Marcus Garvey's Best Strategy To Fight White Dominance

847 Words4 Pages

institution. Marcus Garvey chose this strategy of separation to fight White supremacy for many different reasons. Marcus Garvey believed that separation would be the best strategy to fight White supremacy. There are a few reasons to why he would think this is the best strategy. The first reason is that he believed that nowhere in the world that Black people were treated equally, “…nowhere in the world…are Black men accorded equal treatment with White men…” (Garvey 1920, Pg. 1). What Garvey means within this quote is that he sees that in every country that is controlled by an all White or predominately White government that Black people are discriminated against and the only way to get away from this discrimination is to separate from these …show more content…

Some who followed his strategy of separation included the Honorable Elijah Muhammad leader or the Nation of Islam, Huey P. Newton co founder of the Black Panther Party for Self Defense and Kwame Nkrumah first president of an independent Ghana. Even though they also followed the strategy of separation they practiced them in different ways and also incorporated agitation within their versions of separation. The way that Elijah Muhammad followed the strategy of separation that differed from Garvey’s way was how they were going to separate. The way that Muhammad believed they should separate was predominantly through the financial way as opposed to Garvey’s predominate physical way of separation. For example “2. Pool your resources, physically as well as financially. 3. Stop wanton criticisms of everything that is black-owned and black-operated” (Muhammad 1965, Pg. 174). Muhammad focused primarily on supporting Black businesses to financially separate theirselves to hurt White supremacy by depriving them of the Black dollar. Huey P. Newton’s strategy of separation differed from Garvey’s specific strategy by Newton focussing on separating through stop being dependent on local and county police forces for protection. For example “We began…by checking with the street brothers. We asked them if they would be interested in forming the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, which would be based upon defending the community against the aggression of the power structure, including the military and the armed might of the police” (Newton 1973, Pg. 120). The difference of Newton’s separation strategy is that he wants to separate from the oppressive law enforcement system by instilling his own law enforcement for the Black community but while staying in the same place and not moving like how Garvey’s version of separation is. Kwame