Research Paper on "Garvey the Duality of Garveyism"

Research Paper 20 pages (6231 words) Sources: 1+

[EXCERPT] . . . .

Garvey

The Duality of Garveyism in the Civil Rights Era

Marcus Garvey served as the template for the two most prominent archetypes of the American Civil Rights Era, with his bold Pan-Africanism providing the framework for the radical nationalist ideologies of Malcolm X and his dignified statesmanship and political objectivity providing the model for Martin Luther King.

At the time of his death, Marcus Garvey had already commanded an enormous influence over the identify of black Americans. With the stroke that claimed his life in 1940, Garvey would leave behind him a substantial legacy through his insertion into the public consciousness of ideas and actions precipitated upon the ambition to help free the United States from the deeply unequal system that had evolved in slavery's place. Segregation and the implied and explicit vitriol which were shown to African-Americans in the decades following abolition would be counterintuitive to the philosophical grounding, scholarly background and psychological makeup of the young Garvey. That he would soon be a firebrand in the early movement to gain political unification and shared cultural identity for African-Americans is a product of personality and inflection point.

The distinct qualities of boldness, eccentricity and compromise which delivered Garvey to his visible role in the pre-Civil Rights Era would also be directly relevant in rendering him a figure as criticized and feared as he was respected and lauded. Garvey's ideals of political organization and black self-determination would be among the key revelations precipitating the Civil Rights Era that would unfold in the years following his death. But so too would his ideals about Pan-Africanism and black separatist nationalism factor heavily into the beliefs and practices of many of his successors. In the intercession between these two aspects of his legacy, Garvey would deliver both the extremely positive and, as time would prove, effective methods of political orientation and organization to the black American community but he would also provide a philosophical basis for some of the more destructive and violent impulses of the black community. Ultimately, it becomes clear that Marcus Garvey served as the template for the two most prominent archetypes of the American Civil Rights Era, with his bold Pan-Africanism providing the framework for the radical nationalist ideologies of Malcolm X and his dignified statesmanship and political objectivity providing the model for Martin Luther King.

Malcolm X and Martin Luther King function -- like Garvey -- as symbols to a specific ideology. In this context, Malcolm X and King are to be seen as two distinct bookends to a widely splintered movement. In the various bold and frequently radical objectives and experiments by Garvey, King's unity and Malcolm X's tendency toward fractiousness would both find patronage. And as this argument proceeds to trace a clear path from the activities and ideals of Garvey to the diverse elements of activism in the Civil Rights era, Garvey is ultimately revealed as being as individually responsible as any figure in African-American history for working with such marked success at stimulating unity through central leadership and, simultaneously, is demonstrated to be as individually responsible for the splintering into disparate factions of the Civil Rights movement due to the mounting manifestation of his explicitly stated fundamentalist principles.

Of primary importance to making this conclusion is the generous set of his own words which the well-read Garvey would insert into the discourse over America's grossly unequal treatment of African-Americans. These may perhaps be best initiated with a sentiment that suggests Garvey's own precocious awareness of the duality within his own ideology. In the text by Edward (1996), Garvey reports of his father that "he was severe, firm, determined, bold and strong, refusing to yield even to superior forces if he believed he was right. My mother, on the other hand, was always willing to return a smile for a blow, and ever ready to bestow charity upon her enemy. Of this strange combination I was born thirty-six years ago, and ushered into a world of sin, the flesh and the devil." (Edward, 169)

Without necessarily providing him a direct set of objectives in achieving personal freedom, the figures in his upbringing would help to render Garvey a man aware of the implications of racial disparity in the world. As one of the very first post-abolition activists with the resource, intellect, charisma and sheer bravery to achieve the level of visibility which he did, Garvey would approach the issue of black inequality with something that must be described as creativity and dynamism. For indeed, in contrast to the deeply ideologically rigid successors that would drive different engines in the Civil Rights movement, Garvey would persist in a time with little in the way of a template. In the early decades of the 20th century, individuals such as Mahatma Gandhai were still putting to practice the Enlightenment principles of Natural Rights toward human dignity and self-determination. Concurrently, figures such as Garvey reflected the nature of this struggle against occupation and racial subjugation in the Americas.

Perhaps few words could be seen as so prophetic as that offered by Amy Jacques Garvey (1967), who contended in her unblemished recording of her husband's words in Philosophy and Opinions of Marcus Garvey, that "the history of a movement, the history of a nation, the history of a race is the guide-post of that movement's destiny, that nation's destiny, that race's destiny. What you do today that is worthwhile, inspires others to act at some future time." (Garvey, 1) This is a proverb in which Garvey forecasts that his commitment to active recruitment and organization around the centering premise of black self-determination will produce others in his wake with the same ambitions and a blueprint through his own martyrdom. Even without consideration to the categorical differences in approach between those who aligned with King and those who aligned with Malcolm X through the 1950s and 1960s height of Civil Rights activism and policy change, it becomes clear that Garvey spoke, wrote and acted with the probable expectation that his ideas and tactics would ultimately be extrapolated and applied by others in his wake.

Certainly, to all of the Civil Rights figures to come after, Garvey would cast a long shadow for the grandness of his ambition and for the brazen optimism with which he pursued it. However, in his own words above, there emerges strong support to the premise that though King and Malcolm *** generation later would channel Garvey's expectations into the believe that they might both live to see black men as equals to whites in the eyes of the law, Garvey would expect to see that his very difficult work would be carried on with his passing. To take this a step further, the notion of worthwhile actions in the history of the race inspiring bold action at some future time applies to a continuum that now includes such figures as baseball player Jackie Robinson, Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall and current U.S. President Barrack Obama. Before denoting the splintering effect which Garvey's radicalism would produce in the future Civil Rights movement, it thus bears noting that in many ways explicitly recognized by King and Malcolm in their respective lifetimes, all movements to the extension of black freedoms could be traced to Garveyism, whether radical, rational or something of a combination.

Quite to the point, Garvey may be most certainly regarded as the embodiment of an inflection point for his race and for the future of the Americas. And yet, there is inbuilt to this statement and his own sentiments the understanding that Garvey would fail in some regard as his most immediate ambitions, at least in their concrete forms. Garveyism as a movement is most directly associated to the argument in favor of Pan-Africanism. Inbuilt to this conception were a number of beliefs underscored by the precept that Africans had been living in a Diaspora from their homeland and that in large part the success of black freedom and self-determination would dependent upon a return from this Diaspora. This biblically-couched belief would be one of the building blocks for the founding of Garvey's groundbreaking political group, "organized under the banner of the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) and African Communities League (ACL), and an era of black renaissance, in which Garveyism and the concept of black racial pride became synonymous. Before white America fell enraptured before the spell of what Claude McKay termed 'the hot syncopated fascination of Harlem' in the Jazz Age, black America had already traversed the age of Garvey and the New Negro." (UCLA-ASC, 1)

Central to the figure and canon found in Garvey as these would impact his activist successors would be an unflinching assertion of the black man's entitlement to pride, opportunity and self-betterment. The establishment of his organization would be guided both by the set of political objectives which he would pursue throughout his lifetime and the demand to black men and women to begin viewing themselves with a greater sense of entitlement and dignity. In a statement which he… READ MORE

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