On August 1st, 1914, Jamaican national hero Marcus Garvey, at only 27 years old, founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League (UNIA-ACL) as a means of uniting all of Africa and its diaspora into ‘one grand racial hierarchy’.

The vision for the UNIA came to Garvey upon reading Up from Slavery, the autobiography of Booker T. Washington, a conservative African American educator and reformist. ‘Where is the black man’s government?’ Garvey asked himself. ‘Where is his king and his kingdom? Where are his president, his ambassador, his country, and his men of big affairs? I could not find them,’ he said, ‘and then I declared, ‘I will help to make them.”

A rejection of black inferiority

Garvey strongly believed that more political and economic independence was the only means to combat the lasting consequences of slavery and the subsequent racism that plagued black people globally and held them back from full self-actualization.

Garvey unequivocally rejected the notion of black inferiority and white supremacy and opined that as other nations of people (the Germans, the Irish, and the British) have used their brain power and might to realise self-governance, so too should black people come together to use their God-given intelligence and strength to better their condition.

In his electrifying ‘Look for me in the whirlwind’ speech given in Harlem in 1924, he said:

“I unequivocally rejected the racist assumption of much white American Christianity. Namely, that God had created the Black man inferior, and that he’d intended Negroes to be a servant class, heavers of wood and drawers of water. Well, I predicated my view of man on the Doctrine of Imago Dei, “All men, of color, are created in the image of God”.”

Largest mass movement of black people

The UNIA is considered to be one of the first movements to unite Black people internationally and the largest mass movement in African-American history. In August of 1918, the UNIA began publishing The Negro World, a weekly newspaper, which reported UNIA activities until it ceased publication in 1933. By 1920, the UNIA had over 1,000 divisions in more than 40 countries and over 20 million members globally.

That same year, it held its first international convention in New York, New York, which put forth a program based on “The Declaration of Rights of the Negro Peoples of the World.”

According to the preamble of the 1929 constitution as amended, the UNIA is a :

‘social, friendly, humanitarian, charitable, educational, institutional, constructive, and expansive society, and is founded by persons desiring to do the utmost to work for the general uplift of the people of African ancestry of the world.

And the members pledge themselves to do all in their power to conserve the rights of their noble race and to respect the rights of all mankind, believing always in the Brotherhood of Man and the Fatherhood of God.

The motto of the organisation is ‘One God! One Aim! One Destiny!’ Therefore, let justice be done to all mankind, realising that if the strong oppresses the weak, confusion and discontent will ever mark the path of man, but with love, faith, and charity towards all, the reign of peace and plenty will be heralded into the world, and the generations of men shall be called blessed.’

Economic empowerment in effect

Garvey’s black empowerment movement heavily focused on economic development via capitalistic ventures that would quicken the pace of independence and self-reliance for blacks. And so in 1919 he established the Negro Factories Corporation (NFC) and offered stock. At one point the corporation operated three grocery stores, two restaurants, a printing plant, a steam laundry, and owned several buildings and trucks in New York City alone.

The most instrumental achievement of the NFC was the founding of the Black Star Line shipping company, a counterpart to a white-owned company called the White Star Line. The Black Star Line was as much a trading vessel as it was a means to transport passengers to Africa.

A dream never fully realised

After Garvey’s conviction and imprisonment on mail fraud charges in 1925 and his deportation to Jamaica in 1927, the organisation began to take on a different character, and internal rivalries prevailed.

As a result, the UNIA continued to be officially recognised as the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League, but a rival “UNIA-ACL August 1929 of the World” emerged, headed by Marcus Garvey himself after his deportation to Jamaica.

From Jamaica, Garvey settled in England, where he established and headed the UNIA in 1929, until his death in 1940.