue, to say the least. It takes little imagination to understand how we must credit Garvey for the unification of purpose and the perception of feasibility which helped to drive forward the progress of Civil Rights. To understand the splintering of this Civil Rights era as a function of Garvey's influence though, is to consider that some aspects of Garveyism may have carried with them lasting problems within black intelligentsia and betwixt black and white culture in the United States.

Certainly, the oft-debated figure which was Garvey commanded no small degree of controversy during his lifetime and not alone because of the fear which he stimulated in the whites who opposed desegregation. Quite in fact, to many segregationists and white supremacists, Garvey would be seen as an ally for his staunch support both of African repatriation and of black nationalism. Its implications to black separatist activities would not only appeal to the interests of the Ku Klux Klan but would even make UNIA and the KKK unlikely bedfellows in the shared ambition of returning blacks to Africa. Quite certainly driven by opposite ambitions, UNIA and the Klan would nonetheless find common cause in interrupting the conditions by which African-Americans and white Americans persisted.

To Garvey, the presumption of black inferiority was clearly untenable but the KKK represented an honest political party to his presumption. Its position in favor of a pure white nation would in some regards correspond with Garvey's Pan-African ideals, which provided the blueprint for a pure black nation. That these nations would be separated by the vastness of the Atlantic would seem as very appealing to the Klan, which viewed African-Americans as a burden on the United States in the generations following abolition. For Garvey, of course, the interests trended toward self-determination, self-governance and self-preservation, with the return to Africa and the pursuit of unified governance representing an empowered black state.

This would in the large sense that Garvey anticipated, never truly occur. The conditions precipitating repatriation to Liberia denote the degree of influence which the Jamaican civil activist would levy on his time and place. However, it would not be until the emergence of the Nation of the Islam and the Black Power movement that this aspect of Garvey's influence would be applied to the legal structures within the United States. With Malcolm X serving as the most identifiable figure in this movement, the Black Power movement would adopt the militancy and separatism that were part and parcel to Garvey's ideology, even if they would reject the political tactics that would bring Garvey into contact with such abhorrent would-be partners.

To Garvey, their common ground in desiring separate black and white nations would make the KKK a motivated partner in resolving the issue of unwanted and clearly unequal integration. And moreover, Garvey viewed that with respect to the clarity and explicitness of its position, the KKK represented a more honest organization on the subject of race than most within the United States government. This would invoke one of Garvey's more inflammatory initiatives and set of statements. He denoted in defense of a 1923 meeting with KKK Imperial Wizard Edward Y. Clarke on the subject of repatriating blacks to the African continent and to Liberia in particular "that all white men in America feel like the Ku Klux Klan, but the only difference is that the Klan is honest enough to give expression to its opinion and carry out its attitude in defiance of any other opposition whilst others are not honest enough to give expression but feel the same way." (Garvey3, 1)

Not at all a defense of the Klan, but more a rationalization of the value in meeting with an organization so declaredly and virulently fueled by racial hatred, Garvey's discussion here demonstrates the extremity of his tactics with respect to the institution of the United States. Naturally, this would be a force of great importance as Civil Rights activists battled over the rationality of employing passive resistance, civil disobedience or outright revolutionary militancy. In a tactic such as this, Garvey opened the floodgates for examination of the type of methods which could or should be sought in the process of advancing the agenda of racial equality. In one sense, those after him might have found some way to defend this as a diplomatic means of meeting the enemy face-to-face in search of mutual resolution. But of course, such tactics would also expectedly draw a massive amount of criticism from African-Americans and non-supremacist whites that would take issue with the derisive characterization of white sincerity. Such tactics and the differing prospective interpretations demonstrate Garvey to be a man who would inevitably leave in compliment to his legacy, many points to be philosophically prodded and debated in their practicality.

Naturally -- and especially given the relative failure of Pan-Africanism as the primary means to improving black equality -- meetings with the KKK could be regarded as having been false steps. Certainly, the splintering of the black community in the generations thereafter would be presaged by the rumblings in the black intellectual community over Garvey's behavior. He would be roundly criticized even by those from whom he'd sought counsel in his development as a leader of the people. To this exact case, these are the types of tactics which prompted an elder contemporary in W.E.B. DuBois, a deeply respected voice in the movement for black equality and an individual who himself was well-known to have pursued as many plausible and diverse avenues for the liberation of America's Africans in the Diaspora, to regard Garvey as dangerous and destructive to the ambitions of African-Americans. As he denoted, "Marcus Garvey is, without a doubt, the most dangerous enemy of the Negro race in America and in the world. He is either a lunatic or a traitor. He is sending all over this country tons of letters and pamphlets appealing to Congressmen, business men, philanthropists and educators to join him on a platform" that DuBois interprets as inherently destructive to the future of blacks in America. (Edward, 129)

To DuBois, Garvey's eccentricity, his ideological inconsistency and his willingness to pursue political ends through sometimes objectionable manners such as in his dealings with the Ku Klux Klan would be seen as alienating to meaningful political allies and American mainstream partners in policy amendment. DuBois viewed Garvey's commitment to militant and radical tactics as threatening to undermine the push forward of the desegregationist agenda.

In his phrasing, DuBois considers this action as a final basis for the total condemnation of a man with whom he had shared ideas of African repatriation. This was particularly due to the ideology which seemed to underscore the inflammatory statements which he made toward whites in his meetings with the Klan and in his comments thereafter. But even more so, it cuts to this point that in and of himself -- and magnified by his salient stature and celebrity-like eccentricities -- Garvey would invoke much contradiction. To DuBois, this contradiction was too strong to stomach, as if the contemporary foresaw its role as a firebrand in the internal divisions that would weaken the Civil Rights movement through splintering and infighting.

Dubois interprets Garvey's agenda as containing the following conditions: "that no person of Negro descent can ever hope to become an American citizen; That forcible separation of the races and the banishment of Negroes to Africa is the only solution of the Negro problem [and;] that race war is sure to follow any attempt to realize the program of the N.A.A.C.P." (Edward, 130) This characterization of Garvey's ideology, whether fair and true or not, would at least accurately reflect the brewing storm of disagreement that would be fostered by Garveyism during the period to follow.

Indeed, if this is a scenario that seems familiar, this is likely due to the manner in which this same splintering effect would play out during the Civil Rights Era, when Malcolm X's involvement with the black separatism movement would use the fundamentalist precepts of Garveyism in a fashion viewed as anathema to Gandhi-ists such as Martin Luther King. Just as Garvey would be the subject of deep-seeded criticism from within the black community for his tactics and the danger which they seemed to represent to all blacks, so too would the activities of many peaceful protestors and traditional Civil Rights activists contrast sharply with the approach promoted by Malcolm X the coalition of white, black, Christian and Jewish activist in King's battle against segregation would invoke Garvey's political perceptiveness. However, it appears on the surface that the separatist ambitions of Malcolm X have more in common with the notions of Pan-Africanism and the practices of DuBois.

This is not for point of comparison between Malcolm X and Martin Luther King. Instead, it is to dismiss the idea that we may make a more direct comparison between one of these Civil Rights leaders and Garvey himself. Quite to the contrary, it becomes clear that the movements represented by Malcolm X and Martin Luther would simultaneously be highly adoptive and transformational. That is, even as each of these figures would show a clear line to origins in Garveyism, either could be shown to have rejected just as many of his impulses. Clearly, in King, a counterpoint to Garveyism would be found in his intent focus upon political, social, economic and cultural evolution within the United States for the African-American. Garvey's belief in the formulation of distinctly African points of heritage, history and pride suggests something more of an interest in separation than in ascendance.

However, there also can be found a counterpoint where Malcolm X is concerned, as we can establish little of the vitriol in Garvey's ideals as is present in the activities of the former. To the point, in his upbringing, Garvey would note that "to me, at home in my early days, there was no difference between white and black. One of my father's properties, the place where I lived most of the time, was adjoining that of a white man." (Edward1, 170) Garvey tells of a young childhood in which life was fairly integrated for him and in which he was not taught the hatred that would come naturally to individuals in the situation which faced Malcolm X, for one. By no coincidence and speaking to the clear continuum between the two individuals, Malcolm's parents would actually be deeply invested members of Garvey's UNIA-ACL. The connection between Garveyism and Malcolm X's Nation of Islam becomes clearer in this light, but so too does a clear distinction in their respective upbringings. Garvey was raised in relative racial harmony which would be disrupted as he would come of age. By contrast, Malcolm X was reared in a context where the issues of racial discord were prominent in the lives, beliefs and ambitions of his parentage. The radical resistance to white dominance espoused by Garvey would take on even more counter-institutional forms in Malcolm X

To this idea, for instance, it is unlikely that Marcus Garvey would have condoned or excused the assassination of an American president. Quite to the contrary, his belief system put forth the proposition that Pan-Africanism would be impacted significantly by the capacity of an African nation to represent itself diplomatically and to establish relationships with existing diplomatic forces. Under the cloak of black separatist nationalism thereafter though, Malcolm X would take a decidedly more revolutionary stance on the issue. In the shadow of the Kennedy assassination, for instance, a 1963 article from the New York Times denotes that "Malcolm a leader of the Black Muslims, yesterday characterized the assassination of President Kennedy as an instance of "the chickens coming home to roost." (AP, 1)

Naturally, this is a response which both revealed a sense of disgust and hostility with the United States government. Certainly at a time when many Americans were grieving the death of their leader, Malcolm X would place himself squarely in a camp which did not identify with white America and its white leaders. In the way that DuBois would accuse Garvey of delineating a condition whereby blacks would be ceding their prospects at determination within the United States by resisting opportunities to be full and true citizens there within, one could make the argument that Malcolm X had chosen to take a path of similar resistance. His perception of white America was as the clear and self-proclaimed enemy of black freedom and self-representation, just as Garvey had stated. Even if the Black Power and Nation of Islam movements did not practically invoke the relocation of blacks to Africa, it did become a conduit for that which Garvey believed and that which DuBois feared.

And yet, in considering the other pole in the Civil Rights discussion, Martin Luther King emerges as a figure from whom Malcolm X and his followers would splinter. The leading voice in the Civil Rights movement would strike a significantly different figure than the blustery Garvey, instead emphasizing the path by which African-Americans could become leaders in the United States. In the course of his own intellectual development, King became exposed to Gandhi's methodology and from here was inducted on a course of peace studies that would change his understanding of the plight of black Americans.. "King was struck by the concept of satyagraha, which means truth-force or love-force. He realized that the Christian doctrine of love operating through the Gandhian method of nonviolence was one of the most potent weapons available to oppressed people in their struggle for freedom." (McElrath, 1) He put this into action with his Montgomery bus boycott, which struck out peacefully at an institution which embodied the racism of the South.

This is an example which strikes a sharp contrast from the continental enormity of Garvey's Pan-Africanism and, to that generation of activists, there was also something to be learned by the means of hard-negotiation which King was able to apply without the execution of violence. It was in the realism of his goal, to attack an entity both small enough to be vulnerable and visible enough to reflect a larger mission such as the dismantling of institutional racism that King's boycott served as a beacon with greater immediacy than Garvey's larger and less achievable ideals. Its primacy in initiating national viability to Civil Rights and in providing useful example to others on how to effect change make the bus boycott worthy of consideration as a counterpoint to Garvey's ideals.

Even further to separate King from either Malcolm X or Garvey is the manner in which he rationally associated the direction of American policy with the fate of blacks in American. His vocal investment in all manner of political and social issues of the day demonstrates that King intended to reverse rather than stimulate the isolation of the black community. This is something which is particularly clear in his efforts in bringing viability to the Civil Rights protest movement as being become inextricably linked to his opposition to the state of violence in Vietnam. He observed, during a speech against the war that prior to its onset, "it seemed as if there was a real promise of hope for the poor, both black and white, through the poverty program. There were experiments, hopes, new beginnings. Then came the buildup in Vietnam, and I watched this program broken and eviscerated as if it were some idle political plaything of a society gone mad on war." (King, 3)

This society that King describes is one suffering from a structural violence which both inwardly and outwardly subjects the world to its short-sightedness and which impacts African-Americans with a great and troubling ferocity. All of this stated to distinguish King from Garvey, it is with little doubt that we may presume King to have taken an altogether different form or path in the absence of Garveyism. Garvey would commit to print and to political action many arguments on behalf of the African-American that would theretofore not be broached. For King, this would function as a foundation upon which to formulate the more immediate strategies reflected in the bus boycott -- certainly more demonstrably effective though massively more modest in scope that Pan-Africanism -- and as a foundation upon which to draw up rejections on Garvey's methods.