A Black Aaron Burr

In August, 1920, at Liberty Hall, Manhattan, a Jamaican Negro, aged 36, with broad nose, and of the true Negro type, was publicly married by 30 officiating clergymen in the presence of 3,000 Negro delegates from all over the world.

He styled himself " Provisional President of Africa, Commander of the Order of the Nile, Distinguished Son of Ethiopia." His name was Marcus Garvey.

Last week, the Federal Government rested its case against this same Marcus Garvey for using the mails to defraud.

Between these two events stands the betrayal of the most ambitious effort the world has yet seen to organize the world's 400,000,000 Negroes with the aim of establishing world-wide black supremacy and the freedom of Africa.

Garvey was the leader of this movement; he possessed great ambition; at the height of his power his organization (The International Negro Improvement Association) numbered 4,000,000 members; lie was President of the Black Star Line Company, which aimed to run ships to Africa and the West Indies from America; his career led him to great power, which he preferred to exercise for his own aggrandizement, and thus defrauded and discredited the legitimate activities of the people he pretended to serve.

Born in Jamaica, Garvey practiced journalism there and in London. He traveled in Central Europe and along the shores of the Mediterranean. In 1912 he had elaborated his plans for a Black Empire in Africa and came to New York to promote the scheme. Opposition from hostile leaders led him to give up his attempt, but in 1917 he returned and proceeded to develop his theory through The Negro World, which he founded.

Garvey's Theory: Civilization began among the Negroes (the Cush-ites, from whom the Egyptians, Phoenicians and Greeks acquired culture) . " The earliest Ethiopians were the first to worship according to the present belief." There is historical corroboration for the statement that Christ was black, or rather that His ancestry included all races.

Garvey's Plan: 400,000,000 Negroes can master the world through:

1) The solidification and organization of Negroes of the world in the cause;

2) The formation of a triangular steamship line;

3) The creation of a world-wide Negro super-government to control and guide the destinies of the race ("just as the Pope and Catholic Church control their millions in every land") until such provisional administration would be able to proclaim to the world the recovery of the African motherland and the establishment of a Black Parliament to take its place among representative institutions of free and sovereign peoples.

The organization of the Negroes was to be attained by the formation of the International Negro Improvement Association. In August. 1920, 3,000 delegates, from Abyssinia to Australia, met in Manhattan. A Declaration of Negro Rights and a Constitution of Negro Liberty were drawn up. A flag colored black, red and green was adopted; a World Leader and Supreme Deputy Potentate were elected; plans were made to build a " Black House " in Washington for Marcus Garvey, newly elected Provisional President of Africa. The following Universal Ethiopian Anthem was adopted:

"Ethiopia, thou land of our fathers,

Thou land where the gods loved to be,

As storm-cloud at night sudden gathers

Our armies come rushing to thee.

We must in the fight be victorious,

When swords are thrust outward to glean;

For us will the victory be glorious

When led by the Red, Black and Green.

Chorus:

"Advance, advance to victory;

Let Africa be free;

Advance to meet the foe with the might

Of the Red, the Black and the Green."

It was further declared: "Race amalgamation must cease; any member of this organization who marries a white woman is summarily ex-pelled."

Apparently, the second feature of the program, the triangular shipping line, was the real aim of Garvey. A first shipping venture had failed. He proceeded to use the Association to peddle 2,000,000 shares (for sale to Negroes only) of the Black Star Line, which was organized with $10,000,000 capital.

Disaster overtook the Line. Of the three ships operated two went aground and the third was seized to meet claims of $100,000. Garvey continued to solicit passage money to Africa after he had no ships. On January 12, 1922, he was arrested and later indicted, with three associates.

On January 15, 1922, his Association protested the arrest, asserting that Garvey had been betrayed by his lieutenants.

His fellow Negroes soon began to scent fraud, and a meeting of the Friends of Negro Freedom (August 6,1922) declared his schemes impracticable, and that he was secretly in sympathy with the Ku Klux Klan.

On September 10, 1922, three Negro mass meetings resolved that "Garvey must go."

The trial of the Black Star Line Company revealed that the line has $31.75 in the bank and liabilities of $731,432, One of Garvey's former agents, " Sir" Sydney de Bourg, Knight Commander of the Order of the Nile, Leader of the Far Western Provinces of the West Indies, Duke of Nigeria and Duke of Uganda, testified to Garvey's extravagance in the West Indies, asserting that he had " gone broke at the races." The Assistant Treasurer of the line testified that Garvey had appropriated for himself money collected for the Association and for the Black Star Line. Unless Marcus Garvey can bring evidence to prove the propriety of his financial operations, the case will end with the Provisional President of Africa behind the bars for common fraud.