Garvey Again

One cannot deny that the Negro race has creative imagination. Its gestures may be futile, but as a race it is a master of gesture.

Last week, there opened in Manhattan the Fourth Annual Convention of the Universal Negro Improvement Association. This is quite a different organization from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. The latter is an organization in which a number of prominent men (white as well as black) participate for improving the opportunities --civil, political, economic--of Negroes. It sets about this task in concrete ways.

The Universal Negro Improvement Association is purely Negro in inspiration and exercises its imagination enough to be "universal." It is Marcus Garvey's great organization--great not only in originality, but perhaps also in charlatanism. Garvey, fired with a West Indian imagination, "kindled" the idea. Just at present, he is out on bail, following conviction for using the mails to defraud (TIME, June 11, 1923), in connection with selling stock in the Black Star Line--a steamship company, formed to carry Negroes back to Africa. The company's only significant maritime achievement was to take Garvey and some of his friends aboard a chartered vessel, to the West Indies and back, on an intoxicating journey during which, in some mysterious manner, the ship nearly foundered.

Garvey, temporarily at large, still retains the confidence of those who did not take too hard the loss of their money in the Black Star Line. He himself opened the Fourth Annual Convention of his Universal Negro Improvement Association. He asserted that the Association has 30,000 members in New York City, 25,000 members in the rest of the U. S. and Great Britain. He welcomed its members to a grand confab and celebration to last "31 days and 31 nights."

Gathering his followers together--his Royal Guards, his Imperial Legion of Africa, his Sublime Order of the Nile, his Distinguished Order of Ethiopia, his Black Cross Nurses--he embarked once more, perhaps for the last time before visiting the penitentiary, on an exposition of his doctrines and his hopes.

But first, the 31 days and nights opened with a parade. There were 3,500 marchers. There were several regiments of officers of the Imperial Legion of Africa, representatives of the other orders, Black Cross Nurses, Negro Boy and Girl Scouts, members of the African Orthodox Catholic Church headed by Dean Toote. Every one was suitably attired, from the Legionaries in black and red uniforms with gold lace, to Dean Toote in a purple cassock with a shoulder-sash of white and pale blue carrying a placard: "Independent Church. The Black Jews of the Judea Tribe of Israel, driven out of Judea into Abyssinia by the Gentiles." There were many other placards. One read: "By the science of perpetual motion, the Negro will conquer Africa."

There were eight bands of music and as many floats representing: "Pleading Africa's Cause Before the League of Nations," "The Ladies of the Royal Court of Ethiopa," etc. Everywhere fluttered the red, green and black flag of the African Republic.

In the reviewing-stand stood Marcus Garvey, President of the Provisional Republic of Africa, resplendent in a black uniform with red and gold trimmings. Around him shone a staff, clinking all over with sabres. There were Imperial Potentates, Assistant President Generals, Grand Deputies, Chancellors, Auditor Generals, Ministers for every portfolio of the Republic's Cabinet.

The Convention was prepared to discuss a number of problems: 1) religious; 2) political; 3) industrial; 4) social; 5) commercial; 6) educational; 7) propaganda; 8) constitutional; 9) humanity--each of which is to be "divided into appropriate subdivisions" which will be "exhaustively discussed."

Garvey urged all Negroes to return to Africa, promised that an expedition would set out for Liberia in October, declared that the Black Star Line had gone out of existence, but that the Black Cross Navigation and Trading Co. would be organized to assist the movement. A new city is to be laid out in Liberia, to be known as "the New Palestine." Cablegrams are to be sent to all the crowned heads of Europe and to the League of Nations, requesting aid in setting up the African Republic--the "United States of Africa," with Liberia and Abyssinia as bases. Secretary Hughes will be formally asked to request Great Britain to contribute Sierra Leone and the former German West Africa, and France to give the Ivory Coast.

One of the meetings was held in Carnegie Hall, to which some 2,000 Negroes were admitted at from $1.10 to $2.65 a seat. The speeches were inspirational. Bishop George Alexander McGuire spoke on The Black Man of Sorrows, exhibited pictures of a mulatto Christ crowned with thorns and of a Black Madonna. "If God is your Father, He must be the same color that you are!"

A second-Assistant President exclaimed: "If I could, by the use of some chemical, change my color to white, I would not do it!"

Garvey himself made several eloquent addresses:

"We are gathered here from all parts of the world, not because it is a holiday or a picnic, or from any desire to give vent to our emotions, but because we are charged with a responsibility to our race to enter on the vast duty of Empire building. We are here to redeem the 12,000,000 miles of our native land.

"When the white men were living in caves and were barbarous, we Negroes gave them a civilization they snatched away from us. We will rebuild a civilization on the banks of the Nile which will never pass away until Gabriel blows his horn. Darwin and Huxley said we were monkeys, but we're all men now.

"We will let the white men have America and Europe, but we are going to have Africa. If we find a white God we are going to change him and have a black God, or we'll find Jim Crowism in Heaven. We are not meeting here as rebels, nor are we disloyal. We are not preaching race hatred, but the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man."

"God tells us to worship a God in our own image. We are black, and to be in our image God must , be black. Our people have been lynched and burned in the South because we have been worshiping a false God. But what can you expect when we have adopted the idolism of another race? We must create a God of our own and give this new religion to the Negroes of the world.

"Let them burn and lynch us in Georgia and Mississippi. They may be sorry for it yet. A stranger came to Africa 300 or 400 years ago and grabbed the black man and took him 4,000 or 5,000 miles from home to a new world and put him in the cotton fields. We are willing to give 300 years for eternity for now we will return to Africa and restore the ancient glories of Alexandria and Timbuctoo and we will give Negro salvation to the world in brother hood." " . . .

The Federal Government celebrated the Convention of the Improvement Association by indicting Mr. Garvey on the charge of paying an income tax on $4,000 instead of on a real $10,000 of income in 1921. The Liberian Government also gave notice that none of the Garveyites might enter the Republic.