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Callaloo 26.3 (2003) 695-706



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Reasoning with Professor Robert A. Hill

Lindsey Herbert


On July 10, 2000, I sat down to interview Professor Robert A. Hill, Editor in Chief at the Marcus Garvey Papers Project on the UCLA Campus. At that time, I initiated the interview in hopes of getting it published in a Colorado-based magazine entitled Ujama News. The editor and readers of Ujama News maintain an interest in the history of Marcus Garvey, Rastatari and Pan-African politics and history. In every issue they run a column on the philosophies of Marcus Garvey, so the editor Robert Oyugi and I discussed a line of questioning for Robert Hill that would give the readers more background information on Garvey and attempt to fill in some of the gaps. We hoped Robert Hill would answer some of the questions people have about Garvey, that are not easily accessible in popular sources. At the time Robert Hill was my thesis advisor for the work I was doing on women's history and literature in Jamaica, so it was the prime opportunity for this exchange. The following interview is the product of that afternoon in July.

HERBERT: If you had to describe Marcus Garvey in a few words, who, would you say, is Marcus Garvey?

HILL: In reality, Marcus Garvey was a promoter. That was his true genius. He was also a diplomat, a psychologist, and one who saw himself as a scientist of the science of politics. What Garvey promoted was the idea of racial pride, and along with racial pride the idea of the political redemption of Africa. He did this between 1914 and when he died in 1940. He himself said that his greatest strength was that of an organizer. But I think that what he meant by that was that he was an outstanding organizer of various enterprises and ventures—in other words, a promoter. The main ideological thrust of his myriad schemes was his steadfast belief in "Africa for the Africans, those at home and abroad."

HERBERT: How practical is the idea of repatriation for Africans abroad?

HILL: I know that many people, today, are still exploring and hoping to achieve repatriation to Africa. But I believe that, on many levels, the whole discussion of repatriation needs to be rethought. Africa is not simply the landmass that is called Africa. Africa is wherever the African is. Wherever the African people are, there is Africa. So, today you find large numbers of African people moving out of Africa, rather than African people moving into Africa. There is a protracted migration across North Africa and out of West Africa and Central Africa. [End Page 695]

So, there is a movement occurring, but it is not occurring under the umbrella of the traditional notion of repatriation. It is as if Africa is expanding. There is an expansion of the African world—musically, spiritually, culturally, politically, and it is no longer driven by the idea that the exiles from the West will return to Africa. Marcus Garvey didn't begin by preaching repatriation. Repatriation was preached by Garvey only as a means of implementing his idea of African colonization. This idea of colonization was only broached starting in the second half of 1920, whereas the original idea of the redemption of Africa and the emancipation of the race was promulgated from early 1919.

A lot has happened since Garvey's day, and I think we need to avoid fixating our minds upon a static definition of repatriation. Personally speaking, I feel that within me, every day Africa grows stronger. I feel that I become more and more attuned to Africa as I study Garvey, I become more deeply conscious of Africa. Sometimes it takes the form of attention to the African AIDS crisis or before that to supporting the liberation struggles on the continent. The fact is that Africa is an expanding part of world consciousness, and, to that extent, Africa is not a corner of the world to go and seek refuge in. There's no refuge in Africa...

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