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HAPPY BIRTHDAY, Marcus Garvey!
“The whole thing, my friends, is a bloody farce, and that the police and soldiers did nothing to stem the murder thirst of the mob is a conspiracy on the part of the civil authorities to condone the acts of the white mob against Negroes.” Marcus Garvey
With a few minor changes in the words, one would think this quote was in reference the unrest happening right now in Ferguson, Missouri due to the killing of unarmed teen Michael Brown by police officer Darren Wilson, but it isn’t.
The quote above by Marcus Garvey was delivered when he responded to the 1917 East St. Louis Race Riot, nearly 100 years ago.
Marcus Garvey and the Universal Negro Improvement Association, historically known as the UNIA, responded to the race riot of East St. Louis by calling it a “crime against humanity.” This riot occurred after 470 African Americans has been hired to fill positions left abandoned by white workers that had gone on strike against the local Aluminum Ore Company. The angry whites of the town filed formal complaints to the Mayor against Black migration to the city of East St. Louis. Soon after the formal complaints, an alleged attempted robbery of a white man by an unarmed Black man began to circulate. As a result, an angry white mob began beating and violating the Blacks of the city—these actions resulted in the National Guard being called in to quell the violence, but it only grew worse. The end result of the St. Louis Race Riots, amidst all of the violence and the maimed and murdered African Americans, was that several officers of the East St. Louis police force were indicted for not doing enough to eradicate the mob violence.
Marcus Garvey, born in St. Ann’s Bay Jamaica on August 17, 1887 was a fearless, enterprising man of great conviction. Highly inspired by the formerly enslaved American hero, Booker T. Washington, Marcus Garvey set out to establish a united Black people. He encouraged repatriation to Africa, the industrialization of Blacks and the establishment of an organization that would help Blacks to meet his goals, the UNIA formed in 1914. Further inspired by the large numbers of Black people living in Harlem, Marcus Garvey relocated the UNIA to Harlem’s 138th Street in 1917, and was a leading voice against racial injustice every time these injustices arose. As demonstrated above, Marcus Garvey spoke against the East St. Louis Race Riots of 1917, and his vigilance against the killings that occurred during the Red Summer of 1919 led to the continued growth of the UNIA.
Using Madison Square Garden as his venue, Marcus Garvey attracted 25,000 people to hear him deliver the Declaration of Rights the Negro Peoples of the World at the UNIA International Convention of 1920.
This man was on a mission.
To fulfill his dream of Blacks repatriating to Africa, Marcus Garvey and the efforts of the UNIA purchased a fleet of ships, The Blackstar Steamship Line. Although the ships were never able to fulfill the purpose intended by Garvey and the UNIA, purchasing the ships was a promising move by any Black leader, and a clear testament to the UNIA’s economic prowess.
Like most leaders of his time, Marcus Garvey was not devoid of controversy that would taint his reputation among Black followers and other
Black organizations. The point, however, is that Marcus Garvey was a visionary and he was emphatic about the direction he thought would suit Black people best. He had an “All Black Everything” vision; under the banner of Red, Black and Green he envisioned a Black Army. He lauded Black women as “queens” that gave “color to the world.” He also was clear and staunch in this assertion that he was equal to the white man and he wanted other Blacks to feel and know the same thing.
Marcus Garvey, having been consumed by the poetic and political potential of the United States, specifically Harlem (He was in Harlem in the height of the Harlem Renaissance), as well as the ideas of Black Unity and a Black nation, Marcus Garvey was a true Renaissance Man.
Marcus Garvey died in 1940 while in London, England after having two strokes.
He has influenced people who still follow his teachings, Garveyites. Rastafarianism is highly influenced by Garveyism. The man heralded by Ossie Davis as “our own Black shining Prince,” El Hajj Malik El Shabazz (Malcolm X), was raised by a Garveyite, his father Earl Little. And, all around the world we can find many examples of people holding true to Marcus Garvey’s call, “Up you mighty race; you can conquer what you will.”
On this Centennial (100 years!) of the UNIA and on what would have been the 127th year of Mr. Garvey’s birth, we say HAPPY BIRTHDAY Marcus Garvey!
The Media and the Making of Malcolm X
“The media’s the most powerful entity on Earth. They have the power to make the innocent guilty and to make the guilty innocent, and that’s power. Because they control the minds of the masses.” Malcolm X
Today, May 19th, 2014 we say Happy Birthday to Brother Malcolm X, one of the world’s “brightest hopes” as he is “extinguished now, and gone from us forever…unconquered still. (Ossie Davis–Malcolm X’s Eulogy).”
As is the case with hindsight, we never really understand the blessing of a treasure until it has seeped from within our
grasp, been moved from within our reach, or taken away from us too soon. We often refer to this as missed opportunity. In regards to man, we really only know of their value in death. Such is the case with Malcolm X.
So much of Malcolm X, “our living Black manhood” was lost in the media’s coverage of him as a controversial figure. In the media, Malcolm X is militant, angry, and violent. And, he is never a man.
In the media he is also an agitator rather than a self-help guru–today I suppose even Oprah Winfrey and OWN TV would be doing a Master Class on him because of his ability to help each of us to live our best lives. He is the soul of our Sundays as we reflect on the true meaning of life, but he is also the weekend fever that makes us active, involved and responsive.
In the media, soundbites are used to express the totality of his life, but beyond the camera lens, Malcolm’s total life is an example of transformation, introspection, resilience and the full human experience.
Malcolm X is a mountain.
The media has hijacked his image and taken his words to create him as polarizing to the success of human excellence. But we must know and project him differently. We must know that although Malcolm X did not have the formal education that we revere in our leaders, the invaluable education of accountability and service he taught is as priceless as his precious life.
Today on his birth, Google chose to celebrate the 40th Anniversary of the Rubic’s Cube–a three-dimensional combination puzzle by its Hungarian namesake used to challenge our brains on the myriad ways in which to get all of the same colors on one side of this movable block.
The most puzzling thing to me, however, is how we can continue to deny Malcolm X–this “black shining prince” Ossie Davis described as a man “who didn’t hesitate to die, because he loved us so.”
As long as we have access to smartphones and social media and pens and paper, we are the media. We have the power to shape our heroes in the ways in which they should be viewed–we have the ability to tell their truths; and, we also have the power to write them back into places in which they have been erased. After all, it was Malcolm X who said:
“If you’re not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.”
If we choose to hate Malcolm X, we choose to hate an everyday man with the extraordinary courage to stand up to white supremacy, institutional racism and maintain / assert his manhood with the best of integrity–something that each of us is equipped to do.
I choose to celebrate this sphinx of a man.
He is love.
He is light.
And, I love him so.
Read Ossie Davis’ full eulogy below:
“Here–at this final hour, in this quiet place–Harlem has come to bid farewell to one of its brightest hopes–extinguished now, and gone from us forever. For Harlem is where he worked and where he struggled and fought–his home of homes, where his heart was, and where his people are–and it is, therefore, most fitting that we meet once again–in Harlem–to share these last moments with him. For Harlem has ever been gracious to those who have loved her, have fought for her, and have defended her honor even to the death.
There are those who will consider it their duty, as friends of the Negro people, to tell us to revile him, to flee, even from the presence of his memory, to save ourselves by writing him out of the history of our turbulent times. Many will ask what Harlem finds to honor in this stormy, controversial and bold young captain–and we will smile. Many will say turn away from this man, for he is a demon, a monster, a subverter and an enemy of the Black man–and we will smile. They will say that he is of hate–a fanatic, a racist–who can only bring evil to the cause for which you struggle! And we will answer and say to them: Did you ever talk to Brother Malcolm? Did you ever touch him, or have him smile at you? Did you ever really listen to him? Did he ever do a mean thing? Was he ever himself associated with violence or any public disturbance? For if you did you would know him. And if you knew him you would know why we must honor him.It is not in the memory of man that this beleaguered, unfortunate, but nonetheless proud community has found a braver, more gallant young champion than this Afro-American who lies before us–unconquered still. Afro-American Malcolm was most meticulous in his use of words. Nobody knew better than he the power words have over minds of men. Malcolm had stopped being a “Negro” years ago. It had become too weak a word for him. Malcolm was bigger than that. Malcolm had become an Afro-American and he wanted–so desperately–that all his people would become Afro-Americans too.
Malcolm was our living, black manhood! This was his meaning to his people. And, in honoring him, we honor the best in ourselves. Last year, from Africa, he wrote these words to a friend: “My journey,” he says, “is almost ended, and I have a much broader scope than when I started out, which I believe will add new life and dimension to our struggle for freedom and dignity in the States. I am writing these things so that you will know for a fact the tremendous sympathy and support we have among the African States for our Human Rights struggle. The main thing is that we keep a United Front wherein our most valuable time and energy will not be wasted fighting each other.” However we may have differed with him–or with each other about him–let his going from us serve only to bring us together, now.
Consigning these mortal remains to earth, the common mother of all, secure in the knowledge that what we place in the ground is no more now a man–but a seed–which, after the winter of our discontent, will come forth again to meet us. And we will know him then for what he was and is, our own black shining Prince!–who didn’t hesitate to die, because he loved us so.” ~Mr. Ossie Davis, February 27th, 1965 delivered at the Faith Temple Church of God.
For more information on Ossie Davis feelings toward Malcolm X, go to: Ossie Davis and Democracy Now
Silence is Betrayal
“The human spirit does not move without great difficulty.”
Dr. King was pure genius and completely insightful. It is almost inconceivable to me that a person like Dr. King could walk this Earth, in his times, and believe, say and preach the truths that he rendered. Exactly one year before his untimely assassination death, April 4th, 1968, Dr. King delivered the above quote in his speech, “Beyond Vietnam” on April 4th, 1967 at the famed Riverside Church in Harlem, New York. Having been moved by a particular statement of the executive committee of the Riverside Church: “A time comes when silence is betrayal,” Dr. King persisted in betraying silence by speaking against the Vietnam War.
Since moving to New York City some 13 years ago, I have visited the Riverside
Billy Taylor–VSU Alumni
Church many times, mostly in honor of powerful, accomplished Black men who were once little Black boys living in times that would not acknowledge their humanity. I attended the funerals of Mr. Ossie Davis, Jazz musician and Virginia State University graduate Billy Taylor, Malcolm X’s attorney Percy Sutton, and radio owner, Hal Jackson. I have attended plays written by Daniel Beaty, and a host of other events. To know that Dr. King used this very church to deliver one of the most scathing analyses of what the Vietnam War meant for young Black boys is haunting. Referring to the Vietnam War as an “adventure” he said:
“We were taking the black young men who had been crippled by our society and sending them eight thousand miles away to guarantee liberties in Southeast Asia which they had not found in southwest Georgia or East Harlem…I could not be silent in the face of such cruel manipulation of the poor.”
This man, father, husband, brother…knew that he could not stand idly by and watch a world he had inherited become a will of useless gains. What about his sons, Dexter and Martin Luther King, III? What kind of world would they inherit if he said nothing? What kind of world would we be if men like Dr. King were not moved to serve their nations by preaching and acting in a spirit of love and truth?
In a betrayal of silence and in protest of the Vietnam War, Dr. King demonstrated an exalted love for man and offered a profound definition of love when he said:
“When I speak of love I am not speaking of some sentimental and weak response. I’m not speaking of that force which is just emotional bosh. I am speaking of that force which all of the great religions have seen as the supreme unifying principle of life. Love is somehow the key that unlocks the door which leads to ultimate reality.”
For a living, I teach. For a life, I have learned that I must love better, harder, and
more. Each of us wears scars that reminds us of pain, but each of us has life that reminds us to try again, move on, and struggle some more. I believe it to be true, “The human spirit does not move without great difficulty,” which is why Frederick Douglass, a man’s shoulders on whom Dr. King stood, said:
“If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a struggle.”
Dr. King entered an unforgiving struggle when he gave the Vietnamese a voice, and like a tour guide in a living museum, provided nuanced captions to the inconvenient truths the Vietnam War meant not only for American soldiers, but for Vietnamese men, women, and children, as well. How could one not empathize with the thought of orphaned children running around in packs in the streets of Vietnam looking for food that was no more and water too poisonous to drink? Or cringe at the very thought of women and girls being sold into prostitution as the spoils of war? Dr. King narrated these realities too well. And so he advised that America end this awful war even if it would cost him his life one year later.
In a betrayal of silence, Dr. King imposed an indictment on America and the Western world’s role as leaders in sparking the revolutionary spirit but in the face of Vietnam, Guatemala, Peru, Mozambique and South Africa, King said that it was a “sad fact” that Western nations had “now become the arch antirevolutionaries.”
On this 28th, federally effected, King Holiday, I celebrate with myriad others, but I am 
also forced to confess that I don’t think I am doing enough. But, I continue to learn so that I may reciprocate my learning into lessons for others. Dr. King stated in “Beyond Vietnam” that “every man of humane convictions must decide on the protest that best suits his 
convictions, but we must all protest.” Approximately three weeks after the delivery of this speech, on April 28th, 1967, “The Greatest” Muhammad Ali was inspired by the conviction of Dr. King, and declared that he was a conscientious objector by refusing to fight in the Vietnam War.
I sit in front of my computer, I read everything, and I teach others in protest of ignorance, but still I ponder, on which issue will I betray my silence?
Check out the full “Beyond Vietnam” Speech here:
INVISIBLE MAN: THE REPRIEVE
Last Friday May 19th, 2012 marked the 87th birthday of Malcolm X, the m
an Ossie Davis eulogized as, “our manhood, our living, black manhood!” I am always touched and softened by the love Ossie Davis blanketed Malcolm X with when he adamantly stated that Malcolm X was “a prince—our own black shining prince!” How endearing is that! Even when the media and individuals had castigated Malcolm X from the same communities to whom he had been betrothed, Ossie Davis spoke up for him. To Mr. Davis, Malcolm wasn’t too “militant” or too “Black” 
or too much of a “separatist” or a “Moslem,” he was just a man–heckled by a vicious world too blinded in racism and violence to understand the jewel that had now been forced to speak from a coffin even as he lay in silence.
From one man to the next, Ossie Davis and Brother Malcolm spoke the same language and knew the same struggle as Black men in America. They had fought the same fights for human and civil rights. Who better to humanize the man who had almost outgrown and transcended the consideration of humanity than another “Brother?” Although Malcolm X was in plain sight for the entire world to see, as far as humanity was concerned he was an invisible man. He was an angry Black person stepping out of line and there was no tolerance for that sort of behavior in the 1960s. He died as a man, but he wasn’t allowed to live as one un
less he conformed to the masking of his own humanity. Ossie Davis reminded us of this man when he asked, “Did you ever talk to Brother Malcolm? Did you ever touch him, or have him smile at you? Did you ever really listen to him? Did he ever do a mean thing? Was he ever himself associated with violence or any public disturbance? For if you did you would know him.”
For each of his posthumous birthdays, I only wish that he had smiled at me. When I’m walking down the streets in my new home of Harlem, I feel the winds of Brother Malcolm’s spirit wisp past me, and I only wish that I could have listened to him from a Harlem street corner.
My favorite thoug
hts remind me that he was a husband and a father. He was a son and a brother. How many times must the trepidation of anxiety have crept into his body feeling concerned that he would never have another home-cooked meal, hear the pitter-patter of his daughters’ feet, or see the doting eyes of his siblings while seeking approval at the good news of having a new crush or getting a promotion? Every time I see a picture or watch a video of Brother Malcolm smiling and jovial, the leitmotif of him only being the angry militant dissipates further from my mind; after all, he was only human.
I shared my celebration of Brother Malcolm’s life at the Brooklyn Museum in a discussion about Black men by Black men organized by Question Bridge: Black Males Blueprint Roundtable. To listen to the conversation was enlightening and hopeful most times, but it was also hurtful and contemplative at other times. To think that Black men live trapped in a dichotomy that either embraces or misunderstands them is tiring to me! I can only imagine what it must be like to live it. The discussion made me think of the throngs of Black men I know and the ways they cling to other Black men out of necessity because to not have a “crew” would place them in a world alone. Indeed, each of them would become that Invisible Man that Ralph Ellison had written about.
From what I witnessed on the stage at the Brooklyn Museum, and from what Question Bridge has assembled says that Black men are not invisible—we just have not been listening. We have not been paying attention. For so long, Black men have been role models, even when they deny that they are. There isn’t a creature on Earth that can resist stopping in his
, her or its track when a this man enters the room. Invisible is a state of mind that too many of us have grown comfortable with, but when we shirk the veils of complacency and comfort we realize the best of each of us is unclad–stark naked for all to see.
“However we may have differed with him—or with each other about him and his value as a man—let his going from us serve only to bring us together, now. Consigning these mortal remains to earth, the common mother of all, secure in the knowledge that what we place in the ground is no more now a man—but a seed—which, after the winter of our discontent, will come forth again to meet us (Malcolm X’s Eulogy, Ossie Davis).” 
For Malcolm X to have died in the manner in which he did was to open the door for the spirit of El Hajj Malik El Shabazz to continue to live and celebrate another day on this earth, on every birthday, for everybody to finally see…invisible no more.
Please enjoy the recording, courtesy of Democracy Now, that I have provided for your listening pleasure: http://www.democracynow.org/2005/2/7/ossie_davis_eulogizes_malcolm_x_i
Full text of Ossie Davis’ Eulogy here: http://www.malcolmx.com/about/eulogy.html
ThePoliDay Report 