Marcus Garvey

Marcus Mosiah Garvey, Jr., National Hero of Jamaica (17 August 1887 – 10 June 1940) was a publisher, journalist, entrepreneur, Black nationalist, orator, and founder of the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League (UNIA-ACL).

Quotes

• Look for me in the whirlwind or the storm, look for me all around you, for, with God's grace, I shall come and bring with me countless millions of black slaves who have died in America and the West Indies and the millions in Africa to aid you in the fight for Liberty, Freedom and Life.
  • First Message to the Negroes of the World from Atlanta Prison" (10 February 1925).

• Our union must know no clime, boundary, or nationality… let us hold together under all climes and in every country…
  • The philosophy and opinions of Marcus Garvey or Africa for the Africans (Majority Press, 1986 ed.), p. 163. ISBN 0912469242.

• Hungry men have no respect for law, authority or human life.
  • Reported in Ashton Applewhite, Tripp Evans, and Andrew Frothingham, And I Quote: The Definitive Collection of Quotes, Sayings, and Jokes for the Contemporary Speechmaker (St. Martin's Press, 2003), p. 84. ISBN 0312307446.

• We were the first Fascists, when we had 100,000 disciplined men, and were training children, Mussolini was still an unknown. Mussolini copied our Fascism.
  • 1937 interview reported by Joel A. Rogers, "Marcus Garvey," in Negroes of New York series, New York Writers Program, 1939, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York.

• If you have no confidence in self you are twice defeated in the race of life. With confidence you have won even before you have started.
  • Philosophy and opinions of Marcus Garvey: or, Africa for the Africans‎ (Routledge, 1967), P. 10. ISBN 0714611433.

• When the facts of history are written Haile Selassie of Abyssinia will go down as a great coward who ran away from his country to save his skin and left the millions of his countrymen to struggle through a terrible war that he brought upon them because of his political ignorance and his racial disloyalty.
  • "The Failure of Haile Selassie as Emperor" The Blackman, April, 1937.

• When the war started in Abyssinia all Negro nationalists looked with hope to Haile Selassie. They spoke for him, they prayed for him, they sung for him, they did everything to hold up his hands, as Aaron did for Moses; but whilst the Negro peoples of the world were praying for the success of Abyssinia this little Emperor was undermining the fabric of his own kingdom by playing the fool with white men, having them advising him[,] having them telling him what to do, how to surrender, how to call off the successful thrusts of his [Race] against the Italian invaders. Yes, they were telling him how to prepare his flight, and like an imbecilic child he followed every advice and then ultimately ran away from his country to England, leaving his people to be massacred by the Italians, and leaving the serious white world to laugh at every Negro and repeat the charge and snare - "he is incompetent," "we told you so." Indeed Haile Selassie has proved the incompetence of the Negro for political authority, but thank God there are Negroes who realise that Haile Selassie did not represent the truest qualities of the Negro race. How could he, when he wanted to play white? How could he, when he surrounded himself with white influence? How could he, when in a modern world, and in a progressive civilization, he preferred a slave State of black men than a free democratic country where the black citizens could rise to the same opportunities as white citizens in their democracies?
  • "The Failure of Haile Selassie as Emperor" The Blackman, April, 1937.

Quotes about Marcus Garvey

• Marcus ... maintained forcibly that although the Afro-American people were legally "free" as a people, something of the slave mentality was still characteristic of them. Mentally they were still in chains on account of the crippling effect of an inferiority complex. Somehow the sunlight must be allowed to flood the dark corners of their minds, so that they could be truly free and truly men, confident of holding their own with men of other races.
  • Amy Ashwood Garvey, "The Birth of the Universal Negro Improvement Association"

External links