Negro with a Hat

by Colin Grant

  The most imposing building in the neighbourhood, the Hotel Theresa, refused to admit black guests. The ivory-white mannequins on window display in Harlem’s department stores taunted and mocked the population; there was not one large department store where black folk could comfortably try on clothes, shoes or hats. Garvey countered by opening the movement’s Universal Millinery Store where toques, fedoras, panama hats – almost every fashion of headwear – decorated its double-fronted windows, and African-American assistants fussed over African-American customers. By contrast, Blumstein’s, the big department store on 125th Street, did not, and would not, employ a single black clerk or shop assistant. Not until 1926 would signs of improvement emerge, when the National Urban League was able to run ads in its newspaper Opportunity such as, ‘Wanted: A very good shipping clerk (light colored only – West Indian preferred)’.

  In the same edition, Opportunity proudly announced that ‘a Harlem department store has employed three colored sales ladies. A national chain grocery has employed its first colored clerk.’5 But that was seven years away. Garvey was far ahead of the game. The UNIA planned to open shops and factories that would employ thousands, and establishments that would cater for their comforts. Any black person could make a reservation at the Phyllis Wheatley Hotel. The hopeful young journalist, George Schulyer, who rented a room there and who was already fine-tuning a discerning and cynical style, remembered that ‘the place was spick and span’. Schulyer did not believe in a separate African-American identity. In his conception, an African-American was merely a lamp-blacked Anglo-Saxon. Yet even Schulyer reflected admiringly on the centrepiece of African-American culture that greeted guests as they stepped off the street and into the entrance hall of the Phyllis Wheatley Hotel, with its ‘large striking painting of the famed Negro poetess of Revolutionary days gazing down benignly from the wall’.6

  The new, black-owned, shipping line promised a high-class service for black passengers. No longer would the Negro traveller have to settle for the privations and humiliations of steerage class. He would be welcome to a first-class cabin (at three-quarters of the usual price) on the proposed Black Star Line. Quite simply, the Black Star Line was, in Garvey’s conception, the black equivalent of the White Star Line whose transatlantic steamships, famed for their emphasis on comfort, elegance and safety (notwithstanding the unfortunate Titanic), had made their owners a fortune. Its black cousin would be owned by black men, its crew would be singularly black and its passengers also. For Garvey’s dream to be fulfilled the Black Star Line would operate between American ports and those of Africa, the West Indies, and Central and South America, and, along the way, it would serve as a further tool towards Negro improvement, both spiritual and financial.

  The Negro World notified Harlem’s black population that plans would be unveiled at a monster convention of the race to be held at the Palace Casino. And to those critics who, from the start, thought the scheme fanciful (where after all was the money to come from?) Garvey had a simple answer: black people themselves would provide the $2 million needed to inaugurate the Black Star Line. $1,250,000 would be raised from the Negroes in the USA each donating a dollar. Similar donations from the West Indies would contribute a further $250,000; 50-cent donations from Central and South America would net $300,000; and the African continent would have the honour of reaching the final amount by making 25-cent donations totalling $200,000.

  Such a breakdown seemed further proof, in the eyes of doubters, that the idea was not serious but ill-conceived and shot through with whimsy. Even admirers urged caution – Ida B. Wells amongst them. Ahead of the last mass meeting, Garvey had greeted her off the train at Grand Central station, and swept her into a car that flashed though Harlem on a tour of the latest UNIA acquisitions. A horse-drawn cart that collected the dirty clothes for the UNIA laundrette had been upgraded to a truck. Premises had been obtained for a second restaurant. Though Ida B. Wells was a great talker, there was little chance to interrupt the stream of Garvey’s bountiful thoughts that raced to the summit of his most grand idea thus far – the nascent Black Star Line and the fantastic opportunities that it would bring. The car pulled up at the Universal Restaurant; the engine idled, and Garvey awaited the verdict of his guest. Ida B. Wells argued that the scheme was too large but, she continued as he waved aside her reservations, if Garvey was determined to push ahead then might it not be wiser to wait, at least until the organisation was on a sounder financial footing. After all, the Negro World was still struggling to make a profit and the first restaurant – though enthusiastically patron ised by Harlemites – had yet to offer a return on its investment. Garvey had hoped and expected Ida B. Wells to endorse his plans but, when she got up on the podium, she voiced the kind of scepticism and straight-talking for which natives from Missouri were proudly famous: ‘He [Marcus Garvey] says you Negroes are organised but I’m from Missouri, you’ll have to show me.’ Wells wanted to see and hear concrete and realisable plans but all she heard sounded fanciful and impractical and she kept up the mantra: ‘I’m from Missouri; you’ve got to show me.’ Wells’s words were not part of the script; ‘they sowed doubt amongst the audience’, wrote Amy Ashwood, and Garvey was so furious that he ‘refused point blank to pay her the $150 fee and travelling expenses’. Ashwood quietly ushered her out of the hall and accompanied her to the station with the assurance that Garvey would send on the appearance fee once he’d calmed down.7

  Marcus Garvey did not pause too long to reflect on Ida B. Wells’s warning. He was like a novice driver who had a destination in mind but had forgotten the road map, and rather than lose time by turning and going back for it, decided to drive on, through diversions, down blind alleys and even off the beaten track until arriving at the place he’d been heading for: much energy would be expended along the way, and it would prove a sometimes frustrating but ultimately thrilling ride. Amy Jacques saw this impetuous and impatient side of his character close at hand. ‘He turned the pages of his past life as an avid reader turns the pages of an adventure story, and loses interest in the early chapters after reading them. Those who get hurt in these tense moments of the adventure are only regarded as necessary props to the build-up of the hero. He was quite as impersonal in this regard as any reader.’8 The UNIA leader could not delay or defer his plans. What Wells mistook for arrogance was simply Garvey’s profound belief that he was mystically tuned to the mood of the people. At the large convention on Sunday 27 April 1919, he called for donations to the Black Star Line and the people unhesitatingly responded, cramming envelopes with cash, pledges and promissory notes. Garvey had expected no less. His ambition and popularity multiplied each day. The two were reciprocal: his popularity grew with his ambition and the greater his popularity the more ambitious he became. Black Harlem was especially in love with him. Hugh Mulzac, a prospective UNIA recruit, was stunned by what he saw as he approached the UNIA offices at 56 West 135th Street: ‘As I made my way toward the headquarters – or to within a block of it – I discovered a line more than one hundred yards long waiting to enter. There were job seekers and supplicants … and a few hero worshippers who simply wanted to tell Mr Garvey how proud they were of him for what he was doing for the race.’9 That appreciation was daily turning into ready cash. The BOI informants who now regularly attended UNIA meetings were pained to report his success. They questioned Garvey’s sincerity and speculated that he was only able to maintain enthusiasm for this latest project through a series of novel and cynical initiatives.

  The weekly meetings were indeed, unashamedly, turned over specifically to the task of raising funds for the shipping company. Donations leapt considerably when Edgar Grey, the general secretary of the movement whom Garvey trusted to deputise in his absence, introduced a visiting Liberian speaker, Mr Cooper who, the Negro World reported, endorsed the forthcoming shipping line and ‘thrilled audiences with picturesque phraseology [as] he graphically told … of some of the latent powers of the Negro race in its native habitat’. That evenin
g the envelope method of collecting donations for the Black Star Line ‘was largely omitted because of a direct appeal made by the chair, which resulted in a mass collection to the table’. As a mountain of cash built up over the next few weeks, Garvey was quick to stress that in this, and all other business ventures, the UNIA was acting as guardian of the people, and that there would be ‘no speculation in “the Black Star Line”’. The UNIA would hold the properties for the benefit of every man and woman of colour, and hence ‘there would be no private dividends’, as the money would come from voluntary contributions – in the same manner in which church congregations might top up their pledge of tithes to the church with ad-hoc contributions.

  On 14 June 1919, the long list of subscribers who’d made donations ranging from 10 cents to 5 dollars could run their fingers down the columns of the Negro World to see their names and contributions honoured in print. This one stroke of publicity served both to encourage others and to silence cynics who were beginning to make rumblings about a lack of financial transparency.

  A special account with the Corn Exchange Bank was set up to receive lodgement of Black Star Line donations. More money was passing through the UNIA office than ever before but the thrill of the ringing till brought unexpected consequences. Cash was coming in on such a scale that it embarrassed the organisation into undertaking the long-overdue audit of the UNIA accounts. A three-man auditing committee was appointed. But when the auditors, including the Jamaican UNIA secretary, Uriah T. Mitchell, began work in earnest, it was soon apparent why the exercise had been deferred for so long: the accounts were in a mess, the records had only been kept in a half-hearted manner, and no matter how great the latitude of creativity the auditors gave themselves the books refused to balance. At one of the meetings, reported Amy Ashwood, reasoned arguments gave way to fists. ‘Garvey accused officers, including the treasurer [James] Linton, of dishonesty. Linton sprang to his feet. Garvey … hit out.’ Resignations and dismissals immediately followed but the violent arguments continued. Ashwood noted that the genial first vice-president, Jeremiah Certain, was often called upon to mediate. ‘Jeremiah Certain was slightly deaf in one ear and when things got rough at our meetings, he would be called upon to verify one fact or another.’ Ashwood was amused by the skill with which ‘he avoided taking sides by … saying he had never heard’.10 Certain’s tactics failed, however, to take the sting out of arguments which were increasingly personal and belligerent. Three weeks later, Uriah Mitchell resigned and, along with the other appointed auditors, fearing a scandal and the threat to their professional reputations, hurried to the District Attorney’s office with the unbalanced books under their arms. Garvey had been on the road (leaving Grey in charge) visiting Michigan, Virginia and Toronto, garnering even more interest and dollars for the Black Star Line, and was particularly aggrieved to return to find a summons from the assistant District Attorney Edwin Kilroe on his mantelpiece.

  The auditing committee had lodged a complaint, not only about the poorly kept accounts but about the unremitting drive to collect monies for a paper organisation (the Black Star Line) with no surety of it ever being realised. Marcus Garvey rushed to the District Attorney’s office. Accompanied by Amy Ashwood he sat face to face with his accusers, bristling with resentment at the ignominy of being hauled before the law officer who asked to examine all the paperwork, documents and records of the association. After several hours of scrutiny, the lawyer drew the proceedings to a close; the case against Garvey was not proven but Edwin Kilroe threatened him with prosecution should he continue to solicit funds in such an improper manner; investors would need to be offered at least the possibility of dividends if the proposed Black Star Line became a financial success. Whilst promising to heed the Assistant District Attorney’s advice, Garvey spat defiantly in the Negro World that just as ‘there is a White Star Line owned by white men, there will be a Black Star Line owned by black men’. Edwin Kilroe got off relatively lightly. Garvey reserved his greatest venom for the former allies, the ‘stool-pigeons’ who had sought to damage the organisation under the camouflage of legal propriety. No matter the veracity of the auditing gang of three’s concerns – in a climate where the lynching of black men and women continued unabated, and where Negroes were burnt out of their homes in the all-American version of Russian pogroms and where black pleas for equality were spurned at Versailles – the ‘pedantic quibbles’ over well-intentioned efforts to uplift the race were viewed as nothing less than spineless treachery. From the pulpit of the Negro World, Marcus Garvey howled at the perfidious ‘white man’s niggers’ and vowed to publish the names of the traitors, in bold black type, in subsequent editions of the paper, and to exhibit them in man-sized banners throughout the Palace Casino at the next meeting. No sooner had he fired off his rebuke in the Negro World, than Marcus Garvey quietly began planning to incorporate the shipping company.

  It was too late to deter the unfavourable headlines that were bound to appear in the next few days. The World News was first off the printing press with: ‘DISTRICT ATTORNEY SINKS “THE BLACK STAR LINE”. HEAD OF NEGRO STEAMSHIP PROJECT PROMISES NOT TO COLLECT ANY MORE FUNDS’.

  The head of the Negro steamship project reacted angrily. The news, which alleged a shortfall of over $1,000 between amounts taken in by the new shipping line and the figure recorded in UNIA accounts, was more than sufficient grounds for Garvey to default to litigation. He would immediately institute a $100,000 libel suit against the New York World for its malicious misrepresentation. That newspaper would be pursued no matter the law’s delay, but Garvey had a more speedy revenge in mind for his critics who, with the arrival of warm weather, had invaded Lenox Avenue with their soapboxes and stepladders. Marcus may have graduated from the soapbox but, in attitude and outlook, he was never far from the street, and for one night only, he decided to go back and test himself against the enemy. The UNIA president had his followers spread the word all over Harlem that on 14 June, he would challenge the most vociferous of the street orators, William Bridges, to a debate at Speakers’ Corner. Notice was served on his adversary at noon that day. Bridges was given nine hours to gather all his evidence (and wit) and would be allotted half an hour to address the crowd. Sportingly, Bridges mounted the platform at the appointed hour. The Negro World journalists were on hand to record the expected mismatch between a heavyweight and a featherweight: ‘Bridges was visibly nervous all through his rambling talk’ accompanied by hoots, jeers and a battery of heckles, so much so that Garvey intervened to ‘ask the people to give the man a fair chance to speak’. Eventually Bridges shuffled off the platform to give way to the world-famed orator who, amid the wild applause, cheers and laughter, dispatched his critic as a ‘beast in the image of God’ who’d swallowed whole the white man’s propaganda that the Negro was devoid of initiative, had never built any government, constructed roads or steamships, was dependent on the white man and ‘was capable of doing anything only when [harnessed] and put to work like the mule’. The Negro was no beast, Marcus Garvey would have the crowd know, but if there were such a thing then William Bridges was its personification. The thousands roared their approval. Amy Ashwood mounted the platform and asked the crowd for three cheers for the UNIA, and the people cheered wildly for several minutes. A friend of Bridges who ventured to say a few words of support on his behalf was only just saved from injury, the Negro World reported, by the speedy intervention of officers of the association ‘when they saw the crowd was bent on mobbing him’.11

  Evidently Marcus Garvey took an holistic approach to his association with the UNIA. He lived a very public life and everything, including the bloodsport of pegging out an adversary, was done in the service of the UNIA. He had no purchasing power in the mainstream press, he couldn’t go down to the gentlemen’s club and steer a newspaper proprietor away from an unflattering and perhaps unfair portrayal. He couldn’t ring up the editors and say, ‘Listen old man, don’t you think I deserve a right to reply?’ He simply had the Negro World and
the power of word of mouth. And those thousands who turned out on the warm summer night of 14 June witnessed not just the flaying of an inferior adversary but the sight and sound of Garvey at his most masterful as an orator. They also guaranteed that the news of Garvey’s corrective to the lies, cynical gossip and libellous press reports would spread far quicker than through the vendors hawking their hostile papers at news-stands.

  Within another week Garvey had incorporated the Black Star Line with four other directors, including the UNIA’s general secretary, Edgar Grey, purchasing forty shares each at a cost of $5 per share. With his trademark exuberance and impatience for success, Garvey set himself and the organisation the near-impossible task of obtaining its first ship by 31 October, just four months later. He enlisted a small army of sales agents to promote the stock buying, and a brazen but simple propaganda. Every Negro worthy of the name would be impelled to purchase stock in this fabulous enterprise. Failure was not an option, for ‘the Black Star Line would be floated, if necessary, in a sea of blood’.12