Happy B Day, Marcus Garvey

Long live Marcus Garvey, long live Revolutionary Black Nationalism! After being taught Black Nationalism in England by Islamic Pan Africanist Duse Muhammad Ali, Garvey came to America hoping to hook up with Booker T. Washington (Abuker), but Abuker died before Garvey could reach him. Garvey came to Harlem and set up shop, eventually organizing millions of Black people around the world to fight against colonialism and white supremacy, one and the same.

He championed blackness, black studies, black economics, black literature. Garvey was the esthetic and ideological leader of the Harlem Renaissance. His newspaper The Negro World, published more poets that any other publication during this time.

He immediately became a target of the FBI who infiltrated his movement and with reactionary Negro intellectuals were able to charge him with fraud and put him in prison, then deported. He died in England without ever visiting Africa, yet we know he is the Father of Pan Africanism. Like Moses, he never made it to the promised land.

Elijah Muhammad continued the work of Garvey and took it to another level with his Nation of Islam, combining aspects of Garveyism and the Islamic teachings of Noble Drew Ali. Of course Elijah was taught one on one for three and a half years by the mystical Master Fard Muhammad. Elijah in turn taught Malcolm X for three years.

Many Black intellectuals give a revisionist version of history by discussing Garvey then skip Elijah to
honor Malcolm X, but how did Malcolm become Malcolm X without the teachings of Elijah Muhammad?

While attending Oakland's Merritt College along with Huey Newton and Bobby Seale, we called ourselves followers of Malcolm X, 1962, even while Malcolm was still a member of the Nation of Islam, so this was silly on our part since Malcolm was following the teachings of Elijah.

Eventually I wanted to go beyond the leaf to the tree, so I joined the NOI, 1967.

Aside from the 19th century black nationalists such as David Walker, Henry Highland Garnet, James T. Holly, John S. Rock, Henry McNeil Turner, et al., we must credit Marcus Garvey with any notion of Black National consciousness we possess today.

--Marvin X