Marcus Garvey quote

Audley « Queen Mother » Moore (1898-1996)

Audley « Queen Mother » Moore (1898-1996)
Audley Moore became an ancestor on May 2 at the age of 98 in 1996. She was given the honorary title of `Queen Mother’ by an Ashanti tribe in Ghana. Mother Moore lived a long and active life, dedicated to public service and improvement of the lives of African-Americans. Born on July 28, 1898 in New Iberia, LA, to second generation freed blacks, she became a revered public figure in Harlem, best known as an advocate for Africa and African-Americans. Moore’s ideas and teachings of Pan-African Nationalism was influenced by great political personalities such as W.E.B. DuBois and Marcus Garvey. As a civil rights activist, Mother Moore worked on the defense of the Scottsboro boys. Internationally, she spoke on her disapproval of the Italo-Ethiopian war. « I am not a part-time struggler,’ she once said. `I’m in the movement for the liberation of African people full-time, 7 days a week, 24 hours per day, for life. »
Her career was influenced by the violence and hatred she endured as a young child and young woman. While in the fourth grade, Moore’s parents died and thus ended her formal education. During World War I while in Alabama, Moore was a volunteer nurse who involved herself in the first of her movements for the equality of blacks by organizing support services for black soldiers that were denied by the Red Cross. Mother Moore was drawn to the idea of black nationalism and economic independence by the oratory of Marcus Garvey, founder of the Harlem-based Universal Negro Improvement Association. She became an active member of the organization, and founded the Harriet Tubman Association to better the conditions of black women. Through this organization, Moore advocated issues such as higher wages, better education, and the lowering of food prices to help improve the conditions of the poor. Following her brief membership in the Communist party–at the time, the only organization that accepted her radical ideas–she focused her attention on seeking economic reparations for descendants of the victims of slavery, cultural identity, and education. She launched a national campaign in support of economic reparations. Moore believed that economic reparations were the first constructive step in black nationalists ideology. As an orator, her rhetoric on this issue was powerful: « Ever since 1950, I’ve been on the trail fighting for reparations. They owe us more than they could ever pay. They stole our language; they stole us from our mothers and fathers and took our names from us. They worked us free of charge 18 hours a day, 7 days a week, under the lash for centuries. We lost over 100 million lives in the traffic of slavery. »
In 1962, Mother Moore met with President John F. Kennedy, the United Nations, and the Congressional Black Caucus about the issue of economic reparations. She later organized and directed the Reparations Committee of Descendants of United States Slaves. One of her last public appearances was at the Million Man March in Washington, DC. Although weak, her poignant speech was delivered by an associate. Queen Mother Moore died in a Brooklyn nursing home from natural causes at age 98.

12 things that you may not know about Marcus Garvey

 

“A people without the knowledge of their past history, origin and culture is like a tree without roots.” 

Marcus Garvey

1)Marcus Mosiah Garvey Jnr was born on 17 August 1887 in St Ann’s Bay, Jamaica. His parents were Malcus Mosiah Garvey Snr, a stone mason and Sarah Jane Richards, a domestic worker. The Garvey’s had 11 children, nine of whom died in early childhood. Only Marcus Garvey and his eldest sister Indiana lived to adulthood.

2)His first wife was Amy Ashwood Garvey (1897-1969).They married in New York in 1919 but divorced in 1922. Amy Ashwood was a very active Pan-Africanist, social worker and activist for women’s rights.

 3) His second wife was Amy Jacques Garvey (1895-1973).They married in New York in 1922 after his divorce. She was his personal secretary. Amy Jacques played key organisational roles in the UNIA and was instrumental in teaching people about Marcus Garvey after he died. She and Garvey had 2 sons Marcus Garvey Jnr and Julius Winston Garvey.

4)Education was at the heart of Garvey’s redemptive movement and in 1916 when Garvey decided to travel to the United States, his sole mission was to secure funds for schools to be built in Jamaica and would be modeled on Booker T. Washington’s “Tuskegee Institute.

5)The first UNIA division was formed in New York in May 1917. Within a month, the organisation had 2 million members all over the United States. By 1920, the U.N.I.A. had 1,100 chapters in 40 countries around the world such as UK, Cuba, Panama, Costa Rica, Ghana. By 1926, the membership of the U.N.I.A. had grown to over 11 million members. Marcus Garvey built the largest Black organization in history.

6)The convention adopted the Declaration of the Rights of the Negro Peoples of the World which was one of the earliest and most complete document advocating human rights and detailing the abuses against Black people worldwide. The document made demands such as:a. The freedom of Africa for the Negro people of the world. The condemnation of the term ‘nigger’ and stipulation that ‘Negro’ be spelled with a capital N. No taxation without representation. Equal treatment before the law. The condemnation of segregation and lynching.

7) In 1919, Hoover hired the FBI’s first Black agent in order to infiltrate the UNIA. The agent James Wormley Jones was referred to as code number 800. One of Garvey close confidantes Herbert Boulin was a spy for the FBI known as agent P-138.

8) In 1920, Garvey established the Negro Factories Corporation and offered stock for African Americans to buy. He raised one million dollars for the project. He wanted to produce everything that a nation needed so that African Americans could completely rely on their own efforts. It generated income and provided jobs by its numerous enterprises, including a chain of grocery stores and restaurants, steam laundry, tailor shop, dress making shop, millinery store (clothing, fashion, hats, accessories, etc.), publishing house and doll factory.In New York City alone, he owned several buildings, owned a fleet of trucks and had over 1,000 Black people working in his businesses. Marcus Garvey’s U.N.I.A. also operated the Phyllis Wheatley Hotel (3-13 West 136th Street, New York, NY).

9)Garvey’s greatest achievement was the Black Star Line, which was capitalized at a maximum of $500,000.Incorporated in Delaware, the Black Star Line bought several maritime vessels: SS Yarmouth,(intended to be renamed the SS Frederick Douglass), SS Shadyside, and Kanawha (renamed the SS Antonio Maceo”).

10) In 1923, when his steamship company went bankrupt, Garvey was convicted of mail fraud by using the United States mail to fraudulently collect money for investment in a ship that was never acquired. He went to jail for two years. His sentence was commuted by President Coolidge before Garvey was deported to Jamaica.

11) Garvey’s ultimate dream was for the independence of all African Countries and the creation of a United States of Africa. The UNIA embarked on a plan to repatriate some Blacks from the United States and other parts of the African Diaspora back to Africa.

12) He died on 10 June 1940 in London at age 53 without having set foot in Africa. His life has inspired other Black leaders such as Kwame Nkrumah, Kwame Toure, Jomo Kenyatta, Nelson Mandela, Patrice Lumumba, Julius Nyerere, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr, who said that Garvey was “the first man, on a mass scale, to give millions of Negroes a sense of dignity and destiny … He gave us a sense of personhood, a sense of manhood, a sense of somebodiness.”

Marcus Mosiah Garvey (1887-1940)

Marcus Mosiah Garvey was born in august 17 in 1887.
When Marcus was 27 years old in 1914 he started the United Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) in Jamaica. This program did exactly what the name says. It turned into an international organization to help black people economically, to protect their culture, in self-help and all kinds of racial discrimination. In 1916 he made his first trip to the USA to preach his ideas. He had been prompted by Booker T. Washington to come, but unfortunately Washington died just before Garvey reached the US. He ended up spending many years in the US strengthening the back-to-Africa movement he started. He came at a perfect time because it was right when black people were starting to rise up against the government and racism. By 1920 the UNIA had become a very powerful organization with hundreds of chapters all over the world, international conventions and even a weekly newspaper called the Negro World. The next two years were tough on Garvey and the UNIA. There were critics and unfortunately some black critics which didn’t do well for the organization. There was also a lot of pressure from the government who was threatened by Garvey and his growing power. They accused Garvey of mail fraud from mailings having to do with Black Star Line in 1922 and arrested him then eventually deported him back to Jamaica in 1927. When he returned to Jamaica in 1927 he then started a newspaper called The Blackman, which supported poor people, workers, colonial subjects and African people. It helped spread Garvey’s message in Jamaica and in this newspaper Garvey wrote many dialogues and poetry in a very classical style. This is why he used other philosophies to create his own. He wanted to use prior genius imaginations to his advantage. He told black people to do the same, not to ignore, but to learn from the structure and success of their race and eventually black people will rise up against the white oppression.
May his soul rest forever in peace…

 

About me

Name : Adina

Origin : Senegalese

Favourite singers : Michael Jackson, Donny Hathaway, Phyllis Hyman,  Bob Marley, Tupac Shakur, Stevie Wonder, Sam Cooke,  Marvin Gaye, Aretha Franklin, Anita Baker, Natalie Cole, J. Blackfoot, James Brown, The O’Jays, Gap Band, Bobby Womack, Whitney Houston, Patti Labelle, Nayanka Bell, Angelique Kidjo, KRS One, Lauryn Hill…

Favorite books : The miseducation of a Negro by Carter G. Woodson, Brainwashed by Tom Burell, The immortal life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca  Skloot, Marcus Garvey’s speeches, The autobiography of Malcolm X by Malcolm X and Alex Haley…

Favorite colors : red, gold and black

Favorite quotes :

– By any means necessary.

– Children hold on to your dreams, believe in love, let love be the light to show the way, and love will shine on you one day.

– Each one, teach one.

– Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee.

Hobbies : Reading, cooking and writing

Heroes : My mother , Marcus Garvey, Sojourner Truth, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Michael Jackson, Muhammad Ali, Harriet Tubman, Patrice Lumumba, Thomas Sankara, Amilcar Cabral, Web Du Bois…

Heroes

“A people without the knowledge of their past history, origin and culture is like a tree without roots.”
Marcus Garvey

« The day will come when history will speak… Africa will write its own history…
it will be a history of glory and dignity. » – Patrice Lumumba

 » Freedom by any means necessary ». Malcolm X

« While revolutionaries as individuals can be murdered, you cannot kill ideas” – Thomas Sankara

“I am not African because I was born in Africa but because Africa was born in me.”
Kwame Nkrumah

« Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world. » Nelson Mandela

“Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery.
None but ourselves can free our minds.”
Bob Marley

« I believe it is very important to teach our people more about our history.
We can never be free until we know about ourselves. »
Muhammad Ali

“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where
 they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”
Martin Luther King Jr.