Why did garvey fail

It quickly grew from being a weekly into a worldwide phenomenon with a peak circulation of , In , Garvey returned to London where he lived and worked until his death at age Marcus Garvey died on June 10, from complications brought on by two strokes. Amy Euphemia Jacques Garvey 31 December — 25 July was the Jamaican-born second wife of Marcus Garvey, and a journalist and activist in her own right….

Ultimately, Garvey argued, all black people in the world should return to their homeland in Africa, which should be free of white colonial rule. It derived its name from the White Star Line, a line whose success Garvey felt he could duplicate. Black Star Line. He believed that all black people should return to their rightful homeland Africa, and was heavily involved in promoting the Universal Negro Improvement Association UNIA which he founded in In the s Garvey organised the black nationalist movement in America.

While it had been part of a mass movement in the early s, the UNIA continued in decline without Garvey, though it still exists in the twenty-first century. Garvey started the shipping company in as a way to promote trade but also to transport passengers to Africa.

Garvey had grand plans for settling black Americans in Liberia, the only country in Africa governed by Africans. He launched a recruitment campaign in the South, which he had ignored because of strong white resistance.

Garvey even praised racial segregation laws, explaining that they were good for building black businesses. Little came of this recruitment effort. Criticism from his followers grew. In , the U. At his trial, the evidence showed that Garvey was a poor businessman, but the facts were less clear about outright fraud.

The jury convicted him anyway, and he was sentenced to prison. In , President Calvin Coolidge commuted his sentence, and he was released. The government immediately deported him to Jamaica. Garvey died in , an almost forgotten man. He subsequently moved to Harlem in New York, a hotbed of politics and art. This American sojourn would be a decisive catalyst to the ambitious, unashamedly self-promoting Jamaican, who zealously propounded the idea of New World blacks going "home".

Garvey would lead the oppressed back to Africa. The UNIA was in the ascendant, rapidly increasing its membership when the Bolshevik revolution shook the foundations of the White House. Following the First World War, European superpowers gaily carved up Africa, prompting Garvey, a thorn in the flesh of Empire, to attempt in vain to negotiate territory for repatriation to the motherland.

Undeterred, he created the Black Star Line, the world's first black-owned shipping company, whose steamers would sail across the Atlantic to prosperity and equal rights. This audacious venture captured the imagination of descendants of slaves from Oklahoma to Cuba. As Garvey's power increased, with his speeches and public appearances regularly drawing huge crowds, he started to lose his grip on reality. With his dream of resurgence of the motherland beset with seemingly insurmountable obstacles, the diaspora's great firebrand was consumed by dizzying delusions of grandeur.

Garvey denigrated imperialism but proclaimed himself the "provisional president of Africa". In a monumental act of hubris, he tried to make a deal with the Ku Klux Klan, even announcing that one of its wizards might invest in the Black Star Line. It was not just in his own mind but around him that confusion reigned, and the real triumph of Grant's text is the illuminating portrait it paints of the world on several levels.

Throughout the s and s, African-American society, the American mainstream and the international community grappled with great upheaval.

What clearly emerges is the intense, charged debate among a plethora of black political agencies on how best to uplift the race. Internal animosities reaching back to slavery days made the pot boil over. Nobody could point the way forward with any real assurance.

If black against white was one thing, black against mulatto was another. African-American against Caribbean, another still.