Marcus Garvey: Racism And Colonialism

For many years racism and colonialism have been the reality of the world. Both were used to advance the idea that one race was superior to another, the blacks being inferior to the whites. The Atlantic Slave trade headed the notion of colonialism, the whites believed it was their duty to civilize the blacks as they were seen as ‘untamed beasts’ that needed to be colonized. This resulted in a number of whites exploiting the blacks to gain wealth whilst, the blacks lost everything (families, identities and even their lives). The whites were skilled at manipulating to the point that some blacks believed their views as they often found ways to justify their actions. Even after the abolition of slavery blacks were still not being seen as equal to

Ann, Jamaica. He was the son of Marcus Garvey Senior who was a master mason as well as a deacon at a Methodist Church and his mother Sarah Jane Richards was a local farmer. His father was a well-respected man within his community. From him Garvey not only inherited “...persistence of character, but also his love of books, and his intellectual abilities” (Lewis, 1988, p. 17). His father’s library exposed Garvey to reading at an early age which helped in his development. To improve himself Garvey was sent to school, where his teachers described him as an intelligent

Washington’s autobiography “Up from Slavery” he developed his vision for the UNIA. Garvey left England on June 8, 1914, the hardship he saw amongst black migrants in his travels changed his thinking. On the ship returning to his home country Garvey wrote his ideas for the UNIA and the African Communities League, they were both founded on August 1914. The UNIA was originally conceived as a reform association “dedicated to racial uplift and the establishment of educational and industrial opportunities for blacks, taking Booker T. Washington's Tuskegee Institute as a model” (PBS, 2016). The influence of the UNIA in Jamaica was not as high as it was when Garvey introduced it to the United States. This could be due to a number of people living in Jamaica being uneducated, which was a major problem as Garvey often used the newspaper to communicate with