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The South African
7 days ago
- Politics
- The South African
‘Kill The Boer' sung by ‘African Americans'?[video]
A viral video showed a group of 'African Americans' singing 'Kill The Boer'. Images via X : @ali_naka/ @effsouthafrica A clip of a group of black people singing Kill The Boer – presumably in the US – has gone viral on social media. Recently sung by Economic Freedom Fighter leader Julius Malema, the anti-Apartheid song has been accused of having 'racist' connotations. Last month, US President Donald Trump publicly condemned the 'call to action'. Pretoria-born billionaire businessman and UK media personality Piers Morgan have also criticised the song. 'KILL THE BOER' SUNG ABROAD On social media, a clip of black people singing along to Kill The Boer has gone viral. In the video, the crowd, many of whom wear traditional African garments, are seen dancing and singing the tune to the anti-struggle song. Although some claim that the people in the video were African Americans, it's unconfirmed if the video was taken in the US. However, a flag representing Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) – an organisarion celebrating black Americans in the US – was spotted in the background. The video has many social media users questioning Julius Malema's influence as far as the US. 'FREEDOM OF SPEECH' According to a 2022 ruling, the Equality Court found that Kill The Boer was not considered hate speech. In March, the Constitutional Court – the highest in South Africa – rejected AfriForum's appeal, stating that the song deserved to be protected under freedom of speech. Julius Malema sings Kill The Boer at a political rally. This comes after US President Donald Trump called for his arrest. Images via X: @effsouthafrica WHO SANG IT FIRST? Kill The Boer – titled Dubul' ibhunu – made headlines when anti-Apartheid activist Peter Mokaba sang the song at a memorial for his assassinated comrade, Peter Mokaba, in 1993. It was also sung by former South African President Jacob Zuma during many ANC events. Over the years, Malema has also sang the controversial song at various EFF political rallies. WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS ON 'KILL THE BOER' Let us know by leaving a comment below, or send a WhatsApp to 060 011 021 1. Subscribe to The South African website's newsletters and follow us on WhatsApp, Facebook, X, and Bluesky for the latest news.
Black America Web
19-05-2025
- Black America Web
Malcolm X's Childhood Trauma And The Case For Abolishing Family Policing
Source: Michael Ochs Archives / Getty As we celebrate the centennial birthday of El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz—known to the world as Malcolm X—let us resist the urge to sanitize his legacy. We shouldn't spend this moment only posting his image or quoting his speeches stripped of their revolutionary meaning. We must also remember him as the boy this country tried to annihilate—long before he became the man Ossie Davis eulogized as 'our living, Black manhood… our own Black shining prince—who didn't hesitate to die, because he loved us so.' Malcolm X was born Malcolm Little on May 19, 1925, in Omaha, Nebraska, into a household steeped in Black nationalist politics and resistance. Malcolm's father, Earl Little, was a Baptist preacher and an outspoken organizer with Marcus Garvey's Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA). His sermons lifted up Black pride, economic independence, and Pan-Africanist solidarity. His mother, Louise Norton Little, was equally formidable: a Grenadian-born writer who contributed to Garvey's Negro World newspaper and kept the Garvey movement's flame alive in their family home. Together, they taught their children that Black people could—and must—liberate themselves. For these beliefs, the Littles were marked, surveilled, and terrorized. Before Malcolm could even speak, white supremacists were at his family's doorstep. The Ku Klux Klan threatened the Little family home in Omaha, forcing them to flee to Lansing, Michigan. There, their home was firebombed by white vigilantes. And in 1931, Earl Little was found dead on the street, nearly severed by a streetcar. Though officials ruled his death an accident, the family believed he had been murdered by the Black Legion, a local terrorist white supremacist group. With that ruling, the insurance company denied Louise the life insurance that might have kept the family afloat. The trauma of this brand of racial violence was only the beginning. What followed would be no less devastating: a slow dismantling of the Little family through a state apparatus masquerading as 'child welfare.' After Earl Little's death, Louise Little struggled to support her eight children. She turned to public assistance, but help came only with strings, surveillance, and contempt. Welfare caseworkers, all white, visited constantly, undermining her authority, probing her parenting, and prying into the family's home. Malcolm later recalled that they 'acted as if they owned us… as if we were their private property.' Rather than offer support, the child welfare system became a hostile presence in their lives. Louise, proud and politically conscious, resisted their intrusions. She 'talked back,' defended her children, and demanded dignity. For this, the state labeled her unstable. The relentless surveillance wore her down. In 1939, the state committed Louise to the Kalamazoo Mental Hospital. She would remain there for 26 years. Soon after, Malcolm and his siblings were stolen from their family and community and scattered into foster homes, institutions, and detention centers. 'They were as vicious as vultures,' Malcolm later wrote of the state welfare workers. 'They had no feelings, understanding, compassion, or respect for my mother.' He did not mince words: 'A judge had authority over me and all my brothers and sisters… nothing but legal, modern slavery, however kindly intentioned.' What was framed as child protection was, in fact, racialized family policing—a brutal, bureaucratic dismantling of a proud Black family committed to liberation. What happened to Malcolm X's family wasn't an isolated tragedy of the 1930s. It was—and remains—standard operating procedure for a system built on controlling Black families, not caring for them. Today, Black families are still disproportionately targeted by the family policing system. According to a landmark study from the American Journal of Public Health , over 50% of Black children in the U.S. will experience a child welfare investigation before age 18, nearly double the rate for white children. Black children are also more likely to be removed from their homes, with nearly 10% being placed in foster care at some point during childhood. Though Black children make up only about 14% of the U.S. child population, they represent 22% of all children in foster care. This overrepresentation isn't due to higher rates of abuse. In fact, the vast majority of child removals stem from vague accusations of 'neglect'—a category that overwhelmingly reflects poverty, not harm. In 2019, 75% of confirmed child maltreatment cases were neglect-related. Parents who lack stable housing, childcare, or access to food are labeled unfit, and their children are taken. The state punishes poverty but calls it protecting children. The family policing system is not only racist—it is profoundly ableist. Louise Little was institutionalized, not because she posed a danger, but because she was a Black woman in mourning, under immense pressure, and because she refused to be silent about it. Instead of receiving mental health care or support, she was disappeared into a psychiatric facility. Her children were removed under the guise of her 'unfitness,' and the system never looked back. Today, this ableist logic remains intact. Parents with disabilities—especially Black parents—are far more likely to have their children removed. A national survey found that parents diagnosed with serious mental illnesses are eight times more likely to face CPS involvement, and 26 times more likely to have their children taken from them. Disabled Black mothers live with the compounded fear that asking for help will result in punishment, not support. It is a vicious cycle: state neglect begets trauma, and trauma becomes the justification for more state violence. Malcolm X's early life—shaped by racist terrorism and family separation—planted the seeds of his radicalism. He saw through the lie of state benevolence. He called it what it was: legal slavery, white domination, institutionalized cruelty masked as care. If Malcolm's story teaches us anything, it is that our families need solidarity, not surveillance. Louise Little didn't need to be stripped of her children; she needed respite, mental health support, and community. What the Littles needed was care, not cages. Had neighbors, kin, or even public resources been offered without strings, Malcolm might have grown up more whole. Instead, he grew up in fragments—and forged those fragments into a fire the world could not ignore. Today, abolitionists build on that fire. We demand a world where no parent is punished for being poor or disabled. A world where no child is disappeared into the system for loving their mother too fiercely. Abolition isn't about the absence of safety; it's about building real safety rooted in care, not coercion. As Malcolm once said, 'Our home didn't have to be destroyed.' And as we honor his 100th birthday, we say: no more destroyed homes, no more destroyed families, and no more destroyed communities. Josie Pickens is an educator, writer, cultural critic, and abolitionist strategist and organizer. She is the director of upEND Movement, a national movement dedicated to abolishing the family policing system. SEE ALSO: Malcolm X's Plans Before He Was Killed Malcolm X's Estate Sues FBI, CIA Over Assassination SEE ALSO Malcolm X's Childhood Trauma And The Case For Abolishing Family Policing was originally published on Black America Web Featured Video CLOSE
Yahoo
28-01-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
More Than a Century After His Conviction, Marcus Garvey Receives Pardon for Mail Fraud
"Hearst Magazines and Yahoo may earn commission or revenue on some items through these links." 1887–1940 Marcus Garvey was granted a posthumous pardon by former President Joe Biden on his last full day in office, January 19. The late Jamaican-born activist, who was a prominent proponent of Black nationalism, was convicted of mail fraud in 1923. Garvey served two years of his five-year prison sentence before he was deported back to Jamaica. Civil rights leaders, lawmakers, and his descendants have long requested he be pardoned, claiming his conviction was unjust and politically motivated. Garvey founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) to help advance economic opportunities for people of African descent with the goal of establishing an independent government for Black people in Africa. While in the United States, the orator was targeted by FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, who hired Black agents to infiltrate Garvey's UNIA, leading to his conviction and eventual Garvey was a prominent orator and activist who advocated for Black Nationalism and Pan-Africanism. Born in Jamaica, Garvey founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association that was dedicated to promoting African Americans and their resettlement in Africa. This reflected his philosophy of Black separation and the establishment of Black nations in Africa, known as Garveyism, which sparked a global movement and went on to inspire members of the Nation of Islam and the Rastafari and Black Power movements. After launching several businesses in the United States, Garvey was convicted of mail fraud and deported back to Jamaica. He continued his work for Black repatriation to Africa until his death in 1940 at age 52. Garvey received a posthumous presidential pardon in his mail fraud case in January 2025. FULL NAME: Marcus Mosiah Garvey August 17, 1887DIED: June 10, 1940BIRTHPLACE: St. Ann's Bay, JamaicaSPOUSE: Amy Ashwood Garvey (1919–1922) and Amy Jacques Garvey (1922–1940)CHILDREN: Marcus III and JuliusASTROLOGICAL SIGN: Leo Marcus Mosiah Garvey Jr. was born on August 17, 1887, in St. Ann's Bay, Jamaica. He was the last of 11 children born to Marcus Garvey Sr. and Sarah Jane Richards. His father was a stonemason, and his mother was a domestic worker and farmer. Marcus Sr. was a great influence on young Marcus, who once described his father as 'severe, firm, determined, bold, and strong, refusing to yield even to superior forces if he believed he was right.' His father was known to have a large library where Marcus Jr. learned to read. At age 14, young Marcus became a printer's apprentice. In 1903, he traveled to Kingston, Jamaica, and soon became involved in union activities. In 1907, he took part in an unsuccessful printer's strike, and the experience kindled in him a passion for political activism. Three years later, he traveled throughout Central America, working as a newspaper editor and writing about the exploitation of migrant workers in the plantations. In 1912, Garvey moved to London, where he attended the University of London's Birkbeck College and worked as a messenger for the African Times and Orient Review. It was there he was exposed to Pan-African nationalism, an ideology that promotes unity among people of African descent. During this time, Garvey also discovered Booker T. Washington's autobiography, Up From Slavery, which greatly influenced his philosophy. He believed that Black people should be economically self-sufficient and establish an independent nation in Africa. This ideology became known as Garveyism. Garvey returned to Jamaica after two years in London. In August 1914, he founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League (UNIA), with the goal of uniting all of African diaspora to 'establish a country and absolute government of their own.' Inspired by Booker T. Washington's Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, Garvey traveled to the United States in 1916 to raise funds for a similar vocational school in Jamaica. He settled in New York City and formed a UNIA chapter in Harlem to promote a separatist philosophy of social, political, and economic freedom for Black people. In 1918, Garvey began publishing the widely distributed newspaper Negro World to convey his message. He later purchased Harlem's Liberty Hall auditorium, where he held meetings to help spread his philosophy. In 1919, Garvey and UNIA launched his most well-known business venture, a shipping company called the Black Star Line that established trade and commerce between people of African descent around the globe and transported passengers to Africa. He viewed the shipping company as a symbol of tangible success and economic potential for Black people. At the same time, Garvey started the Negros Factories Association, a series of companies that would manufacture marketable commodities in every big industrial center in the Western hemisphere and Africa. While these ventures helped facilitate the spread of Garveysim, they ultimately failed as businesses due to mismanagement and corruption. In August 1920, UNIA claimed an estimated 4 million members and held its first International Convention at Madison Square Garden in New York City. Before a crowd of 25,000 people from all over the world, Marcus Garvey spoke of having pride in African history and culture. Many people found his words inspiring but not all. Some established Black leaders thought his separatist philosophy ill-conceived. W.E.B. Du Bois, a prominent Black leader and cofounder of the NAACP, called Garvey 'the most dangerous enemy of the Negro race in America.' Garvey, meanwhile, felt Du Bois was an agent of the white elite. W.E.B. Du Bois wasn't the worst adversary of Garvey; history would soon reveal FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover's fixation on ruining Garvey on account of his radical ideas. Hoover felt threatened by the Black leader and feared he was inciting Black people across the country to stand up in militant defiance. He referred to Garvey as a 'notorious negro agitator' and, for several years, desperately sought ways to find damning personal information on him, even going so far as to hire the first Black FBI agent in 1919 to infiltrate Garvey's ranks and spy on him. 'They placed spies in the UNIA,' historian Winston James said. 'They sabotaged the Black Star Line. The engines... of the ships were actually damaged by foreign matter being thrown into the fuel.' Decades later, Hoover would use similar methods to obtain information on Black leaders like Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X. In 1922, Garvey and three other UNIA officials were charged with mail fraud involving the Black Star Line. Trial records indicate several improprieties occurred in the prosecution of the case. It didn't help that the shipping line's books contained many accounting irregularities. On June 23, 1923, Garvey was convicted and sentenced to prison for five years. Claiming to be a victim of a politically motivated miscarriage of justice, Garvey appealed his conviction but was denied. He served two years of his five-year sentence, starting in 1925, before he was released from prison and immediately deported to Jamaica. More than a century after his conviction, Garvey was posthumously pardoned by President Joe Biden in January 2025. Also in the 1920s, Garvey wrote three books. His first was The Philosophy and Opinion of Marcus Garvey, initially published in 1923. He went on to pen Aims and Objects of Movement for Solution of Negro Problem the following year before delivering his final work, The Tragedy of White Injustice, in 1927.$12.73 at Garvey continued his political activism and the work of UNIA in Jamaica and then moved to London in 1935. But he didn't command the same influence he had earlier. Perhaps in desperation or maybe in delusion, Garvey collaborated with outspoken segregationist and white supremacist Senator Theodore Bilbo of Mississippi to promote a reparations scheme. The Greater Liberia Act of 1939 outlined a plan to deport 12 million African Americans to Liberia at federal expense to relieve unemployment. The act failed in Congress, and Garvey lost even more support among the Black population. Garvey was married twice. He met his first wife, Amy Ashwood, at a debate program in Jamaica in 1914. The two were a decade apart in age, and she was 17 years old at the time of their meeting. Ashwood later became Garvey's personal secretary and a member of the UNIA board of management. The two became secretly engaged in 1916 but were briefly separated when Ashwood's parents sent her back to Panama, where she spent much of her childhood. After reuniting in the United States, the pair got married in a private Catholic ceremony in December 1919, followed by a public ceremony and reception at Liberty Hall. Just months after their wedding, however, Garvey filed for an annulment, citing his new bride's infidelity as the cause of the split. Their divorce was finalized in July 1922. That same month, Garvey married his second wife, Amy Jacques, who was Ashwood's friend and maid of honor. At the time of their marriage, Jacques had already taken over Ashwood's secretarial duties and later became Garvey's personal representative while he was in prison. In 1930, she gave birth to their first child, Marcus Mosiah Garvey III. Three years later, their second son, Julius, was born. Garvey died in London on June 10, 1940, after several strokes. Due to travel restrictions during World War II, his body was interred in the United Kingdom's capital city. In 1964, his remains were exhumed and taken to Jamaica, where the government proclaimed him Jamaica's first national hero and reinterred him at a shrine in the National Heroes Park. His memory and influence remain—his message of pride and dignity inspired many Americans in the early days of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s and 1960s. In tribute to his many contributions, Garvey's bust has been displayed in the Organization of American States' Hall of Heroes in Washington D.C. The country of Ghana named its shipping line the Black Star Line and its national soccer team the Black Stars, both in honor of Garvey. In addition, a park in Harlem, New York, was named after him in 1973. Hungry men have no respect for law, authority or human life. 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. [Poverty is] a hellish state to be in. It is no virtue. It is a crime. Our union must know no clime, boundary, or nationality... let us hold together under all climes and in every country. 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. The question may start in America, but [it] will not end there. Just at that time, other races were engaged in seeing their cause through—the Jews through their Zionist movement and the Irish through their Irish movement—and I decided that, cost what it might, I would make this a favorable time to see the Negro's interest through. My garb is Scotch, my name is Irish, my blood is African, and my training is half-American and half-English, and I think that with that tradition I can take care of myself. The Negro's chance will come when the smoke from the fire and ashes of 20th century civilization has blown off. There are two classes of men in the world, those who succeed and those who do not succeed. Be not deceived. Wealth is strength, wealth is power, wealth is influence, wealth is justice, is liberty, is real human rights. If the Negro is not careful he will drink in all the poison of modern civilization and die from the effects of it. Fact Check: We strive for accuracy and fairness. If you see something that doesn't look right, contact us! You Might Also Like Nicole Richie's Surprising Adoption Story The Story of Gypsy Rose Blanchard and Her Mother Queen Camilla's Life in Photos
Yahoo
27-01-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
More Than a Century After His Conviction, Marcus Garvey Receives Pardon for Mail Fraud
"Hearst Magazines and Yahoo may earn commission or revenue on some items through these links." 1887–1940 Marcus Garvey was granted a posthumous pardon by former President Joe Biden on his last full day in office, January 19. The late Jamaican-born activist, who was a prominent proponent of Black nationalism, was convicted of mail fraud in 1923. Garvey served two years of his five-year prison sentence before he was deported back to Jamaica. Civil rights leaders, lawmakers, and his descendants have long requested he be pardoned, claiming his conviction was unjust and politically motivated. Garvey founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) to help advance economic opportunities for people of African descent with the goal of establishing an independent government for Black people in Africa. While in the United States, the orator was targeted by FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, who hired Black agents to infiltrate Garvey's UNIA, leading to his conviction and eventual Garvey was a prominent orator and activist who advocated for Black Nationalism and Pan-Africanism. Born in Jamaica, Garvey founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association that was dedicated to promoting African Americans and their resettlement in Africa. This reflected his philosophy of Black separation and the establishment of Black nations in Africa, known as Garveyism, which sparked a global movement and went on to inspire members of the Nation of Islam and the Rastafari and Black Power movements. After launching several businesses in the United States, Garvey was convicted of mail fraud and deported back to Jamaica. He continued his work for Black repatriation to Africa until his death in 1940 at age 52. Garvey received a posthumous presidential pardon in his mail fraud case in January 2025. FULL NAME: Marcus Mosiah Garvey August 17, 1887DIED: June 10, 1940BIRTHPLACE: St. Ann's Bay, JamaicaSPOUSE: Amy Ashwood Garvey (1919–1922) and Amy Jacques Garvey (1922–1940)CHILDREN: Marcus III and JuliusASTROLOGICAL SIGN: Leo Marcus Mosiah Garvey Jr. was born on August 17, 1887, in St. Ann's Bay, Jamaica. He was the last of 11 children born to Marcus Garvey Sr. and Sarah Jane Richards. His father was a stonemason, and his mother was a domestic worker and farmer. Marcus Sr. was a great influence on young Marcus, who once described his father as 'severe, firm, determined, bold, and strong, refusing to yield even to superior forces if he believed he was right.' His father was known to have a large library where Marcus Jr. learned to read. At age 14, young Marcus became a printer's apprentice. In 1903, he traveled to Kingston, Jamaica, and soon became involved in union activities. In 1907, he took part in an unsuccessful printer's strike, and the experience kindled in him a passion for political activism. Three years later, he traveled throughout Central America, working as a newspaper editor and writing about the exploitation of migrant workers in the plantations. In 1912, Garvey moved to London, where he attended the University of London's Birkbeck College and worked as a messenger for the African Times and Orient Review. It was there he was exposed to Pan-African nationalism, an ideology that promotes unity among people of African descent. During this time, Garvey also discovered Booker T. Washington's autobiography, Up From Slavery, which greatly influenced his philosophy. He believed that Black people should be economically self-sufficient and establish an independent nation in Africa. This ideology became known as Garveyism. Garvey returned to Jamaica after two years in London. In August 1914, he founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League (UNIA), with the goal of uniting all of African diaspora to 'establish a country and absolute government of their own.' Inspired by Booker T. Washington's Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, Garvey traveled to the United States in 1916 to raise funds for a similar vocational school in Jamaica. He settled in New York City and formed a UNIA chapter in Harlem to promote a separatist philosophy of social, political, and economic freedom for Black people. In 1918, Garvey began publishing the widely distributed newspaper Negro World to convey his message. He later purchased Harlem's Liberty Hall auditorium, where he held meetings to help spread his philosophy. In 1919, Garvey and UNIA launched his most well-known business venture, a shipping company called the Black Star Line that established trade and commerce between people of African descent around the globe and transported passengers to Africa. He viewed the shipping company as a symbol of tangible success and economic potential for Black people. At the same time, Garvey started the Negros Factories Association, a series of companies that would manufacture marketable commodities in every big industrial center in the Western hemisphere and Africa. While these ventures helped facilitate the spread of Garveysim, they ultimately failed as businesses due to mismanagement and corruption. In August 1920, UNIA claimed an estimated 4 million members and held its first International Convention at Madison Square Garden in New York City. Before a crowd of 25,000 people from all over the world, Marcus Garvey spoke of having pride in African history and culture. Many people found his words inspiring but not all. Some established Black leaders thought his separatist philosophy ill-conceived. W.E.B. Du Bois, a prominent Black leader and cofounder of the NAACP, called Garvey 'the most dangerous enemy of the Negro race in America.' Garvey, meanwhile, felt Du Bois was an agent of the white elite. W.E.B. Du Bois wasn't the worst adversary of Garvey; history would soon reveal FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover's fixation on ruining Garvey on account of his radical ideas. Hoover felt threatened by the Black leader and feared he was inciting Black people across the country to stand up in militant defiance. He referred to Garvey as a 'notorious negro agitator' and, for several years, desperately sought ways to find damning personal information on him, even going so far as to hire the first Black FBI agent in 1919 to infiltrate Garvey's ranks and spy on him. 'They placed spies in the UNIA,' historian Winston James said. 'They sabotaged the Black Star Line. The engines... of the ships were actually damaged by foreign matter being thrown into the fuel.' Decades later, Hoover would use similar methods to obtain information on Black leaders like Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X. In 1922, Garvey and three other UNIA officials were charged with mail fraud involving the Black Star Line. Trial records indicate several improprieties occurred in the prosecution of the case. It didn't help that the shipping line's books contained many accounting irregularities. On June 23, 1923, Garvey was convicted and sentenced to prison for five years. Claiming to be a victim of a politically motivated miscarriage of justice, Garvey appealed his conviction but was denied. He served two years of his five-year sentence, starting in 1925, before he was released from prison and immediately deported to Jamaica. More than a century after his conviction, Garvey was posthumously pardoned by President Joe Biden in January 2025. Also in the 1920s, Garvey wrote three books. His first was The Philosophy and Opinion of Marcus Garvey, initially published in 1923. He went on to pen Aims and Objects of Movement for Solution of Negro Problem the following year before delivering his final work, The Tragedy of White Injustice, in 1927.$12.73 at Garvey continued his political activism and the work of UNIA in Jamaica and then moved to London in 1935. But he didn't command the same influence he had earlier. Perhaps in desperation or maybe in delusion, Garvey collaborated with outspoken segregationist and white supremacist Senator Theodore Bilbo of Mississippi to promote a reparations scheme. The Greater Liberia Act of 1939 outlined a plan to deport 12 million African Americans to Liberia at federal expense to relieve unemployment. The act failed in Congress, and Garvey lost even more support among the Black population. Garvey was married twice. He met his first wife, Amy Ashwood, at a debate program in Jamaica in 1914. The two were a decade apart in age, and she was 17 years old at the time of their meeting. Ashwood later became Garvey's personal secretary and a member of the UNIA board of management. The two became secretly engaged in 1916 but were briefly separated when Ashwood's parents sent her back to Panama, where she spent much of her childhood. After reuniting in the United States, the pair got married in a private Catholic ceremony in December 1919, followed by a public ceremony and reception at Liberty Hall. Just months after their wedding, however, Garvey filed for an annulment, citing his new bride's infidelity as the cause of the split. Their divorce was finalized in July 1922. That same month, Garvey married his second wife, Amy Jacques, who was Ashwood's friend and maid of honor. At the time of their marriage, Jacques had already taken over Ashwood's secretarial duties and later became Garvey's personal representative while he was in prison. In 1930, she gave birth to their first child, Marcus Mosiah Garvey III. Three years later, their second son, Julius, was born. Garvey died in London on June 10, 1940, after several strokes. Due to travel restrictions during World War II, his body was interred in the United Kingdom's capital city. In 1964, his remains were exhumed and taken to Jamaica, where the government proclaimed him Jamaica's first national hero and reinterred him at a shrine in the National Heroes Park. His memory and influence remain—his message of pride and dignity inspired many Americans in the early days of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s and 1960s. In tribute to his many contributions, Garvey's bust has been displayed in the Organization of American States' Hall of Heroes in Washington D.C. The country of Ghana named its shipping line the Black Star Line and its national soccer team the Black Stars, both in honor of Garvey. In addition, a park in Harlem, New York, was named after him in 1973. Hungry men have no respect for law, authority or human life. 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. [Poverty is] a hellish state to be in. It is no virtue. It is a crime. Our union must know no clime, boundary, or nationality... let us hold together under all climes and in every country. 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. The question may start in America, but [it] will not end there. Just at that time, other races were engaged in seeing their cause through—the Jews through their Zionist movement and the Irish through their Irish movement—and I decided that, cost what it might, I would make this a favorable time to see the Negro's interest through. My garb is Scotch, my name is Irish, my blood is African, and my training is half-American and half-English, and I think that with that tradition I can take care of myself. The Negro's chance will come when the smoke from the fire and ashes of 20th century civilization has blown off. There are two classes of men in the world, those who succeed and those who do not succeed. Be not deceived. Wealth is strength, wealth is power, wealth is influence, wealth is justice, is liberty, is real human rights. If the Negro is not careful he will drink in all the poison of modern civilization and die from the effects of it. Fact Check: We strive for accuracy and fairness. If you see something that doesn't look right, contact us! You Might Also Like Nicole Richie's Surprising Adoption Story The Story of Gypsy Rose Blanchard and Her Mother Queen Camilla's Life in Photos
The Guardian
26-01-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
Inside the 100-year fight to get a Black revolutionary pardoned
In the days before President Joe Biden's final moments in office, Justin Hansford, a Howard University law professor, received a call from a White House staffer. They told Hansford that Marcus Garvey, the revolutionary Jamaican leader who pushed for the unity of Black people and a collective return to Africa, would soon be posthumously pardoned for mail fraud. The Guardian's journalism is independent. We will earn a commission if you buy something through an affiliate link. Learn more. Hansford dialed in Garvey's son, Dr Julius Garvey, for a three-way call to break the news to him before it hit the newspaper circuit. As he thought of his nearly two decades of legal and advocacy work to help exonerate Garvey, Hansford remembered Garvey's wife Amy Jacques who began the efforts to pardon him in 1923. 'I just bore witness to the culmination of over 101 years of people trying to accomplish something,' Hansford, the founder and executive director of Howard's Thurgood Marshall civil rights center, told the Guardian. 'After working on this for all these years, it was a great honor for me to be able to be the person on the phone when [Garvey's son] got that news.' Garvey's Black nationalist movement, anchored by the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), began in the 1910s and spread throughout the world after Garvey moved to the US. His organization advocated for the celebration of African history and culture and championed a back-to-Africa movement where the descendants of formerly enslaved Africans would return to their roots. But in 1923, Garvey was convicted of one count of mail fraud and served nearly three years of a five-year sentence at the Atlanta federal penitentiary. He was deported from the US in 1927 and the UNIA soon lost momentum. Garvey's supporters, including Hansford, say that the trial was politically motivated and designed to quash the global movement. The conviction had far-reaching effects: it sullied Garvey's reputation during his lifetime and cast a lasting shadow over the movement. Garvey's posthumous presidential pardon on 19 January followed over a century of legal teams poring over trial transcripts, volunteers gathering tens of thousands of petition signatures, and supporters sending several US presidents letters seeking Garvey's exoneration. Hansford's 2024 book, Jailing a Rainbow: The Unjust Trial and Conviction of Marcus Garvey, provided a legal analysis in support of his exoneration. While the conviction did not define Garvey's legacy, Hansford said, the posthumous pardoning will help restore the dignity of his global movement: 'That idea of pride in your heritage, for African Americans, all of these ideas are what we vindicate when we vindicate Garvey.' The son of a stonemason and a domestic servant, Garvey formed the UNIA in Jamaica in 1914 to achieve what he called Black self-reliance, the idea that economic and political independence could lead to liberation. In 1916, Garvey moved to Harlem, New York, to spread UNIA's message and soon set up the movement's headquarters there. Within four years, the movement flourished among working-class people, with nearly a thousand UNIA divisions cropping up throughout the US, Canada, Africa, Central America and the Caribbean. After the first world war, Garvey saw an opportunity to unite the African diaspora in the non-colonized west African country Liberia. At a 1920 conference he organized in Manhattan called the International Conference for the Negro Peoples of the World, which was attended by African delegates and tens of thousands of his followers, the UNIA adopted a human rights document that detailed abuses towards Black people throughout the world and declared the need for unity. Along with his idea of Liberia becoming an empire for Black people in the Americas, Garvey created a shipping company called the Black Star Line that would trade between the continents and repatriate Black Americans to Africa. People could buy stocks in the Black Star Line for $5 a share. 'If you believe that the Negro has a soul, if you believe that the Negro is a man, if you believe the Negro was endowed with the senses commonly given to other men by the Creator, then you must acknowledge that what other men have done, Negroes can do. We want to build up cities, nations, governments, industries of our own in Africa, so that we will be able to have the chance to rise from the lowest to the highest positions in the African commonwealth,' Garvey said in a recorded July 1921 speech. Even though the Black Star Line vessels transported people to Latin America, the ships never made it to Liberia. The Bureau of Investigation, a precursor to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), began investigating the fleet soon after it launched in 1919. The company quickly failed and lost up to an estimated $1.25m, laying the groundwork for Garvey's charge of using the mail to solicit company investments. According to Hansford, Garvey was solely guilty of launching a business at an unfortunate time, at the beginning of the Great Depression when many businesses financially struggled. After the first world war, ships that were once used for warfare sat idle, so many people began entering the shipping business, Hansford said. 'If you try to open a business and suddenly everybody in the world has access to ships and they can open the same business as you can, it was really hard to be successful in the shipping industry.' While gathering research for the pardon, Hansford learned from FBI documents that undercover federal agents had infiltrated the Black Star Line in order to sabotage it. The Bureau of Investigation's J Edgar Hoover 'had made it really clear in the documents that he wanted this to fail, so some of these agents were the same people in charge of operating some of these ships', Hansford said. 'So it's a number of things working against them. He had the Great Depression. He had this shipping industry. He's got infiltrators operating the company.' Additionally, Black leaders, such as A Philip Randolph, who opposed Garvey's ideology began a 'Garvey Must Go' campaign to discredit him, and in 1923, wrote a letter to the attorney general encouraging the government to continue its prosecution of Garvey for mail fraud. Hansford said that he lamented the fact 'the policy debate around Black leadership was decided not on the merits, but it was decided by the fact that the government and J Edgar Hoover was able to intervene and convict and frame and deport one side of the debate'. The trial led to Garvey's deportation in effect dismantled the UNIA movement and contributed to his death, Hansford said. After he survived a stroke in 1940, the media prematurely published obituaries for Garvey, many of which focused on the mail fraud conviction and caused Garvey distress. He suffered another stroke and died shortly thereafter. 'That false charge was the very thing that took his life,' Hansford said. It was 'a very, very difficult pill to swallow'. Garvey's son Julius approached Hansford about 20 years ago after he discovered a paper that Hansford wrote about the trial. Soon after, Garvey asked him to join the legal team to help exonerate his father. Over the course of several years, Hansford pored over transcripts from the trial, visited Jamaica to view museum archives, and drafted an analysis of why Garvey deserved a pardon. When Hansford became a law professor at his alma mater, Howard University, he encouraged his students to read the trial transcripts to glean new angles, and hosted campus events to highlight the injustice of Garvey's conviction. Goulda A Downer, an associate professor at Howard University's College of Medicine, also spent nearly a decade pushing for Garvey's pardon. As the then head of the Caribbean-American Political Action Committee, which politically advocates for Caribbean Americans in DC, Downer fell 50,000 short of gathering the 100,000 signatures needed to send a pardon petition to the White House in 2016. She tried again six years later and successfully got the required signatures by working with advocates throughout the world, but said that she didn't hear back from the White House at that time. For several years thereafter, Downer helped organize Caribbean American community events to inform people of Garvey's legacy, and regularly met with attorneys, including Hansford, to brainstorm new ways to secure a posthumous pardon. 'We are the beneficiaries of Marcus Garvey's vision,' Downer said. 'Because he clarified for us the question of our identity, and I think that was something that we always wanted to make sure that the community knew: that we hadn't stopped. We were continuing to fight.' Downer and Hansford are uncertain what made Biden pardon Garvey after a century of global efforts, but they saw it as a long time coming. For Hansford, it was symbolic that Garvey's pardon came on the eve of President Donald Trump's second inauguration. '[Garvey] had an outgrowth of activism that was fascinating and powerful and dynamic and energized, and those ideas are still relevant,' Hansford said. 'Those ideas could still empower resistance movements today.' He was thrilled to see videos circulating on social media of youth learning about Garvey after he received his presidential pardon. Hansford said that advocates were planning a large celebration at Howard University in February, with global celebrations continuing into the summer. For Downer, a posthumous presidential pardon served as a form of justice for Garvey and his family, and had the potential to restore his legacy. 'He really inspired us to take pride in ourselves,' Downer said. 'He changed the world.'
