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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class from how

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Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.

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Speaker 1: I'm Katie Lambert and I'm Sarah Dowdy and Sarah and

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Speaker 1: I decided to do some episodes for Black History Month.

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Speaker 1: So our topic for today is a man some people

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Speaker 1: know as Black Moses. By nineteen nineteen, this Black Moses

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Speaker 1: claimed a following of as many as two million people.

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Speaker 1: And they're African Americans and people from the West Indies

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Speaker 1: who were just tired of being denied their rights or

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Speaker 1: subjected to violence just because they're black. But unlike his

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Speaker 1: predecessor book Or T. Washington and his contemporary W. E. B.

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Speaker 1: Two Boys, Black Moses didn't preach assimilation. He didn't even

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Speaker 1: oppose segregation, just the mistreatment that went along with it. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: And instead his line was pan Africanism, and it was

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Speaker 1: a desire to unite all the people separated under the

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Speaker 1: Black daspora as one people. And he believed that once

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Speaker 1: Africa became associated with quote armies, navies and men of

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Speaker 1: big affairs, people of African descent wouldn't be denied their

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Speaker 1: rights anymore and they wouldn't be subjected to violence and

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Speaker 1: too pity, and this line of thought put him at

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Speaker 1: the head of America's first major black nationalist movement based

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Speaker 1: in Harlem, which was known as Garvey Um. And the

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Speaker 1: name gives you a clue as to the answer to

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Speaker 1: our question, who was Black Moses. Black Moses was Malchus

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Speaker 1: Mosiah Garvey, who today we know as Marcus Garvey was

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Speaker 1: born in eighteen eighty seven at St. Anne's Bay in Jamaica,

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Speaker 1: and as far as what we know about his parents,

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Speaker 1: his dad may have been a master mason or perhaps

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Speaker 1: just someone who broke stones on the roadway. But regardless

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Speaker 1: of what he did as a profession, he really truly

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Speaker 1: loved books and he spent as much time as he

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Speaker 1: good in his own private library, which was a building

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Speaker 1: actually separate from the family home. I can only hope

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Speaker 1: and his mother helps support the family by selling her

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Speaker 1: delectable pastries. But Um later in life, Garvey really emphasized

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Speaker 1: that he came from a family of quote black negroes.

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Speaker 1: He really wants to distinguish himself from the other terms

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Speaker 1: that uh people in the West Indiesies to describe themselves,

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Speaker 1: like brown or mulatto. He emphasizes that his people are

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Speaker 1: from Africa, and he's not even completely sure about people

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Speaker 1: who do have white lineage. As much as he emphasizes

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Speaker 1: that in himself, he actually does a lot of work

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Speaker 1: with people who are of mixed race. A lot of

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Speaker 1: it is kind of taught, yes, but he does make

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Speaker 1: statements like this, which of course are important when you're

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Speaker 1: talking about his life. He's largely self taught, but he

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Speaker 1: does get a valuable apprenticeship with a printer which helped

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Speaker 1: him learn a lot about the art of composition and

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Speaker 1: about the business of running a press, which will come

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Speaker 1: in handy beater. Yeah, he learned the journalistic trade in

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Speaker 1: this apprenticeship, as well as the mechanics of it. Um.

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Speaker 1: But he travels some as a youth. He goes to

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Speaker 1: Central America, where he's really disappointed to find um black

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Speaker 1: people living in similarly bad conditions as they are in Jamaica,

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Speaker 1: and as many young people living in countries with a

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Speaker 1: strong British influence. He is also driven to London and

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Speaker 1: he lives there from nineteen twelve to nineteen fourteen. And

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Speaker 1: um he starts to learn about Pan Africanism and uh

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Speaker 1: that sort of thing when he's in London, but he

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Speaker 1: also reads book or t Washington's Up from Slavery, and

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Speaker 1: Garvey was certainly an admire of Washington, even though they

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Speaker 1: disagree on that major point of integration, Washington obviously being

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Speaker 1: for it and Garvey not so much. But he did

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Speaker 1: really like the idea of Washington's Tuskegee Institute and comes

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Speaker 1: up with the dream of making his own own trade

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Speaker 1: school in Jamaica, and he writes to Washington and secures

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Speaker 1: an invitation to visit, but before he can, Washington dives.

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Speaker 1: So Garvey comes to the United States nevertheless, in nineteen sixteen. Um.

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Speaker 1: But all right, so before we talk about his early

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Speaker 1: days in the United States, we should mentioned that in

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Speaker 1: Jamaica in nineteen fourteen, he founds the very long name,

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Speaker 1: very unwielder Universal Negro Improvement and Conservation Association and African

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Speaker 1: Communities League, which is usually just called the Universal Negro

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Speaker 1: Improvement Association, and we're going to call it the u

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Speaker 1: n i A. And the group had a Pan African agenda,

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Speaker 1: So we wanted to talk a little bit about what

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Speaker 1: that means. There's a bit of a spectrum on one side,

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Speaker 1: according to Wilson Jeremiah Moses, sometimes it just is a

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Speaker 1: call for unity among black or African peoples wherever they

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Speaker 1: might reside. That's a quote from Moses. And on the

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Speaker 1: other side, we've got the goal of uniting the entire

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Speaker 1: African continent under one government to be controlled by Africans. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: so I kind of see this as a pan African

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Speaker 1: light and then a very intense version um. But the

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Speaker 1: U n I A, which has this Pan African agenda,

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Speaker 1: doesn't really catch on in Jamaica, and this is partly

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Speaker 1: why Garvey is attracted to the US, and he actually

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Speaker 1: becomes so involved in un I A work when he's

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Speaker 1: in the United States that he eventually abandons his other

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Speaker 1: motive for coming, which was the Jamaican Trade School plan.

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Speaker 1: But the un I really picks up steam, especially in

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Speaker 1: Harlem and in other cities, and by nineteen nineteen he's

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Speaker 1: got that following of about two million people. This is

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Speaker 1: really the height of his popularity. So let's talk a

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Speaker 1: little bit about Garvey and his work with the U

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Speaker 1: and I A. Garvey is a pitch man, and he

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Speaker 1: speaks to black power, but specifically black economic power. He's

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Speaker 1: also interested in black history and an African identity, but

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Speaker 1: black and economic power is kind of the center of

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Speaker 1: what he wants to do. Yeah, and that interest in

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Speaker 1: black history and African identity. We talked about the pan

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Speaker 1: Africanism already, but he's also interested in afric Centrism, which

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Speaker 1: is really more of a philosophical movement, and it's the

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Speaker 1: idea that Africa is the center of black history and

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Speaker 1: cultural identity, and that black people all around the world

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Speaker 1: should celebrate the Ethiopians and the Egyptian civilization and kind

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Speaker 1: of consider that, uh, a golden Age of the Pharaohs

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Speaker 1: was going on at the same time that Europeans were,

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Speaker 1: you know, considered barbarians living in caves. And Garby was

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Speaker 1: also convinced that whenever black people accomplished something amazing, they're

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Speaker 1: basically reclassified as white. So he went with a whole

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Speaker 1: racist one drop rule and that one drop of blood

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Speaker 1: may makes you black, right, and reclaimed it and embrace

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Speaker 1: stit for historical vindications, saying, well, all right, then the

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Speaker 1: pharaohs are black with up. So his newspaper, Negro World,

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Speaker 1: is very afrocentric and it's really his instrument um to

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Speaker 1: communicate you know, Afrocentrism and pana Africanism to his followers

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Speaker 1: and he's got a lot of popular articles, not just

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Speaker 1: on news but on African history and society. And he's

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Speaker 1: really good at this paper business. We've we've talked a

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Speaker 1: lot about these great publishing men recently, but um, he's

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Speaker 1: good at this. He's a journalist and it's the u

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Speaker 1: n A is big success and something to remember when

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Speaker 1: we talk about some of its spectacular failures later on.

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Speaker 1: But Garvey is a born publicist and he's got this

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Speaker 1: great sense of style and composition, and at its peak, um,

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Speaker 1: Negro World has a regular circulation of fifty thousand or

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Speaker 1: more readers. Um. And that doesn't count even all the

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Speaker 1: people who were listening to it being read aloud at

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Speaker 1: work or in beauty parts all around the city. So

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Speaker 1: that's a low estimate. Yeah, definitely. But don't think of

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Speaker 1: Marcus Garvey as a retiring sort of newspaperman. He's very showy.

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Speaker 1: He wears plumes and military style clothing. Sarah emailed me

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Speaker 1: some fabulous pictures earlier than Katie and I are always

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Speaker 1: interested in the plumes. Well, we're big into that. You're

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Speaker 1: the green editor we have to be. But he's not

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Speaker 1: just about talking and promoting and pitching it's it's not

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Speaker 1: all talk. He wants to be the guy at the

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Speaker 1: head of this economic revolution that he dreams of, but

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Speaker 1: unfortunately he is no businessman. And his goal is to

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Speaker 1: establish an independent black economy, so not integrate into the

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Speaker 1: existing white economy, but have his own. And so he

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Speaker 1: establishes the Negro Factories Corporation, and then a line of

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Speaker 1: black run restaurants and grocery stores, laundries, a hotel, a

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Speaker 1: printing press, and then most famously, the Black Star Line,

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Speaker 1: most famously for being a complete misadventures. So the idea

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Speaker 1: behind the Black Star Line is actually really impressive. It

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Speaker 1: was a shipping line that was meant to be the

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Speaker 1: foundation of trade between Africans around the world, so it

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Speaker 1: would increase the distribution of black made products and make

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Speaker 1: more money for the black community. And it's popular. People

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Speaker 1: want to be involved in this. It's incorporated in selling

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Speaker 1: stocks at five dollars a share, and it has between

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Speaker 1: thirty thousand and forty thousand stockholders. And these are people

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Speaker 1: who could have invested in some of the businesses, you know,

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Speaker 1: the restaurants and the laundry mats and all that, and

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Speaker 1: many do um. But a lot of people choose the

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Speaker 1: Black Star Line because it offers economic independence and because

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Speaker 1: it just seems so militant. It was so bold. It

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Speaker 1: is a really bold, impressive, showy kind of idea. But

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Speaker 1: unfortunately terrible investments and mismanagement lead to the line and

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Speaker 1: garbs downfall. There was just a lot of incompetence, not

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Speaker 1: only with Garby but also with the people he hired

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Speaker 1: and surrounded himself with. The vessels are dilapidated and sometimes

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Speaker 1: just unseaworthy. One of them originally called the Yarmouth and

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Speaker 1: renamed Frederick Douglas. You'll see this is a they rename

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Speaker 1: their boats. Um. It was purchased on the advice of

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Speaker 1: a West Indian captain named Joshua Cockburn, who gets a

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Speaker 1: six dollar brokerage fee for buying it. And it's not

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Speaker 1: that great of a ship, but still people are excited

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Speaker 1: about the inauguration of the Black Star Line and maybe

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Speaker 1: it seems like it will work out. But on its

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Speaker 1: voyage to Cuba with a cargo of whiskey, it runs

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Speaker 1: aground off the Bahamas. Well, Cockburn is asleep, and then

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Speaker 1: finally it does get to Cuba, makes no profit, runs

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Speaker 1: aground again off of Boston, and it's sold at public

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Speaker 1: auction the next year. And this is just this is hitomazes.

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Speaker 1: These these boats here, they're all sunk, abandoned or sold

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Speaker 1: at public auction. Shortly they're after And the other side

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Speaker 1: of this whole shipping line idea was transporting people, because

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Speaker 1: that was the ultimate plan you would resettle all of

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Speaker 1: the black people in Africa, which is the scheme Garvey

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Speaker 1: is probably best known for. Yeah, So one year after

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Speaker 1: the launch of the Black Star Line, Garvey starts the

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Speaker 1: Librarian Program and UM. In fact, in nineteen twenty which

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Speaker 1: once again this is like the height of his popularity.

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Speaker 1: There's a Madison Square Garden meeting of twenty five thousand

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Speaker 1: people and they elect him the provisional President of Africa,

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Speaker 1: which have no idea. That's a rather bold title. But

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Speaker 1: the idea was to give American blacks an African base

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Speaker 1: and UM to develop Liberia as a kind of economic powerhouse.

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Speaker 1: So in nineteen twenty a U n I A delegation

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Speaker 1: sets up a deal with the Liberian government to set

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Speaker 1: aside land for the un I to develop and you know,

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Speaker 1: Librarius is okay, They're agreed, and the UNI sets up

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Speaker 1: this Liberian Development Corporation and raises seven hundred and fifty

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Speaker 1: thousand dollars. But this money simply disappears. You got all

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Speaker 1: the money and then it's gone. So the Liberians, who

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Speaker 1: are definitely in need of some kind of influx of

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Speaker 1: capital here they need to develop their country, move on

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Speaker 1: because at this point there's increasingly bad pr around Garvey

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Speaker 1: in the u n i A, and France and Great

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Speaker 1: Britain even pressure Liberria to announce that the U n

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Speaker 1: i A can't have the land after all. So instead

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Speaker 1: the Librarians set up a partnership with the American rubber industry,

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Speaker 1: specifically Firestone Company, because I got to consider it this time.

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Speaker 1: The automobile industry is really picking up and we need

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Speaker 1: tires in America, right. But this whole venture is the

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Speaker 1: beginning of the end for Garvey. We've got some bad

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Speaker 1: business deals going on, some definite failures um and Garvey's

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Speaker 1: popularity ensures that the white establishment is looking for a

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Speaker 1: way to bring him down. He's very powerful and they

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Speaker 1: don't like it. Yeah, A young j Edgar Hoover is

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Speaker 1: especially hard after him. He sees him as a threat

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Speaker 1: to the American way. But he also has enemies from

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Speaker 1: within and from within his own organization. In guy named

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Speaker 1: George Tyler actually shoots him four times in the U

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Speaker 1: n A offices, But then it gets a little sketchy. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: The state Attorney General UM Edwin P. Kilroe says that

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Speaker 1: Tyler was going to make damaging revelations about Garvey's business practices,

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Speaker 1: and then shortly after Tyler dies in police custody, and

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Speaker 1: UM Garvey sort of puts out the word that maybe

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Speaker 1: the U and I was a victim of a plot

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Speaker 1: by Kilroe, the Attorney General, and he says that many

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Speaker 1: of his followers end up believing him. And Garvey is

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Speaker 1: also clashing with leaders of other black movements. He's having

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Speaker 1: confrontations with a Philip Randolph with du Boys, who's head

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Speaker 1: of the Double A CP at the time, and also

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Speaker 1: Robert s Abbott, who's the publisher and editor of Chicago Defender,

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Speaker 1: a rival black paper, but really cannot stand Garvey. He

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Speaker 1: thinks he's a Charlatan essentially, um but Garvey falls out

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Speaker 1: hard after the government finally pins some charges on him

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Speaker 1: on January twelve, two, He's arrested and later indicted on

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Speaker 1: twelve counts of mail fraud, which you know, mail fraud

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Speaker 1: lawyers have been hunting for some kind of technical charge

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Speaker 1: stumbled upon this one. The arrest, though, stirs up a

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Speaker 1: lot of existing negative press about the Black Star Lines

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Speaker 1: financial problems, and the black press demands some proof that

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Speaker 1: this company works, that it's not you know, just a front,

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Speaker 1: or that their money is not going to waste. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I think of all the investment that's gone into this

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Speaker 1: shipping line. So the Black Star Line says that it

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Speaker 1: will buy the ship Lion, which they'll rename the Philli

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Speaker 1: Sweetly Um. And this is really the nail in the

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Speaker 1: coffin of Garvey's career. At the the purchase is bogged

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Speaker 1: down by a bunch of legal and financial problems. The

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Speaker 1: White agent negotiates a purchase and takes a third of

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Speaker 1: the deposit money for himself, And meanwhile the U S

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Speaker 1: Shipping Board, which owns the orion Um, is being urged

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Speaker 1: by the FBI to demand a bond of four hundred

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Speaker 1: and fifty thousand dollars, which is three times the purchase price.

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Speaker 1: So Garvey is stuck. You know, he can't get his ship,

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Speaker 1: can't pay four fifty thou dollars, so he's in a

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Speaker 1: real pickle by this point, and it really really does

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Speaker 1: not help that he tries to get pretty much the

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Speaker 1: worst allies ever. As his popularity plummets. He meets with

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Speaker 1: the KKK Um meets up with the Imperial Wizard in

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Speaker 1: Atlanta in June, and if this absolutely makes no sense

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Speaker 1: to you, he justifies himself by saying, and I quote,

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Speaker 1: I was speaking to a man who was brutally a

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Speaker 1: white man, and I was speaking to him as a

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Speaker 1: man who was brutally a negro. So I can't justify

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Speaker 1: it for you anymore than Garvey did. So Garvey is

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Speaker 1: convicted in nineteen and his appeals unsuccessful. He's sentenced to

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Speaker 1: federal prison, back in Atlanta again for six years, but

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Speaker 1: Calvin Coolidge commutes his sentence after two and he's deported

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Speaker 1: to Jamaica, but he ultimately ends up in England, where

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Speaker 1: he dies in pretty much an obscurity in middle age.

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Speaker 1: UM the U and I A really can't press on

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Speaker 1: without charismatic Garvey at its head. And interestingly, though, you know,

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Speaker 1: despite this black Star line, despite the failed Liberian movement,

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Speaker 1: it's not seen as a failure. It helps shape what's

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Speaker 1: to come, which is UM the black nationalism that really

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Speaker 1: strengthens after World War Two, and according to Wilson, Jeremiah Moses,

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Speaker 1: again he had quite a lot of accomplishments. This is

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Speaker 1: a quote from him. Marcus Garvey revealed the ability of

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Speaker 1: African Americans to combine capital organized politically, create jobs, provide

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Speaker 1: a forum for writers and intellectuals, and sustain institutions independent

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Speaker 1: of white philanthropy, which is of note because I mean

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Speaker 1: even the early Double A CPU was pretty heavy on

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Speaker 1: white leadership. Um. But kind of a an interesting footnote

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Speaker 1: to this whole story. UM, if we're not going to

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Speaker 1: just leave you with mail fraud and dying in obscurity.

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Speaker 1: In nineteen seven, Representative Charles Wrangle introduced measures to Congress

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Speaker 1: to have Garvey exonerated on those mail fraud charges. And

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Speaker 1: he was going off of research then by Robert A. Hill,

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Speaker 1: who had found evidence in the National Archives that the

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Speaker 1: conviction was politically motivated because Hoover in the Justice Department

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Speaker 1: saw links between Garvey is UM and the communist movement

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Speaker 1: that Hoover that Hoover. UM. So it's interesting and I

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Speaker 1: think that people are still trying to this happened. It's

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Speaker 1: kind of um an unprecedented thing to have a a

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Speaker 1: posthumous pardon, but at least that we know, at least

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Speaker 1: as far as we know, So send us an email

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Speaker 1: if you if you have any updates on the Garvey

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Speaker 1: exoneration process. That History podcast at has to work Stack

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Speaker 1: home and that brings us to listener mail. We got

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Speaker 1: an email from Anne from Houston, who had written us

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Speaker 1: a bit of a follow up to our Burke and

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Speaker 1: Will's expedition talking about the camels in Australia which have

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Speaker 1: become a huge problem. She sent her old camel right.

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Speaker 1: She sent a link to the Times Online a story

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Speaker 1: from January one of this year, and apparently the government

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Speaker 1: had committed nineteen million dollars to calling the camel population

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Speaker 1: of Australia helicopters. Yet that never really goes over well

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Speaker 1: in the press um and instead some people are trying

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Speaker 1: to get them sent to Saudi Arabia, where apparently you

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Speaker 1: can buy a baby camel burger which tastes a lot

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Speaker 1: like beef. So amnesty for Australian camels, I guess right,

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Speaker 1: and thank you for the footnote. And but going back

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Speaker 1: to Garvey if you want to learn more about where

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Speaker 1: all these movements lead you should read our article how

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Speaker 1: the Civil Rights Movement worked. Um it's on our home

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Speaker 1: page www dot how stuff works dot com and we

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Speaker 1: will inevitably be talking about the sixties and the later

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Speaker 1: Black History movement when we continue this February series, so

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Speaker 1: you'll want a little more background, and if you would

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Speaker 1: also like to connect with us in another way, you

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Speaker 1: can now follow us on Twitter at missed in History

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Speaker 1: to come find us. For more on this and thousands

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Speaker 1: of other topics, visit how stuff Works dot com and

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Speaker 1: be sure to check out the stuff you missed in

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Speaker 1: History clas flogged on the House staff works dot com.

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Speaker 1: Pound page boom,