Marcus Garvey and the Issue

Marcus Garvey and the Issue of "Double Consciousness"

Although the quest for equal treatment and civil rights are fundamental tenets of black activism in the United States, there has not been a universal strategy embraced by all blacks to achieve these goals. One strategy embraced by many was Black Nationalism, or the belief that blacks in America should be geographically separated from their white counterparts since racial harmony was considered impossible. This paper will examine how Marcus Garvey expanded on the model for black self-determination provided by Booker T. Washington, followed by a discussion of his views on the positions of W.E.B. DuBois and an analysis of where these black leaders stood on the issue of "double consciousness." A summary of the research will be provided in the conclusion.

Review and Discussion

Background and Overview. "Just as influential as inclusion or integration," Marable says, "has been the perspective of black nationalism" (1). While a number of divergent organizations have emerged since the end of the Civil War that reflected a wide range of ideologies, there have been some core components that were generally characteristic of the Black Nationalism tradition. The first component was the ardent belief that blacks in the U.S. were an oppressed nation or national minority, trapped inside a predominantly white society that had developed its own culture, social institutions and collective interests without regard to them. In this "double consciousness" setting of "we" and "them" then, black nationalists frequently considered themselves as being either people of African descent or Africans who just happened to be living in America at the time. Another key component of the Black Nationalism movement was the intuitive assessment by blacks that they would not be able to survive and thrive in a hostile environment unless they built their own institutions and enterprises to provide themselves with the goods, services and resources they would need to prosper. As a result, Black Nationalists were highly skeptical about the long-term viability of relationships or alliances with whites in general and Americans in particular. With some minor variations on themes, these components have remained the basis of the Black Nationalist movement from the militant emigrationist approach promulgated by Martin Delany in the 1850s to Marcus Garvey's Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) in the 1920s (Marable 1998).

Garvey's Model for Black Self-Determination. A number of Black Nationalists sought a completely separate homeland for blacks in the U.S. since interracial harmony was considered impossible. In fact, as early as 1916, Arthur Anderson recommended that one entire southern state should be occupied by blacks only who would then be allowed to secede from the Union to create their own government. Booker T. Washington provided a different approach to Black Nationalism by seeking to train the black middle class and elite to teach, guide, and lead others. According to Marable, "By the late 1920s, the Communist International partially recognized the political claims of the Garveyites by defining the one-thousand-mile crescent of millions of African-Americans across the deep South as a 'black belt nation'" (3). Frazier described Garvey's brand of Black Nationalism as using contrived cultural devices to help establish a sense of solidarity among his constituents; further, Garvey was an astute student of human nature and seemed to know instinctively what people wanted to hear: "[Garvey] not only promised the despised Negro a paradise on earth, but he made the Negro an important person in his immediate environment. He invented honors and social distinctions and converted every social invention to his use in his effort to make his followers feel important" (237). In reality, though, Garvey's approach was diametrically opposed to the alternative solutions sought by liberal black intellectuals such as W.E.B. Du Bois and reformist organizations like the NAACP (Marable 1998).

W.E.B. DuBois and Garvey. While W.E.B. Du Bois was frequently a hostile critic of the Black Nationalist movement, he agreed with Garvey's assessment that during the Great Depression, black America was "a nation in a nation" (Marable 3). When Garvey appointed himself the "provisional president of Africa," though, Marable reports that DuBois and other middle-class black leaders "found him ridiculous" (3). The white powers-that-were, though, did not share Du Bois's opinion and the organization and its publication was outlawed in a number of countries and territories throughout Africa and the Caribbean (Marable 1998). The leaders of the UNIA leaders and its organizers were also subjected to harassment, arrest and, in some instances, even death. "The U.S. government launched an effort to destroy the UNIA from within, and successfully charged Garvey himself with mail fraud. The UNIA's leader was imprisoned and, in 1927, expelled from the U.S., never to return" (Marable 4).