In several ways, and certainly from political and cultural standpoints, we are still weighing the monumental impact of Marcus Garvey around the world. His clarion call of "One Aim, One God, One Destiny," and "Africans for Africans at home and abroad," still resonate, having an especially significant value in the spiritual and psychological outlook of Black people wherever they reside.



Born in St. Ann's Bay, Jamaica, August 17, 1887, Garvey would be celebrating his 110th birthday this coming summer. Garvey was virtually self-taught, reading voraciously from his father's extensive library. By 1910, and then residing in Kingston, he quickly established himself as a orator, a skill that was the hallmark of his illustrious political career.

For the next four years or so Garvey travelled throughout the West Indies, Central America and Europe, primarily working as a printer and an editor. In England he worked briefly at the prestigious Africa Times and Orient Review, where he came under the estimable influence of Duse Muhammad. Upon his return to Jamaica, he was convinced of a need for an organization to uplift the downtrodden people of his island. Thus was born the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA).



Two years later, after being completely captivated by Booker T. Washington's autobiography "Up From Slavery," Garvey wrote to the great man and was soon thinking of building his own institution modelled after Washington's Tuskegee Institute. Through the correspondence with Washington, Garvey made plans to visit the United States. Unfortunately, when he finally arrived in America, Washington had died the previous year in 1915, but a visionary like Garvey was not deterred by this setback.



As part of his introduction to the states, Garvey toured the country, lecturing and establishing contacts. It took the energetic Garvey only a couple of years to place the UNIA on the political map, and this notoriety was ushered along by his extremely potent weekly the Negro World.



At its peak, some historians have written, the UNIA boasted a membership of more than four million, with almost as many sympathizers. How it rose to this prominence and its ultimate eclipse which has been insightfully discussed in the works of Robert Hill and Tony Martin. What is apparent in their exhaustive studies is the powerful impression Garvey left on our spiritual and mental health. His fervent nationalism, his belief in self-reliance is an indelible stamp that marks our progress as a people. We salute the magnificent Garvey on this 110th year of his birth, knowing that his prodigious soul-force will carry us through the 21st century and beyond.



Source: http://www.raceandhistory.com/Historians/marcus_garvey.htm