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1 Antecedents He spoke from his soul . . . and ah, Garvey spoke the words that you thought you was speaking yourself. . . . They were in your thoughts, in your mind, in your brains, but still you did not speak them the way Garvey spoke them. And it . . . ah, it was in one accord. It was just like, ah, everybody had one mind.—Virginia Collins, Louisiana Garveyite, 2001 Many of Marcus Garvey’s inspiring words and ideas sounded familiar to his followers because they were not necessarily new.∞ Many of the most important themes of Garvey’s speeches, both spoken and transcribed weekly in the Negro World, echoed the voices of generations of black clergymen, journalists, and other influential black leaders of the American South. So much of what appealed to American Garveyites, whether they were born in the rural South or remained there, came straight out of the collective memory of generations past. From the intermittent African American colonization of Liberia, to the emigrationism, racial pride, and self-defense espoused by African Methodist Episcopal (ame) bishop Henry McNeal Turner, to the e√orts to uplift and redeem African societies by African American missionaries from the rural South, to the self-reliance and economic nationalism of Booker T. Washington, Garvey’s program blended preexisting strategies familiar to rural southerners, while adding elements that appropriately addressed the postwar setting of the 1920s. African American leaders struggled with issues of legitimacy. Who did southern blacks consider their leaders in this modern era? Who articulated their agenda, and how did their lives and issues overlap with those of African American migrants to urban areas? Certainly ministers, journalists, and even national figures like Booker Washington and Bishop Turner confronted problems in diverse ways. Garvey successfully appropriated and transformed popular tactics and rhetoric that spoke to rural people ’s issues: survival, spirituality, coping strategy, pragmatism, strength, and preparation for protest, organization, and community formation and reconstitution. In the North and in southern cities, alternative approaches to black advancement had begun to take shape, most of which tailored protest to the urban setting and addressed issues confronted by urbanites. The Great Migration, which began the eventual shift of millions of African Americans to cities, had antecedents | 25 begun, but in the early 1920s southern blacks remained predominantly rural and agricultural. Many held on to previous models for race advancement but recognized their limitations. The unia leadership walked a fine line between embracing what was useful from previous e√orts and defining ways in which some old practices were obsolete. The adjustments Garvey wanted to make in strategy required black pride and dignity in interactions with whites and a modern, nationalistic approach to community building and economic development. At Carnegie Hall in August 1919, Garvey, then viewed by Harlem’s black leaders as a radical West Indian upstart, went so far as to say, ‘‘The white man of the world has been accustomed to deal with the Uncle Tom cringing Negro. Up to 1918, he knew no other Negro than the Negro represented through Booker T. Washington. Today he will find that a new Negro is on the stage.’’≤ Another attempt at distinguishing the unia program came in an early Negro World editorial entitled, ‘‘Honorable Marcus Garvey and Our Fossilized Missionaries.’’ In this column J. Arthur Davis, a black American organizer who became the early Miami unia division president, stressed the uniqueness of Garvey’s plans while comparing their purposes to those of Henry McNeal Turner and other black missionaries to Africa: ‘‘Like Bishop Turner, [Garvey] dreams of a Negro flag in Africa. Like our missionaries, he claims that if Africa is to be saved, it must be saved by black men. But he would save it wholesale, while our missionaries have been trying to save it by the retail. For fifty years they have been raising money to that end.’’ Implying that missionaries had ‘‘sold out’’ Africa in the face of European imperialism, Davis argued that Garvey and the unia were more sincere. He posited that the creation of a steamship line and the development of commerce were the logical routes to African redemption. It was not enough to transplant black American farmers to Liberia. The industrial development that could make this imagined black nation competitive in the modern world, Davis asserted in the Negro World, was essential to the new program.≥ Although never an advocate of emigration, during his years as a student at Hampton Institute Booker T. Washington had considered, with many others, becoming a missionary...

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