Marcus Moziah Garvey

Born 1887, in Jamaica; died June 10, 1940, in London. Leader of the nationalist separatist tendency in the American Negro movement called Garveyism. Printer by profession.

Garvey founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) in Jamaica in 1914. In 1916 he moved to New York and transferred the headquarters of the UNIA there. He succeeded in turning the movement into a mass organization. Garvey’s appeal for resettlement of Negroes in Africa as a solution to the Negro problem was popular among American Negroes until the early 20th century. To help implement his idea, he came into contact with the racist, terrorist Ku Klux Klan organization and received subsidies. Soon after Garvey’s arrest in 1925, the UNIA fell apart. In 1927 he was deported to Jamaica.