Professor continues push to exonerate Garvey

(CNS): Following a popular presentation on 18 September at Miami Dade College, Florida, Professor Geoffrey Philp said he would be giving another performance of “Marcus Garvey: (Still) The Most Dangerous Black Man" next month. The lecture will support the ongoing drive to raise 2,000 signatures for a petition to persuade US President Barack Obama to exonerate the late Jamaican national hero. In 1925 Marcus Garvey began serving a five-year sentence in the US penitentiary in Atlanta, Georgia, for mail fraud. "The injustices committed against Marcus Garvey, including the denial of his most basic human rights will be highlighted," Professor Philp said about his second presentation.

The lecture is sponsored by the Institute for Civic Engagement and Democracy’s "Dive into Democracy" campaign and Philp combines texts, music, and video in his presentation on the man who inspired millions of followers with his messages of black pride and self-reliance.

The Jamaican government recently announced plans to introduce a new mandatory civics programme in its schools that will teach students Garveyism. Although students are taught some of the less controversial values the leader promoted, the school curriculum previously omitted any mention of Garvey’s promotion of a “Back to Africa” movement, his use of the title “provisional president of Africa” and a campaign for racial separation, born of the conviction that whites would never allow blacks justice. American civil rights pioneer W.E.B. Du Bois once called him “the most dangerous enemy of the Negro race”.

“The teaching of Garveyism in schools is something that politicians of all stripes have shied away from, partly because of their own intellectual ignorance and partly because they don’t know what to make of this complex subject,” said Robert Hill, a Garvey expert who is professor emeritus at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Born nearly 50 years after the abolition of slavery in Jamaica, Garvey founded the United Negro Improvement Association in 1914 on the island, and then built it into a mass movement in New York from 1919 to 1927. He established a network of “Liberty Halls” as venues for political debate, theatre and scholarship around black themes, raising awareness of African achievements and calling for economic empowerment to circumvent racism. Garvey urged people find pride in their African history and assured the descendants of slaves that there were no limitations to what they could accomplish.

A petition was launched earlier this year, which is the 125th anniversary of Garvey’s birthday, by the Celebrations Committee, Institute of Caribbean Studies, and the Rootz Foundation Inc, which launched the drive the same year that Jamaica celebrated 50 years of Independence.

“The petition has the full support of Dr Julius Garvey, Marcus Garvey’s son,” said Justin Hansford, legal counsel. “We hope that this effort will help to undo the historic miscarriage of justice.”

The petition currently has 1,805 signatures and can be signed at SignOn.org