Marcus Garvey

On August 17, 1887, in St. Ann's Bay, Jamaica, Marcus Garvey was born into a family connected to skilled work and local reading culture. He trained as a printer, worked as a journalist and organizer in the Caribbean and Central America, and absorbed the racial hierarchies of empire before coming to the United States. Those experiences led him to imagine Black politics on a global rather than purely national scale.

Garvey founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association in Jamaica in 1914 and transformed it into an international movement after settling in Harlem in 1916. Through the Negro World, mass parades, and the Black Star Line, he promoted racial pride, economic self-help, and visions of African redemption at a scale unmatched by most contemporaries. Federal prosecution for mail fraud and deportation in 1927 weakened the movement but did not erase its global reach.

Garveyism influenced later Black nationalism, Pan-Africanism, and the political vocabulary used by Malcolm X and many decolonization movements. His movement also changed how historians understand the international dimensions of the Black freedom struggle in the twentieth century.