Black History Fact #26

Garvey, Marcus (1887–1940), social activist and journalist. As a major figure of the Harlem Renaissance, Marcus Garvey was in the vanguard of the new awakening among African Americans. Although his philosophy was at odds with other leading figures of the era, such as W. E. B. Du Bois, his influence could not be abated. Promoting his ideals in the art of oratory and through his newspapers, first Negro World and later the Blackman, Garvey has influenced almost every generation of African American writers since.

Images depicting the destructive element in racial prejudice, one of the cornerstones of Garvey's ideology, were initially seen when major fiction writers of the Harlem Renaissance, such as Nella Larsen, grappled with the infirmities of ““color”” prejudice. In Larsen's so-called passing novels, Quicksand (1928) and Passing (1929), mulattoes move into the white world to escape personal oppression and limited opportunity. As is typical in Garveyism, this social mobility leads to selfhate and racial ambivalence.

Richard Wright and his school of fiction writers was the next group to depict the struggle of African Americans against social and political forces. Richard Wright's Bigger Thomas in Native Son (1940), for example, is an ““Everyman”” motif for social, political, and cultural disenfranchisement of African Americans. Bigger acquires self-pride and faces his troubles through the aid of two white males, both unlikely cohorts, and becomes the folk hero often created through the use of Garveyism.

The next generation of writers displaying Garveyism might be termed the precursors of the Black Arts Movement. Extending James Baldwin's protest themes in Nobody Knows My Name (1960) and The Fire Next Time (1963), the aggressive poets of the sixties, such as Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones), decry the destructive environment of the northern ghetto and portray Garvey's contempt for such dehumanizing existence. Beyond the 1960s, an aesthetic perspective that embraces the racial loyalty and pride found in Garveyism is seen in works such as Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye (1970). Thus, the influence of the Garvey social and political movement continues.