A Message from Marcus Garvey

Fellow Citizens of Africa.

I once trod the earth. I looked around and saw the conditions of my fellow Africans and I asked: Where is the Black man's great nations? Where are his captains of industry? Where are his big thinkers? Not seeing these, I set about to address these deficiencies. I set about to organize the millions of black men and women into a unified force for the liberation and build up of Africa. I set about to create a steamship company to impress upon the African the importance of being economically independent.

I called upon Negroes everywhere that regardless of their citizenship, that we have a common interest in the development of Africa and to connect up with our brothers and sisters in the Caribbean and central and south America. For this I was ridiculed and framed up. So called "leaders" in America and Jamaica conspired with government agents to discredit me and the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League. They aimed to discredit and thwart the Black Star Line. They said that my "scheme" was only a means to part people with their money. They said that it was a waste of time and effort.

Now I look upon the world and I see the destruction of Haiti. Our first independent Black nation in the Western Hemisphere. I see the island that scared Thomas Jefferson and the slave holders in North America. I see the people who inspired revolution in South America. And again I am forced to ask: Where is the black man?

Where is his red Cross? His red Ankh? His red Ako-Ben? Where is his big ship carrying supplies under the Black Star of Ghana? Where is his big plane carrying loads of food and supplies from our lands where there are three growing seasons? Where is his organized search and rescue? Where is his heavy equipment? Where is his medicine and floating hospitals?

Today the African living in the west is richer than any generation of African than any other time. Today Africa with it's so called independence is no less a slave to the colonial powers than it was during my time on earth. It has been nearly one hundred years since I last trod the earth and still we are dependent upon non-Africans for basic things. We import clothes from China and then wonder why we have high unemployment. We import food and wonder why our farmers are poor. We import transportation and wonder why we have no expertise in design. So when we import rather than produce and purchase for ourselves, we find that we lack the finances, we lack the intellectual resources to develop for ourselves and therefore leave ourselves vulnerable to such tragedies. And then
our representatives must go, hat in hand to our former colonizers, with sad eyes and a smile, for help.

Yours, in spirit

Marcus Garvey