In Leonard Sykes JrMilwaukee‘s Journal Vigil article, “Garvey’s celebration represents a call for peace and unity in the community,” the author describes the gifts that Jamaican “Back-to-Africa” activists gave M. Garvey as his birthday The day was celebrated by the Wisconsin Black Historical Society.
August 17, 2005 marked M. Garvey’s birthday, and the 17th M. Garvey celebration was held by the Wisconsin Black Historical Society. Milwaukee County’s homicide rate was 87 during that period, up from 55 during the same period the previous year. Sykes says that “engaged themes” were made tangible through the celebration, “in what some argue is a senseless summer of violence and depression in Milwaukee.”
Just what values did Garvey espouse? According to the article, peace, unity and equality. According to a Wikipedia article, Garvey then joined the Universal Negro Amplification Association and the League of African Communities because he was “convinced that uniting blacks was the only way to improve their situation.”
According to the same article, although Garvey founded this organization to “unite all the African world. to one big body con a> to establish a republic and absolutely (sic) his government”. This seems to reflect Garvey’s “Back-to-Africa” sentiments.
In a Wikipedia article, Garvey is quoted as saying: “Education, industry, and political affairs are based on the protection of the nation we founded. And the nation can be nowhere else than in Africa.”
While Garvey believed in uniting blacks, he felt that their unity would never be fruitful in a country dominated by whites. So Garvey expressed a kind of segregationist attitude on Wikipedia: “I recognize the Klan… as better friends of the [Black] race than all the other hypocritical white groups put together. I like honesty and a fair story. You can call me a Klansman if you want, but potentially, every white man is a Klansman, as far as the Ethiopian in whites competes socially, economically and politically, and is not used to lying.”
Garvey’s hope of uniting the Blacks was right in the beginning, but wrong in practice. The “Back-to-Africa” movement was entirely impractical, and that impracticality was viewed with immense envy. Garvey was wrong in assuming that blacks could only join and experience better conditions in a white environment. Perhaps their fortunes would have been more easily overcome in such an environment, but history has shown that progress can be made in a racially mixed society through the diligent efforts of civil rights leaders such as Dr. Garvey‘s values of “peace, unity and equality” were admirable. But the way in which he intends to implement these values is fundamentally flawed. Our country will do well to achieve absolute equality with the implementation of Garvey’s values without such erroneous ideas and “Back-to-Africa” movements.
