17 minute read
BACK TO AFRICA WAS NOT MARCUS GARVEY’S PAN-AFRICANISM FOCUS By Kwaku 50INTERVIEW WITH ANGEL COULBY
Back To Africa was not Marcus Garvey’s Pan-Africanism focus
Kwaku is a London-based history consultant and co-editor of ‘African Voices: Quotations By People Of African Descent’
BY KWAKU
Marcus Garvey is undoubtedly one of the world’s greatest pan-Africanists. He was born in St Ann’s Bay, Jamaica on August 17 1887 and died in London on June 10 1940. Indeed, the month of his birth, August, has so many Garvey connections, and Garveyites in Britain have taken to referring the month as Mosiah month, after Garvey’s middle name.
Not surprising, there are a number of mis-information about Garvey. One such mis-information is the way he, and his UNIA-ACL (Universal Negro Improvement Association-African Communities League) organisation, is often painted with the ‘Back To Africa’ brush. I argue that, despite the prevalent view, the ‘Back To Africa’ agenda was not the focus of Garvey, who’s the inspiration behind The Marcus Garvey Annual Pan-Africanism Presentation, which I organise annually on his birthday, partly to raise awareness of the Garvey bust in Brent Museum.
I suggest that Garvey ought to be remembered for much more, such as advocating for African history, confidence and empowerment, rather than “back to Africa”.
Indeed, when the January 2019 edition of New African magazine published an article of mine entitled ‘Back To Africa Movement Gathers Pace’, I’m sure it surprised some pan-Africanists, particularly Garveyites, because there was no mention of Garvey.
Yes, Garvey and his UNIA organisation did advocate “back to Africa”. But as we shall see, because of his unsuccessful attempt to resettle diasporic Africans in Africa, this article argues that Garvey’s abiding legacy should be his centrality to 20th century pan-African history and nationalism, and his advocacy for the teaching of African history as a means of uplifting, empowering and encouraging Africans to regain confidence, in an effort to rise to their full potential and let, as he stated: “Africa be a bright star among the constellations.”
It’s worth pointing out that the “back to Africa” ideology was neither started by Garvey nor was it his main preoccupation. By the time Garvey and the UNIA were making inroads into the United States and the world stage in the early 1920s, the “back to Africa” movement had had more than a century of history, propelled mainly by church and civil society groups.
Garvey’s pan-Africanist thought and “back to Africa” ideology were influenced mainly by two men: Edward Wilmot Blyden, an African Caribbean who emigrated in 1850 to Liberia, where he became a writer, educator and diplomat, and Martin Delaney, an African American medic, military officer, and abolitionist. Delaney was an official of the Liberian Exodus Joint Stock Steamship Company, which managed to transport some two hundred African American émigrés to Liberia in 1878.
Although Garvey’s Liberian resettlement plan was unsuccessful, his main aim for Africa was to redeem colonial Africa for the African, rather than a quest for all Africans in the diaspora to return to Africa. He did once pronounce on the matter, saying: “I have no desire to take all black people back to Africa. There are blacks who are no good here and will likewise be no good there.”
Garvey never visited Africa – the speculation was that the Western colonial authorities would not give permission to such a person, whose call for decolonisation would have destabilised the status quo of their colonies. And although the UNIA had chapters across Africa, Garvey’s direct engagement with the continent was with Liberia, where his plans were to resettle thousands of African families drawn from the Caribbean, and north and south America.
However, the hands of the British and French colonial powers, and the United States, were said to have been at play during the four years of UNIA dealings in the 1920s with the government of Liberia, then one of only two nominally independent, sovereign states in Africa.
Garvey’s emissary Elie Garcia began discussions in Liberia with Liberian president Charles King from May 1920, in which he outlined Garvey’s plan to relocate the UNIA’s headquarters to Liberia, raise funds to help the chronically financially-challenged
country, resettle his followers, and help develop the country. This was followed in February 1921 by a small retinue of officials and technicians, who conducted feasibility studies and had talks with government officials, which included UNIA members and supporters, such as Mayor Of Monrovia Gabriel M Johnson.
The initial positive response to Garvey’s Liberian overtures resulted in a third UNIA party going to Liberia in December 1923, where its responsibilities included sorting out the preparations for 20,000 to 30,000 emigrant families. Sadly for reasons too convoluted to go into detail here, by the time the next UNIA party arrived in 1924, the relationship had soured. They were deported, their property was sold by the government, the UNIA was proscribed, and land earmarked for the UNIA was subsequently sold to the Firestone tyre company for its rubber plantation.
However, although Garvey’s plan to resettle diasporic Africans in Liberia was unsuccessful, he succeeded in instituting the teaching of African history. This is one of the key points he should be remembered for, as he has received little credit for this.
The African-American historian Dr Carter G Woodson is credited with founding in February 1926 Negro History Week, the forerunner to today’s internationally celebrated African or Black History Month (BHM). However, prior to that, the teaching of African history was an integral part of the educational programme available to UNIA’s millions of members and readers of its Negro World newspaper.
This was also embedded in one of the articles of the Declaration of Rights of the Negro Peoples of the World, which was adopted at the 1920 UNIA Convention in New York. Article 49 demanded that school education of African-American children include African history. Incidentally, this and article 53, which proclaimed that August 31 be observed as an international holiday by all Africans, inspired African History Reflection Day. The Day was declared at a UNIA centenary memorial event I co-organised at the Ghana High Commission in London in 2014.
In December 2020, Costa Rican vice president Epsy Campbell Barr managed to get enough support within the UN for the organisation to proclaim August 31 International Day for People of African Descent. She tweeted the day after the proclamation the inspiration for the Day - Article 53 of the UNIA’s 1920 Declaration. So due to Garvey and his organisation, the world has a commemoration day to focus on the contributions of Africans to society, and also to help tackle racism, or more specifically - Afriphobia.
Garvey’s influence on the 20th century African decolonisation and nationalism movements is unassailable. For example, Ghana’s first president Kwame Nkrumah in his 1957 biography ‘Ghana: The Autobiography of Kwame Nkrumah’, said: “I think that of all the literature that I studied, the book that did more than any other to fire my enthusiasm was the ‘Philosophy And Opinions Of Marcus Garvey, Or Africa For The Africans’.”
Nkrumah went on to name Ghana’s shipping line Black Star Line, after the short-lived shipping line incorporated by the UNIA in 1919, which unfortunately never reached the shoreline of any part of Africa. There’s a Black Star Square in Ghana’s capital city Accra, a black star in the Ghanaian flag, and the national football team is called Black Stars.
Nkrumah also championed Garvey’s African pride philosophy, by talking about the African Personality, instituted the African Studies department at the University Of
Ghana, and commissioned the compilation of the ‘Encyclopedia Africana’, which unfortunately was never completed. However, with the support of the Africa Union and the Zimbabwean government, the concept was birthed last year as an 800 paged tome entitled ‘The Africa FactBook: Bursting The Myths’.
Garvey’s influence can be found not only in other African political leaders, such as Jomo Kenyatta, Nelson Mandela, Julius Nyerere, Nnamdi Azikiwe, and Patrice Lumumba, but also in faith and civil rights leaders. The Nation of Islam leader Hon Elijah Muhammad was a UNIA member, as were the parents of his deputy Malcolm X. Martin Luther King acknowledged Garvey’s influence, whilst the Rastafari faith, pioneered by UNIA member Leonard Howell, includes Garvey as one of its prophets.
Also, the flags of African countries, such as Kenya, Malawi and Libya, incorporate the red, black and green tri-colours, which the 1920 Convention declared as the UNIA or pan-African colours.
It is worth noting that by the time Garvey relocated to London in his last years, 1935-40, his stature on the world stage had greatly diminished. So it’s perhaps not surprising that a 1984 Greater London Council (GLC) motion to erect a commemorative plaque on Garvey’s London home was successfully opposed on the grounds that he wasn’t sufficiently known in Britain.
However, within a year, Garvey was to have a most profound and enduring impact on African history awareness in Britain. Whilst some people may be aware that in 1987 Britain became the first country outside of north America to adopt Black History Month (BHM), very few know the Garvey-related backstory. Incidentally, three years on from organising Commemorating African Jubilee Year 1987-88 @30 at London’s City Hall, we’ll revisit this story this November in an online event entitled The True History Of African/Black History Month In The UK.
It all started some time in 1985, when Ghanaian-born Akyaaba Addai-Sebo was working at a special projects advisor at the GLC. One day, he noticed one of his colleagues was distressed. Upon enquiring, his colleague explained that the night before, her young son had asked her: “Mummy, why can’t I be white?”
The fact that a boy named Marcus, after Garvey, being brought up within a pan-Africanist centred home, was having identity issues stirred Addai-Sebo to develop African history programmes to engage Londoners, particularly the youth. So before the GLC was abolished in March 1986, the GLC supported and organised a wide range of history programmes, including a lecture series, and a major exhibition and accompanying book called ‘A History Of The Black Presence In London’.
Having moved to the GLC successor body, the London Strategic Policy Unit (LSPU), Addai-Sebo and his LSPU colleagues began planning in 1987 a major multi-strand, cross-London project initially to mark the centenary of the birth of Garvey. Although the project was subsequently re-named African Jubilee Year 1987-88 (AJY), it’s Garvey image that dominates the logo of AJY, which run from August 1987 to July 1988.
Three significant historic milestones were commemorated within this period: the 25th anniversary of the founding of the Organisation of African Unity, the 100th anniversary of the birth of Garvey, and the the 150th anniversary of the so-called emancipation of enslaved Africans in the British Caribbean. Incidentally, the 10th anniversary of Steve Biko’s death was also considered.
Sally Mugabe stood in as the keynote speaker at the AJY launch on July 31 1987 for Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe, who had to attend an OAU meeting. The African Jubilee Year Declaration was also officially revealed at the launch. The Declaration, which was underpinned by the GLC’s 1984 anti-apartheid and anti-racist declarations, enjoined London’s statutory bodies in marking BHM annually in October.
The Declaration also called for the promotion of “positive public images and an understanding of Africans and people of African descent and encourage the positive teaching and development of their history, culture and struggles”, and the “naming of streets, buildings and parks after Marcus Garvey and other prominent personalities of the pan-African revolutionary process and the commemoration of historic connections between the pan-African revolutionary struggle and London, including the erections of plaques, sculptures and murals in honour of such connections.”
Garvey understood the importance of history, which he succinctly summarised in this often-repeated quote: “A people without the knowledge of their past history, origin and culture is like a tree without roots.”
Although he was born in Jamaica, Garvey was very confident in his African identity. His first hand experience of the lives of the majority of Africans through his travels across the Caribbean, Americas, and Europe, helped him to become one of the major champions of pan-Africanism. So it wasn’t surprising that when asked whether he was African or Jamaican, he replied: “I will not give up a continent for an island.”
He also knew that knowledge of self and one’s proud history produced confident people, leading him to quip: “If you have no confidence in self, you are twice defeated in the race of life,” adding: “With confidence, you have won before you have started.” This is what Garvey ought to be remembered for.
Diversity creates brilliance.
We bring brilliant minds together to crack complex issues
Problems aren’t one-dimensional. By collaborating we can find the answers.
We are committed at the highest levels in all that we do. This is what makes NTU a highly effective learning environment for our students and staff, characterised by fairness, equality of opportunity, and the valuing of diversity. Principles of dignity and respect underpin all that we do, and the University had very clear expectations around how all members of its community treat-and are treated by-others.
Students: As the destination of choice for an increasingly diverse group of students, we are keen to ensure that individual needs are met and that a sense of value and belonging is nurtured.
Colleagues: Colleagues can access our learning and development programme, find out about staff networks and information and source advice and resources to support their working life at NTU.
Contact: Nottingham Trent University, 50 Shakespeare Street, Nottingham NG1 4FQ Tel: 0115 941 8418 Visit us: https://www.ntu.ac.uk/about-us/visit-us About us: https://www.ntu.ac.uk/about-us
If you’re leaving school or college this year and you’re worried about the cost of university and finding a good job afterwards, a JTL apprenticeship could be a better option for you.
With a JTL apprenticeship you can launch a rewarding lifelong career as an electrician or a plumbing & heating engineer, and once fully qualified you can go on to earn an annual salary of £32,000 or more. An apprenticeship can be started at 16 and completed within 4 years. Supporting Black History Month UK’s ‘Proud to be’ campaign.
jtltraining.com/think-ahead 0800 085 2308
Angel interview with... Coulby
Angel is best known for starring as Gwen in all 65 episodes of the action adventure fantasy series ‘Merlin’, which also starred John Hurt, Colin Morgan, and Emilia Fox. The show aired from 2008 to 2012, and in 2010 Angel was nominated for a Golden Nymph Award for Outstanding Actress in a Drama Deries at the Monte Carlo TV Festival.
How did you get into the acting business? My acting career began with a lucky break of sorts. I was approaching the end of my final year of drama college in Edinburgh and had returned to London to take part in a mid-term work placement.
A friend from college called me and told me about a message on the college notice board from a casting director at the BBC. She said they were casting a role in a comedy series which fitted my description, and that I should send in my CV ASAP, because the deadline was in a few days’ time.
I faxed my CV to the relevant parties and then waited to hear back. A week or so later I was called in for my first ever casting, and several months and a couple of auditions later I landed the role.
At the time I was agent-less and had zero experience of working professionally, so the sitcom’s casting director kindly introduced me to an agent friend of hers who agreed to handle the contract for me as a favour. I’m privileged to say that agent happened to be from one of the top agencies and has represented me ever since.
For me this was all literally the stuff of dreams. My drama school buddies and I had spent most of our final year fretting about whether we’d ever get an agent and/or an acting job.
But now, seemingly out of the blue, I had both. I felt and still feel extremely lucky to have had such a smooth journey into the industry.
What medium do you enjoy the best… live theatre, or television? For me they both have their unique merits, so I couldn’t say I preferred one more than another. There’s more of an adrenal buzz with live
Image Credit: Wil Coban
theatre because once you’re on stage there’s no going back, mistakes or no mistakes. Plus, you get a palpable response from the audience, which feels great as long as they’re enjoying themselves!
But with TV you have the luxury of doing more takes if you’re not happy with your performance. And personally, there’s something I appreciate about the finality that comes with filming. There is necessarily some repetition, in that you’ll likely do several takes of
each scene. But once everything in that scene has been captured it’s time to move on to something new.
I also like the fact that when you’re filming you often get to travel and experience new places. But my passion for acting has to do with the actors themselves.
I’ve worked with many wonderful people over the years. This is the part I love no matter the medium.
Being in a series for so long, were you ever concerned about being type cast? Generally, actors are cast based on their look, age and character fitting the role. So, I think the reality is that most actors tend to play close to their own type most of the time.
I guess I wasn’t concerned about being typecast after Merlin because it’s what I’d observed to be the case for most people and therefore what I expected. However, I would certainly welcome the challenge of playing a role which is totally against type.
What have been your most satisfying roles so far? At the risk of sounding anodyne, they have all be satisfying in one way or another. But if I was forced to single something out it might be the show I did at the Hampstead theatre which later transferred to the West End. It was called Good People and was written by David Lindsay Abaire. It was a really funny show and the writing was just so wonderful, it was a joy to perform each night.
Did you always know you wanted to act? Yes. From the moment I understood that those people I’d watched in films and on the tele were in fact actors being paid to perform, and that this was a legitimate career choice, I knew it was what I wanted to do.
Do you think the move towards diversity over the past few years in the industry has made a difference, especially to you as a person of Afro-Caribbean heritage and for others? I feel like it has made a difference for me personally. In the past I would regularly receive auditions for roles which, although they would specify “any race/ethnicity”, I knew absolutely they would not go to a non-White actor. Now however that’s changed.
I’ve also previously experienced tokenism in my career, but now I’m finding casting is often more balanced and representative of the diverse society we live in.
I’m not saying the battle has been won, but this is undoubtably a step in the right direction.
What projects are you currently working on? Earlier this year I shot a series for Apple TV+ called Suspicion, which stars Uma Thurman Noah Emmerich and Kunal Nayyar. I’m currently in Vienna shooting a Drama series called The Net. I imagine both will be shown sometime next year.
Looking back over your career to date, what advice can you give to other Black artists keen to make it in the industry? I can offer the following, which is what I’d say to anyone: • Start meditating - try the Z technique developed by Emily Fletcher • Don’t let the toxic types get you down.
