Twelve Jamaican Men Walking in Garvey's Footsteps
Twelve Men Supporting Black Upliftment
Submitted by Ntukuma, the Storytelling Foundation of Jamaica
Twelve Jamaican men who Garvey knew personally and who were luminaries of Pan Africanism and racial pride were recalled in a presentation by President of the United Negro Improvement Association UNIA, Mr. Stephen Golding at the Ananse SoundSplash 2023 event marking International Men’s Day. Held on November 19, 2022 at Liberty Hall, Kingston, the presentation revealed how the individual and collective work of these men promoted a spirit of self pride in Black people in the Western Hemisphere.
80 YEARS OF JOURNEYING THROUGH CARIBBEAN IDEALS
Using the theme “In Garvey’s Footsteps” Golding tracked a period spanning 80 years, starting in 1900 with early efforts to form associations that promoted Pan African interests, and closed with the 1980 release of Bob Marley’s Redemption Song, which was inspired by Garvey’s essay, “The Work That Has Been Done”.
An early inspiration for Garvey, who enjoyed reading as a child, would have been the Jamaica Advocate newspaper that was first published in 1894 by politician and medical doctor Joseph Robert Love. Jamaica was under Crown Colony government at that time with few elected positions. Dr Love used his newspaper as a part of his advocacy for those elections to be free and fair. The newspaper was published for about a decade and his voice perhaps paved the way towards Jamaica proudly becoming the third country in the Commonwealth to have universal adult suffrage in 1944, behind first New Zealand, and then the UK.
Having been blacklisted within the printing industry for leading a labour strike in Kingston at age 23, Garvey started his travels in 1910, going first to Central America for employment. During his two years there, he started two newspapers, Nation/La Nación in Limón, Costa Rica and La Prensa in Colón, Panama. Founding Rastafarian, Joseph Nathaniel Hibbert, was a young man in Costa Rica at that time. Golding noted that the significance of this lies in the fact that as fellow Jamaicans, Hibbert and Garvey would have been exposed to the buzz of ideas in their diaspora community, and current at that time was the Ethiopia movement which is crediting with fueling new spiritual expressions.
Following visits to the UK and Europe, Garvey returned to Jamaica and strengthened his relationship with Dr Love, who by then had retired due to his health. In 1914, after Love died, Garvey, and Amy Ashwood founded a new kind of organisation that would not only serve Pan African intellectuals, but also labourers, entrepreneurs and youth. Now in his early 30s, Garvey moved to Harlem in 1916 and over the next eleven years successfully established the UNIA as a global force.
DIASPORA CONFLICTS AND COLLABORATIONS
Among the Jamaicans who were in New York from 1916 to 1927, and who would have come into contact with the UNIA, were friends and associates whose support and ideas were influential in Garvey’s future direction. Among them was Hanover-born Joel Augustus Rogers who had completed service in the British armed forces to become a man of letters as a New York-based journalist and self-taught historian. Rogers’ focus was the histories of African peoples. His writing is acclaimed in the USA and Europe as being influential to the development of the African American identity. In 1917, the same year that Garvey established the first branch of the UNIA in the USA, Rogers self-published the groundbreaking novel “From Man to Superman”, a futuristic discussion between a negro railway porter and a white US Senator for Oklahoma. The novel has a hopeful conclusion. Rogers was later the sub-editor of the 1922 UNIA newspaper Daily Negro Times.
Throughout his life, Garvey attracted and then came into conflict with many men who were serving the social needs of the Black community in different ways. During his first year in the USA, the Gleaner published a letter on October 4, 1916 and signed by thirteen Jamaican men denouncing Garvey as a troublemaker who was giving Jamaica a bad name.
Three of these were outstanding in their own right: journalist Wilfred Adolphus Domingo; priest of the Orthodox Church Fr Raphael Robert Morgan, and private detective Herbert Simeon Boulin.
At age 27, radical socialist Wilfred Domingo had introduced Garvey to reputable printers and was also the Editor of the UNIA newspaper, The Negro World, until there was an ideological falling out between him and Garvey. He pressed for socialism, while Garvey adopted capitalism. Domingo’s writings also pitted him against African-American writers as he made distinctions between the mindsets of the immigrant and those of USA born Blacks. He co-founded the Jamaica Progressive League which, over time, helped to establish the People's National Party. In 1941, one year after Garvey died, Domingo was detained and held for 20 months at Up-Park-Camp for actions that the Governor of Jamaica considered to be prejudicial to public safety and defense. His detention overlapped with that of Alexander Bustamante.
With roots in Chapleton, Clarendon-born Fr Raphael Robert Morganwas a well-known churchman who had served in three different denominations as he followed his personal spiritual evolution. He is considered to be the first Black man from the western hemisphere to be ordained as a priest in the Orthodox church. His achievements it has been said, helped to spread the view that Christianity existed outside of colonialism and enslavement of peoples of African descent. The letter was sent by him from Philadelphia and he was 50 years old in that year, 1916.
The third Jamaican man who was highlighted by Golding, in the context of the conflict that followed Garvey at that time, is Herbert Simeon Boulin, a former member of the Jamaica Constabulary Force who ran a detective agency in New York City. It is believed that Boulin later provided information which the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) used to have Garvey arrested.
GLOBAL INFLUENCES
Many of the Jamaican men in Garvey’s Harlem community had already experienced the wider world outside of the Caribbean and USA. Three of these mentioned by Golding were working in the fields of health, nutrition and cuisine. Although then only 25 years of age and from the deep rural district of Brandon Hill, St Andrew, St William Grant at age 25, was a veteran of the Eleventh Battalion of the British West India Regiment and, like many in the UNIA who were disbanded at the close of World War 1, would have experienced prejudice based on colour during his service. In 1919, Grant was working in New York as a cook. He later became a bodyguard for Marcus Garvey and was later a fiery speaker for social justice beside Alexander Bustamante.
Alexander Bustamante of Blenheim, Hanover was 35 and had worked in several occupations including as Jamaican policeman and also a seaman. In New York, he was a dietitian. Bustamante would become the first Prime Minister of Jamaica.
A few doors down from Liberty Hall, 21-year-old Leonard Percival Howell of Crawle, Clarendon ran a health business, as a tea room, selling herbs to the public. Howell, like Joseph Hibbert, had worked in Central America and was a spiritual person who was being guided by the UNIA’s message of empowerment. He is known as The First Rasta.
COMMITMENT AND PERSEVERANCE
Garvey, who put everything that he had into building the UNIA, was found guilty of a federal crime and was deported to Jamaica in 1927. Undaunted he formed the People’s Political Party, which is credited as Jamaica’s first political party. Golding said that three candidates who supported by the PPP were successful at the polls, although they were not all of the PPP. Rev Dr Felix Gordon Veitch won a by-election and became the Hanover member of the Legislative Council. Advertising executive for Garvey’s Black Man Newspaper, John Coleman Beecher, won for Ward#2 of the Kingston and St Andrew Corporation and Garvey himself also won for Ward #2 in 1929 and again in 1930. During his time as councillor, Garvey inserted himself into a dispute over a gas station building permit on Oxford Road. Advocating on behalf of residents, Garvey found himself in direct conflict with the barrister Norman Manley who was representing the KSAC.
Ever the entrepreneur, Garvey started Edelweiss Park Amusement and outfitted it to the high level that he had seen in New York. In so doing, Golding notes that he provided an important platform for the development of the performing arts of Jamaica.
By 1934, Hibbert, Howell, Garvey, Grant and Bustamante had all returned to Jamaica from New York. Hibbert and Howell, with others, infused the uplifting UNIA message for the Black diaspora with Ethiopian Christianity and the result of this was Rastafarianism.
Garvey, Grant and Bustamante were agitating for improved conditions for workers, greater political representation for the masses and political independence for Jamaica. By 1935 Garvey had lost his seat in the KSAC twice and lost his election to the Legislative Council and the amusement park was bankrupt. He moved to the UK, and five years later, in 1940, Marcus Garvey became ill and died. Throughout his time, he was devoted to serving the UNIA. St William Grant and Bustamante both continued in activism that led to universal adult suffrage in 1944 and then political independence of Jamaica in 1962.
UNFORGETTABLE
Stephen Golding stated that by the 1950s the world seemed to want to forget about Garvey. The impact of the 1939-1945 war was followed by an intense period of rebuilding which led to the Windrush generation of the Caribbean people in the 1950s. By the 1960s, the dissatisfaction with the prejudicial social structures that were based on race, emerged again. The Black Panther movement in the USA and other Black power organizations were inspired by Garvey’s footsteps and his teachings. The red black and green flag became popular again and then reggae music emerged, carrying the name and the message of Garvey. Golding declared that without the memory of Garvey, there could be no reggae music, and from reggae music came Hip-Hop which also carries political messages. These are rooted in what Garvey did at Edelweiss Park and Liberty Hall.
In Golding’s view, the music of the 1960s has not diminished as it has been carried by artists such as Burning Spear and Bob Marley; both of whom happen to be from St Ann, the parish where Marcus Garvey was born. Burning Spear released the album Marcus Garvey in 1975 under the distribution of the Island label which allowed it to reach a worldwide audience. In 1976, Island released Bob Marley and the Wailers’ Exodus album with the Marcus Garvey poem “Man to Man” re-written as “Who the Cap Fit”. In 1980, Marley interpreted Garvey’s essay of the uplifting power of personal accountability, “The Work Has Been Done”, with his non-reggae ballad “Redemption Song”.
In concluding his presentation Golding expressed that , “In the Footsteps of Garvey” is about one powerful Jamaican with his shadow touching other powerful Jamaicans and providing some insights into why we find ourselves where we are today. His impact still lives on. We have the Royal African Soldiers with us here, a name of a legion of the UNIA, and their word, sound, power is rooted in that same level of consciousness.”
Ananse SoundSplash was held from November 13 to 20 under the theme Webs of Greatness with partners: Tourism Enhancement Fund, CHASE Fund, CIBC International Caribbean Bank, Emancipation Park, Jamaica Cultural Development Commission, The Sky Gallery and the Jamaica Library Service. “In These Footsteps” was presented in collaboration with Liberty Hall.
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