Had he been successful in all his aspirations everyone would know the story of Marcus Garvey, a founder and leader of the Pan-African movement and expounder of ideals similar to Booker T. Washington. Colin Grant's Negro With a Hat gives a deep and rich rendering of the man known as Black Moses.
Growing up in late-nineteenth century Jamaica, Garvey experienced first-hand the colonial system of the sugar cane and banana producing British colony. As a young man from rural parents, Garvey was fortunate to get a job as a print worker in the capital, Kingston. Shortly after, seeing the iniquities of Jamaican society plainly evident in the stratified city, the 20-year-old took the risky position of joining his coworkers when a strike broke out, distinguishing himself as a labor leader.
And -- surprise! -- he was canned. The United Fruit Company (a virtual nation-state in itself, comparable to the earlier East India Company and predecessor to Chiquita), which fed on the tropical fruits of the Caribbean and Central America, provided Garvey's next line of employment. Being a U.S. company, the UFC used "Jim Crow standards of segregation and introduced a two-tier system of payment: white workers benefited from gold roll, while Blacks had to settle for silver." In other words, Garvey's opportunity was limited because of his color. This, combined with poor health -- asthma -- forced Garvey to return to Jamaica at the age of 24.
Colin Grant plods out information about Garvey's life in a timeline studded with details. Later in the book, Garvey's life finds him feeling confined on his home island, and in 1912 he decided to take a steam ship to the heart of the British Empire. While there he worked for the African Times and Orient Review, a newspaper described as a "manual of Black malaise and a road map for the redemption of the race." Although Garvey only lived in London for two years before returning to Jamaica, his work for this paper exposed him to vibrant figures in the Black intellectual life of the modern world.
Within five days of his return to Jamaica, Garvey had established UNIA, the Universal Negro Improvement Association, and African Communities Imperial League. For two years he developed his organization before packing his bags and moving himself and UNIA to Harlem, which in 1916 was "the Negro capital of the world." Garvey hoped to draw energy to the UNIA from the renaissance well under way. Garvey saw in the founding of the UNIA an organization that would develop unity among the African Diaspora, promote a spirit of race pride, and reclaim history -- all while looking toward Africa as the motherland. Over its years, UNIA would work for a homeland in Liberia, develop factories and production centers to produce goods to trade within the African Diaspora of the world, buy steamships to ferry people and cargo and farmland to grow crops, open branches across the U.S. and the world, and purchase land in Virginia to establish a university.
These commercial endeavors were clearly ambitious, and his critics accused him of being unrealistic. The important thing though is that he got these movements started and expanded the imagination of what could be possible. The UNIA developed a sense of nationhood among people of African descent throughout the world and in the U.S. specifically, the pan-African movement, and proclaimed the red, black, and green flag as the flag of the African race. To protect itself, it had its own line of defense, the Universal African Legion, and to communicate with its masses of members and the greater public the UNIA had its own paper, the Negro World.
As could be expected, Garvey and his supporters encountered opposition. Travel was restricted in Britain and its colonies, and the U.S.'s Bureau of Investigation's (predecessor of the FBI) infiltration of the UNIA culminated with an assassination attempt, the gunman fingering the assistant DA of New York. Being a movement of the people, Garvey and the UNIA attracted socialists who "both admired and envied his success in signing up huge numbers of working-class Black people." Unfortunately for the UNIA at this time in history, "paranoid America" was markedly anti-labor. Eventually on trumped-up charges of mail fraud, Garvey was sentenced to five years in prison in 1925. Thanks in part to active campaigning by his supporters and the UNIA (including Earl Little, Malcolm X's father), he was pardoned by President Coolidge two years later, only to be deported to Jamaica, leaving his work in the U.S. behind.
In his book, Grant delves into the details of Marcus Garvey, giving an account of the leader's life and accomplishments while being careful not to over-embellish. Grant presents an honest picture of the many accomplishments and dreams of the person called Black Moses. It is almost as if Garvey's day-to-day life is retold.
Garvey stayed in Jamaica for five years and continued his involvement in the UNIA. During this time Garvey founded the country's first political party. However the island could not satisfy Garvey and he moved back to England where he would spend his last five years of life and die in relative obscurity.