9-th, 2004 - 21: 2   (Posted By: Webmaster)
Marcus Garvey    

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On these occasions Garvey appeared in raiment that outdid Solomon in all his glory. He led the parade in a uniform loaded with tassels and gold braid that rivaled that of a British monarch. Beside him sat other officials as gaudily dressed. Though he was opposing British imperialism, he imitated its forms. Apparently he had never been able to throw off the impression British folderol and glitter had made on him in his childhood. Although he called himself a "president," he had his "Royal African Guards," and created dukes, as the Duke of Uganda, and the Duke of the Nile, and Knights Commander of the Most Noble Order of the Nile, etc., etc. Showman supreme, he applied the methods of Barnum to racial agitation and attracted the attention and support not only of primitive-minded Negroes but of many cultured whites and blacks who might otherwise have ignored him had he proceeded with less noise and ballyhoo.

During his conventions Madison Square Garden with its capacity of 25,000 was filled to overflowing. The platform contained hundreds of delegates from the American states, Central and South America, and Africa. In response to his appeals for funds came vast heaps of dollar bills, which had to be stuffed into suitcases like wastepaper to haul them off. (At that time bookkeeping had not been introduced into the "Universal Negro Improvement Association.") For the remainder of August the delegates met at Liberty Hall, the Garvey center in Harlem, a low roofed, hot, zinc-covered building that held 6000 persons.
Garvey's successes stirred his enemies to greater activity, thereby increasing the wasp-like devotion of his partisans. Admirers and sycophants buzzed around him in swarms. He was hailed as the greatest man of all time, as another Moses and another Christ. "The two greatest G's in the world," said one of his admirers, "are God and Garvey." Like Napoleon, Mussolini, Hitler, and other dictators, Garvey himself was none too modest, and he too joined the chorus. The more he was praised, the greater became the frenzy of his followers, many of whom were virtually ready to sail), out and attack the whites anywhere.
Among the many activities of Garvey's movement was the formation of an African Legion, the members of which carried guns and swords in the fervent belief that the day was near when they would be using them against the whites in Africa and elsewhere.

It was, in short, racial fascism. He seemed to have believed honestly that the best way to right the wrongs of his people was to retort by adopting the modus operandi of the racial imperialists he was fighting. In other words, for everything white they had, he would have something black. For instance, he promised "a Black House side by side with the White House in Washington." He himself declared that his movement was fascistic. He said, "We were the first Fascists. We had disciplined men, women and children in training for the liberation of Africa. The black masses saw that in this extreme nationalism lay their only hope and readily supported it. Mussolini copied fascism from me but the Negro reactionaries sabotaged it."
Opposition against him increased, while his followers became more fanatic. One of them sent a chopped-off human hand to A. Philip Randolph, editor of the Messenger, one of his leading opponents. Inside the movement, too, all was not harmony. In it were Negroes who were better educated than Garvey and with more practical, more liberal, and more advanced views, and who did not regard him as an oracle. Some of them were no doubt jealous, too, of the adulation showered on him. Others inside the movement denounced him as medieval, autocratic, and antimulatto. Some of his once most faithful supporters attacked him violently in print and founded counter organizations. One of these, his lieutenant, Rev. J. W. Eason, known as "The American Leader," was shot to death as he was leaving a church in New Orleans by a fanatical Garveyite, at Garvey's

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