¹ Scholarly convention has judged the word “Caribbean,” derived from Carib, the original inhabitants of the islands, to be more appropriate than “West Indies,” which arises from the errors of Western explorers. For the purpose of this article, the Caribbean will refer to British territories.

² Judith Stein, The World of Marcus Garvey: Race and Class in Modern Society (Baton Rouge and London: Louisiana State University Press, 1986), 87.

³ Ibid., 226.

⁴ George M. Fredrickson, Black Liberation: A Comparative History of Black Ideologies in the United States and South Africa (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 156. On 25 June 1922 Garvey travelled to Georgia to meet Edward Young Clarke, deputy leader of the Ku Klux Klan. From their opposing perspectives, Garvey and Clarke shared a common belief in racial purity and separation. Garvey believed the Klan's pledge to make America a white man's country was the representative view of most white Americans and subsequently opted to challenge the status quo where blacks formed the majority group.

⁵ Stein, 39.

⁶ Marcus Garvey, Negro World, 5 April 1919; Robert A. Hill, ed., The Marcus Garvey and Universal Negro Improvement Association Papers, 7 vols. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983–1990), 1, 398. From 1891 to the completion of the canal and railroad project on 15 August 1914, an estimated 91,000 Jamaicans departed for Panama to work for the Isthmian Canal Company and Panama Railroad Company. For details of Jamaican migration to Panama see Olive Senior, “The Colon People,” Jamaica Journal, 11, 3 (March 1978), 62–71, and 11, 4 (Sept. 1978), 87–103; Velma Newton, The Silver Men: West Indian Labour Migration to Panama, 1850–1914 (Kingston: Institute of Social and Economic Research, 1984). The Negro World began publication as the official organ of the UNIA on 17 August 1918 and was a pivotal source of American black expression through its literary competitions and reviews of black writing.

⁷ Irma Watkins-Owens, Blood Relations: Caribbean Immigrants and the Harlem Community, 1900–1930 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996), 171.

⁸ W. E. B. Du Bois, “Marcus Garvey and the NAACP,” Crisis, Feb. 1928, italics added; in Watkins-Owens, 125.

⁹ Garvey, “West Indies in the Mirror of Truth,” Champion Magazine, Jan. 1917, in Hill, 1, 199.

¹⁰ Garvey, Negro World, 12 Feb. 1921, in Hill, 3, 168–69.

¹¹ E. U. Essien-Udom and Amy Jacques Garvey, eds., More Philosophy and Opinions of Marcus Garvey (London: Frank Cass and Co., 1977), 62.

¹² Garvey, Negro World, 12 Feb. 1921, in Hill, 3, 168–69; Claude McKay, A Long Way from Home (London: Pluto Press, 1985; first published New York: Furman, 1937), 349; Harold Cruse, The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual: A Historical Analysis of the Failure of Black Leadership (New York: William Morrow, 1967), 127.

¹³ Garvey, Negro World, 1 Nov. 1919, in Hill, 1, 120.

¹⁴ Garvey, Negro World, 19 March 1921, in Hill, 3, 240.

¹⁵ Stein, 71–74.

¹⁶ Hill, 1, xlviii–xlix. Convicted of using the mails for fraudulent purposes on 18 June 1923, Garvey was sentenced to five years' imprisonment in a federal penitentiary and held for three months, without bail, in Manhattan's Tombs Prison. His bail was posted on 10 September, pending his appeal against the conviction, which the Appellate Court and Supreme Court rejected on 2 February and 23 March 1925 respectively. The following day Garvey was incarcerated at Atlanta Federal Penitentiary. In a bid to prevent his eventual release in the United States, the Justice Department recommended commuting his sentence to deportation, which President Coolidge granted on 18 November 1927. On 2 December Garvey boarded the SS Saramacca bound for Panama and then Jamaica. See Judith Stein, World of Marcus Garvey, 200, 203–04 and 207.

¹⁷ There are a number of reasons why Garvey's personal and organizational papers are incomplete. First, the Justice Department seized the records of the UNIA parent body in 1922 as evidence to be used in the mail-fraud trial of Garvey and his associates. Second, the parent body's remaining papers were dispersed and lost due to dissension and acrimonious splits following Garvey's imprisonment for mail fraud. Third, Garvey was forced to leave most of his personal papers behind in Jamaica when he moved to London in March 1935, which were subsequently lost when the UNIA headquarters in Jamaica was auctioned as a result of mortgage foreclosure. Finally, his personal papers accumulated and stored in London were destroyed during air raids in 1941 and 1942.

¹⁸ “Marcus Garvey to the Black Star Line Stockholder,” New York, 27 Feb. 1920, Printed letter, recipient's copy, in Hill, 2, 225.

¹⁹ In Hill, 1, xlviii.

²⁰ The SS Yarmouth was floated on 31 Oct. 1919. On 23 Nov. the vessel departed from New York Harbour on its maiden voyage to the West Indies and Central America. In late June 1920 the SS Kanawha was paraded before cheering crowds along the Hudson River. A series of mishaps, breakdowns and aborted sailings delayed its departure for Havana, Cuba until 28 March 1921. For the nautical career of these vessels see E. D. Cronon, Black Moses: The Story of Marcus Garvey and the Universal Negro Improvement Association (University of Wisconsin Press, 1962), 73–102.

²¹ Report by Bureau Agent H. J. Lenon, 18 Jan. 1921, in Hill, 3, 134.

²² Garvey, West Indian (Grenada) 28 Feb. 1919, in Hill, 1, 374.

²³ Walter C. Thurston (1st secretary to American Embassy at Costa Rica) to Charles Evans Hughes (secretary of state), San Jose, Costa Rica, 2 May 1921, in Hill, 3, 379; Garvey, Negro World, 30 July 1921, in Hill, 3, 533. In the same issue of the Negro World, Garvey recounts, “they were willing to pay $50 just to hear me for the last time in Panama. That will give you an idea of the enthusiasm of the people in Cuba, Jamaica and the Panama Republic.” Hill, 3, 534.

²⁴ Cronon, 84.

²⁵ David J. Hellwig, “Black Meets Black: Afro-American Reactions to West Indian Immigrants in the 1920s,” South Atlantic Quarterly, 77 (1978), 206–24.

²⁶ Robert F. Foerster, “The Racial Problems Involved in Immigration from Latin America and the West Indies to the United States,” Washington: Government Printing Office, 1925, 2 and 4, Ibid., 207.

²⁷ Watkins-Owens, Blood Relations, 121.

²⁸ W. A. Domingo, “Open Forum: The Policy of the Messenger on West Indian and American Negroes,” Messenger, March 1923, 640, in Watkins-Owens, 122.

²⁹ Lennox Raphael, “West Indians and Afro-Americans,” Freedomways, 4 (1964), 438–45.

³⁰ Rudolph Fisher, “The City of Refuge,” in John Henrik Clarke, ed., American Negro Short Stories (New York: Hill and Wang, 1987), 21–36, 27. This story won the Crisis short-fiction competition in 1925. Another example of how black Americans felt about West Indian migrants is summed up by the adage “once he gets 10 cents above a beggar … he opens a business.” Gilbert Osofsky, Harlem: The Making of a Ghetto, Negro New York, 1890–1930 (New York: Harper and Row, 1971), 133.

³¹ Roi Ottley and William Weatherby, eds., The Negro in New York: An Informal Social History (New York: Oceana Publications, 1967), 191.

³² “The Value of Knowing the Spanish Language,” Negro World, 2 July 1927, in Watkins-Owens, 5.

³³ George M. Fredrickson, Black Liberation, 152–59.

³⁴ Reports of the Convention, New York, 4 Aug. 1920, in Hill, 2, 536.

³⁵ Hill, 2, 529.

³⁶ Ibid., 2, 536.

³⁷ Kevin Kelly Gaines, Uplifting the Race: Black Leadership, Politics and Culture in the Twentieth Century (Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 1996), 234.

³⁸ Ibid., 239.

³⁹ McKay, A Long Way from Home, 345.

⁴⁰ Theodore G. Vincent, Black Power and the Garvey Movement (Berkeley: Ramparts Press, 1972), 210.

⁴¹ Tony Martin, Race First: The Ideological and Organizational Struggles of Marcus Garvey and the UNIA (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1976), 359–60; Robert G. Weisbord, Ebony Kinship: Africa, Africans and the Afro-American (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1973), 55–56.

⁴² Garvey, “The Truth about Our Labourers,” Daily Gleaner, 17 July 1933, in Hill, 2, 550.

⁴³ Gaines, 243.

⁴⁴ E. M. Rudwick, W. E. B. Du Bois: Propagandist of the Negro Protest (New York: Atheneum, 1969), 219.

⁴⁵ John White, Black Leadership in America: From Booker T. Washington to Jesse Jackson (London and New York: Longman, 1990), 98; Garvey, “W. E. B. Du Bois as a Hater of Dark People,” Negro World, 13 Feb. 1923 in Theodore Vincent, ed., Voices of a Black Nation: Political Journalism in the Harlem Renaissance (San Francisco: Ramparts Press, 1973), 99–105. Besides Du Bois, Garvey also found reason to question the racial ancestry of Cyril Briggs, predictably following his criticism of the UNIA in the April 1920 issue of the Crusader. In fact, as the founder of the African Blood Brotherhood (ABB), Briggs welcomed some aspects of Garveyite philosophy and called for a federation of all black organizations. Garvey, however, chose to reject all offers of cooperation and subsequently declared Briggs to be a white man who claimed to be black for convenience. While his followers repeated the claim that Briggs was a white man passing as black, Garvey retracted his statements and issued a formal apology after being charged with criminal libel in November 1921. For a capsule biography of Cyril Valentine Briggs see Hill, 1, 521–27.

⁴⁶ New York Age, 22 July 1922, in Vincent, Black Power, 191.

⁴⁷ Negro World, 16 August 1924, in Vincent, Black Power, 205.

⁴⁸ Chandler Owen's response to the Klan meeting was echoed by many other black critics. His editorial in the Messenger, the black socialist paper, concluded, “the Messenger is firing the opening gun in a campaign to drive Garvey and Garveyism from the American soil.” John White, Black Leadership in America, 88–89.

⁴⁹ West Indies Report, “By the Honorable E. F. L. Wood, MP, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies, on his visit to the West Indies and British Guiana [Guyana], December 1921–February 1922. Presented to Parliament by Command of his Majesty, June 1922” (London: HMSO, 1922), Cmd. 1679.

⁵⁰ Ibid., 5–7.

⁵¹ Jamaica's constitutional history documents piecemeal developments towards representative government. The 1884 constitution restored elected representation to the Jamaican Legislative Council, which the Assembly had relinquished for pure crown colony rule in 1866. The new Legislative Council consisted of four ex-officio members, up to five nominated members and nine elected members, whose eligibility for office was determined by an annual income of £150 from property or £300 from business. Consequently, the 1884 election returned white men of property and landed interests to the council, whose leadership was not challenged by black and coloured representatives until 1910. Although the elected element was practically all black or coloured by 1935, franchise qualifications based on income restricted voter eligibility to less than 10% of the total population in 1938, which kept these members socially and economically detached from the mass of the population. Further modifications to the constitution in 1895 increased both the elected element from nine to 14 (one member for each parish except Port Royal) and ex-officio and nominated members to 15. These constitutional changes were specific to Jamaica, which, with Barbados and British Guiana (Guyana), remained the index of political democracy in the British West Indies; pure crown colony government prevailed in all other British territories by the close of the nineteenth century. For a guide to constitutional developments in the British West Indies see Jesse Harris Proctor, Jr., “The West Indies in Transition, 1920–1960,” in Trevour Munroe and R. Lewis, eds., Readings in Government and Politics of the West Indies (Department of Government: University of the West Indies, Mona, Jamaica, 1971); Ronald V. Sires, “Government in the British West Indies: An Historical Outline,” Social and Economic Studies, 6, 2 (1957), 109–33. Jamaica's tentative steps towards representative self-government are covered in Franklin Knight, The Caribbean: The Genesis of a Fragmented Nationalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978); Richard Hart, “Changing Attitudes to the Concept of Self-Determination in Relation to Jamaica, 1660–1970,” Postgraduate Seminar: “Decolonization in Small States, with Special Reference to the West Indies,” University of London, Institute of Commonwealth Studies, 26 May 1970. Located in the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, London, England.

⁵² Rupert Lewis, Marcus Garvey: Anti-colonial Champion (London: Karia Press, 1987), 24; Daily Gleaner, 7 Feb. 1925, 13.

⁵³ Garvey, Negro World, 1 Nov. 1924, in Hill, 6, 32. In October 1920 Garvey launched the Liberian Construction Loan which aimed to raise $2 million to finance a UNIA loan to the Republic of Liberia. To promote the scheme, Garvey called for $250,000 by mid-January to secure a ship to transport workmen and materials to Liberia. At this stage, the BSL and the Liberian Colonization Loan were, for practical purposes, the same promotion. The Liberian colonization plan promised much: President King offered a trial land concession of 500 acres, while Gabriel Johnson, Mayor of Monrovia, obtained a charter to incorporate a local division of the UNIA from the Liberian legislature. Even a UNIA delegation sent to Monrovia in December 1923 reported on their successful negotiations with Liberian officials. Yet by July 1924 the UNIA's colonization scheme had collapsed, as the Liberian consul-general in the United States, Ernest Lyon, issued a press release announcing his government's refusal to grant visas for colonization purposes to UNIA members. See Stein, The World of Marcus Garvey, 209–23.

⁵⁴ Report of UNIA delegation to Liberia, Negro World, 6 Sept. 1924, in Hill, 5, 787 and 798.

⁵⁵ Garvey, Negro World, Nov. 1, 1924, in Hill, 6, 33.

⁵⁶ Report by Special Agent Joseph G. Tucker, in Hill, 5, 592–95.

⁵⁷ Robert Minor, “All Africa in Rebellion, Is Garvey Report” (original headlines omitted), Daily Worker, 19 August 1924, in Hill, 5, 754. Robert Minor was an active member of the Communist Party. He was elected to the party's Central Committee in 1925 and played a major role in Chicago's South Side campaign against high rents in 1925.

⁵⁸ Emory Tolbert, “Garveyism in California: A Case Study of Outpost Garveyism,” in R. Lewis and M. Warner-Lewis, eds., Garvey: Africa, Europe, The Americas (Kingston: University of West Indies, 1986), 18–36.

⁵⁹ Vincent, Black Power and The Garvey Movement, 155.

⁶⁰ Tolbert, 28. Robert Hughes Brisbane, Jr., “Some New Light on the Garvey Movement,” Journal of Negro History, 36 (1951), 58–62; Alphonso Pinkney, Red, Black, and Green: Black Nationalism in the United States (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976), 40; L. W. Levine, “Marcus Garvey and the Politics of Revitalization,” in John Hope Franklin and August Meier, eds., Black Leaders of the Twentieth Century (University of Illinois Press, 1982), 116–18.

⁶¹ Nancy Foner, Jamaica Farewell: Jamaican Migrants in London (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1979), 34 and 24; Ira De A. Reid, The Negro Immigrant: His Background, Characteristics and Social Adjustment, 1899–1937 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1939), 25.

⁶² C. Tilly and C. H. Brown, “On Uprooting, Kinship, and the Auspices of Migration,” International Journal of Comparative Sociology, 8, 2 (1967), 139–65; Reid, 26; McKay, A Long Way from Home, 345.

⁶³ Tolbert, 29.

⁶⁴ California Eagle, 3 Dec. 1921, in Stein, The World of Marcus Garvey, 141.

⁶⁵ Ibid., 226.

⁶⁶ Robert F. Foerster, “The Racial Problems Involved in Immigration,” 4.

⁶⁷ Newton, The Silver Men, 104.

⁶⁸ Ottley and Weatherby, The Negro in New York, 192.

⁶⁹ Anthony P. Maingot, “Political Implications of Migration in a Socio-cultural Area,” in Robert A. Pastor, ed., Migration and Development in the Caribbean: The Unexplored Connection (Boulder and London: Westview Press, 1985), 63–90, 69.