by Colin Grant
The US Shipping Board were not so easily swayed by his rhetoric. On the contrary, the adverse publicity effectively killed off the negotiations for the SS Orion between them and the Black Star Line. The corporation continued on its inexorable slide towards insolvency. The UNIA leadership and BSL directors’ board were showered with subpoenas and their unity – already under strain – began to fracture; three others, Thompson, Garcia and Tobias, would eventually be indicted along with their leader. The Negro World’s associate editor, Hubert Harrison, was also interviewed, but he volunteered his information without waiting for a summons to be issued. Harrison had given Garvey his first big break back in 1917, and although he’d been semi-detached from the Negro World for the past few months, he’d kept a dossier of – if not incriminating then at least embarrassing – documents on the inner workings of the movement. Harrison’s diaries show that he’d become disenchanted and progressively embittered with Garvey from as far back as the momentous first convention at Madison Square Garden. His entry for 31 August 1920 ends with his description of that spectacular event as ‘the most colossal joke in Negrodom, engineered and staged by its chief mountebank’. In 1920, the discreet Harrison, who did not contest any of the elected posts, made the quiet note to himself: ‘Delegates are still asking why did I withdraw. Time will tell them: I won’t.’ Eighteen months later, with Garvey bloodied, Harrison judged the time had come to tell all. Not only that, Garvey’s former mentor, who had disguised a long harboured resentment that ‘Garvey appropriated [from me] every feature that was worthwhile in his movement’, was suggesting potential witnesses for the prosecution, and even offering to coach the bureau’s officers on the best line of questioning.12
A trickle of disgruntled stock-holders presented themselves voluntarily to the Bureau of Investigation. Thomas H. Cort was typical of the sensible but idealistic prospective investor who’d been prudent enough to travel from his home in Galveston, Texas to New York; he had sounded out and even interviewed executive officers of the UNIA and BSL; thrilled by what he had heard, Thomas Cort’s caution had disappeared into the ether only to be replaced abruptly by a gambler’s impetuousness based on a hunch. In a flush of enthusiasm, he’d bought $200 in BSL stock. He continued to check up on his investment in the course of a lengthy correspondence with UNIA headquarters, which he kept up for over a year, before reluctantly concluding that his money had gone the same way as his caution. But there might yet be some satisfaction to be gained from at least seeing Garvey prosecuted.13
Tens of thousands of small investors had bought shares totalling close to $1 million in the Black Star Line but there were never more than a handful of Thomas Corts who made formal complaints to the authorities. Investors largely spurned the overtures and inducements of bureau agents who penetrated the black belts in search of anti-Garvey litigants. The stock-holder Edward Orr was an exception. Orr had the temerity to sue Garvey and the Black Star Line for the $105 he had invested but was unlikely ever to see again. Finding in favour of the plaintiff, the Socialist judge, Jacob Panken, painted an unflattering portrait of the defendant: ‘It seems to me that you have been preying on the gullibility of your own people, having kept no proper accounts of the money received for investment, being an organisation of high finance in which the officers received outrageously high salaries … You should have taken the $600,000 and built a hospital for colored people in this city instead of purchasing a few old boats. There is a form of paranoia which manifests itself in believing oneself to be a great man.’14
Panken’s advice, that the ‘“dupes” who have contributed to [the Black Star Line]’ seek recompense and apply to the courts for the appointment of a receiver, went unheeded. Astonishingly, there was no ‘run’ on the organisation. On the contrary, Marcus Garvey’s personal stock held up remarkably well despite the judgment against him. The heads of the rival NAACP were perplexed. ‘Among the poor and exploited,’ wrote Mary White Ovington, with more of a hint of envy than animosity, ‘even among those whose money he misappropriated, he is defended with an ardour that abashes the critic.’
There was no pandemonium at the venues where Garvey subsequently spoke; no clamouring for a return of funds. There was instead an extraordinary willingness, amongst his followers, to close ranks and rally round their persecuted leader; an acceptance of his assurances that their money would be returned eventually and of his assertion that this arrest was ‘but a concoction decided upon by the unseen forces operating … to find some criminal excuse by which the promoter of the greatest movement among Negroes could be held up to world scorn and ridicule’. Garvey mistook those unseen forces for his African-American rivals. In none of his writing at this time does Garvey seem to conceive the degree to which the campaign against him was actually being engineered by the state – or perhaps he chose not to. It was abundantly clear to others. The Communist, Robert Minor, questioned the solicitude of the authorities acting on behalf of the shareholders. As Minor observed, investigators found it enormously difficult to break down African-American cynicism over the motives of a government which had not made a priority of black welfare in the past; he doubted whether the ‘lickspittles of Capitalism’, the corrupt beneficiaries of the Teapot Dome scandal, would ‘have any objection to fleecing the Negro masses’.15
Despite the talk of his preparedness for martyrdom, Marcus Garvey underestimated the seriousness of the charge against him and the determination of Hoover and the Bureau of Investigation to secure a conviction. Hoover worried that Garvey might yet wriggle out of the prosecution. His agents informed him that Garvey’s lawyer was confident that, for a $20,000 bribe parcelled out amongst certain influential individuals, the case against his client would be dropped. Agent 800 assured his bosses, though, that ‘Garvey would not come across with the money’. Much to his lawyer’s frustration, Garvey would wake up to the threat only after his first formal interview with the federal authorities and once he gleaned the extent of the evidence in their possession, but by then it would be too late.16 Judging from the amount of time he devoted to talking about the prosecution, Garvey was undoubtedly concerned about it, but he had developed, especially in the last few years, an extraordinary capacity to compartmentalise his problems, to render them as if they were happening to some third party. Outwardly, after the initial shock of his arrest, Garvey appeared to recapture his natural exuberance. Captain Jones, the BOI informant, was amazed by his bullishness, reporting three months later that ‘Garvey seems to have lost sight of the fact that he has ever been indicted or that he will ever be tried. To talk with him you would think that he has never been in court.’17 Once more Garvey was brimming over with energy, rejecting the counsel of advisers who called for a period of retrenchment and making plans, excitedly, for a tour of the southern and western states. After all, Marcus Garvey was never one for brooding in his tent. He was much more inclined to strap on his armour, to go out and engage the enemy in battle. But it would also be a tour of distraction and diversion. For though he was thrilled by the chance to return to the campaign trail, it was not a propitious time to be striking out for the territory.
The news from the South was sobering. The Ku Klux Klan was ascendant; proselytising field workers of both the NAACP and UNIA, going into small towns with delusional doctrines of black equality, were an obvious target. The look and sound of these activists – bowtied and suited with Northern twangs and Caribbean lilts – made them conspicuous, no matter how cautious or vigilant they were. At the beginning of May 1922, the UNIA commissioner Robert Moseley canvassed in and around Jacksonville, Texas, moving among the black sharecroppers of the Mountains and the Church Hill Old Farm region; he was invited to speak at local Baptist churches and found the congregations sympathetic. Moseley travelled between the towns buoyed by the warmth of their hospitality and his success in marketing the organisation, but when he finally arrived at Jacksonville, he was pulled off the train and locked in jail on a charge of vagrancy. UNIA HQ wired funds to him. He paid the fine and
headed back towards the station. But, as he later wrote to Garvey, starting down the street Moseley was abducted by men in two cars and driven to woods on the edge of town. There ‘they made me let down my trousers and threw me to the ground. One held my head, one on each arm and leg.’ The ringleader proceeded to horsewhip him. Once his tormentors had finished with their fun, a terrified, bruised and bleeding Moseley fled the town on the very next train.18 Marcus Garvey was due in the South the following month and would not be dissuaded by Moseley’s experi ence. Presently, he and a party of officers were rounding up support in the West.
Garvey planned a show of strength in Los Angeles. He sent word in advance to the local divisions of details for a parade and the line of march to which the faithful were encouraged to join. Blaring trumpets from the UNIA announced the start of the parade of several thousands which included colour bearers, a float with the Goddess of Liberty and Feminine Deity of Africa, the local legions, officers and Black Cross Nurses of the Los Angeles and other divisions, and the honourable Marcus Garvey accompanied by his private secretary, Amy Jacques. Los Angeles was the most important staging post in Garvey’s campaign throughout California to win back the defectors and solicit new members. From Oakland he sent a telegram back to Harlem’s Liberty Hall, in the manner of a victorious general, assuring the membership that the mission was completed:
Entire State recaptured for organisation; defeated enemies in Oakland and held enthusiastic meeting by enjoining Chief of Police, who was under influence of enemies of movement. Great triumph; splendid loyalty to cause from Frisco to Los Angeles. Entire North and Southwest rallying to colors of organisation.19
The account of Garvey’s conversion of enemies, as his roadshow rolled on through California, was supported by military intelligence officers. Commander J. J. Hannigan reported the strange spectacle of detectives, who had infiltrated the audience at Oakland and who had readied themselves for the possible arrest of Garvey should he inflame racial hatred, only to find that they ‘encored him along with the others when he commenced to speak’. Hannigan’s memo to his superiors included the confounding assessment that in the San Francisco Chapter alone ‘400 [new] members have come into the organisation since Garvey’s visit … the negroes seem to have a childish faith in him’. Many were undoubtedly bewitched by the leader’s ability to chastise and inspire at the same time. Wherever Garvey ventured he secured the largest venue possible, and tirelessly recycled the same brutally frank message. It was dark and foreboding, and even, in parts, apocalyptic. ‘Negroes [were] the most careless people in the world,’ and African-Americans were mistaken in their belief that the white man, having built his railroads, his opera houses and other building blocks of civilisation, was going to yield that civilisation to the black man. But that bleak view was coupled to the promise of salvation that only a prophet with an almighty self-belief could uphold: ‘If the Negro wants the comforts of modern civilisation … to ride in Pullman cars … and occupy orchestra seats,’ Garvey advised that he should give up any expectation of being invited to the seat of government in the USA, and ‘go out and create for himself a United States of Africa’. From California, he would take his message to the South: ‘I may pass this way but once,’ he told audiences in Oakland, ‘if I come not again, remember that Marcus Garvey was here and in his humble way tried to convey to you the sign of the times.’20
His prophecy would be conveyed by the Negro World to the larger black world. Black people throughout the diaspora would be invited to join their African-American brethren and take shelter under Garvey’s African vine and fig tree. Although he was impatient for his ideas to be adopted, Garvey also understood that for him to succeed black people would have to break with the past and recast their minds – a process that might take generations before it came to pass. He understood the basic psychology of the people: he was one of them and acknowledged the distance he had travelled in his own not so distant past, to divest himself of his former colonial self, a time when he had sung the British national anthem ‘to the King with more fervour, more lustre than anyone else’.21 He expected to be persecuted: it was the lot of any leader of a downtrodden people. What Marcus Garvey was now demanding for Great Britain’s black citizens of Empire, Mahatma Gandhi was demanding for its Indian subjects. On 10 March, Gandhi was arrested and put on trial for a series of articles in Young India which were considered seditious. Gandhi pleaded guilty to preaching disaffection towards the [British] government established by law in India, and was subsequently sentenced to six years’ imprisonment. The Negro World followed closely the course of his trial, and Garvey aligned himself to the Mahatma, ‘one of the noblest characters of the day’, whose sacrifice, like the Irish Republican martyr, Terence MacSwiney, would ‘ultimately pave the way for a free and independent India’. Africa should be free, just like India and Ireland. In order to concretise the idea of an African homeland, Garvey was prepared to act expediently and embrace even the most unlikely of allies. One such was the southern Senator, T. S. McCallum who, the month before, had proposed a bill for the United States ‘to secure sufficient territory in Africa to make a suitable and final home for the American Negro’. The Mississippi senator’s proposal, and archaic flapdoodle of ideas to ‘colonise Africa with the surplus American colored population’ struck Garvey as ‘not far-fetched … but reasonable and feasible’22 – a view strengthened when the resolution was passed by the state senate by a majority of almost three to one, and not diminished by its final rejection in the House of Representatives.
Garvey was gradually reversing the setbacks to the organisation. Even the disappointing announcement that sales in the Black Star Line had inevitably ceased, he advanced as a painful but a necessary learning stage. The UNIA leader felt strongly that the tide was slowly but inexorably turning in his favour once more, and that his movement was at the epicentre of a black zeitgeist. By 1922, Egypt had achieved a semblance of home rule; the American administration had approved the $5 million loan to Liberia; and French colonial rule was under attack, if only in the shape of a novel, Batouala, whose frank portrayal of the brutality of life in its African territories – earning René Maran the prestigious Prix Goncourt – shattered the much-trumpeted illusion of France’s benign administration. All were supporting evidence, convincing Garvey of the rightness of his instinct.23
The UNIA convention was now instituted as an annual event. Following his arrest, Garvey and his officers recognised its magnified importance. Any significant dip in the numbers attending would reflect the distemper of the people and a cooling of enthusiasm for the UNIA programme. Having championed the convention as an all-black event in previous years, Garvey now opened it up to include white participation. European ministries of the colonies were invited to send representatives, along with sympathetic senators. From his old contacts’ book a number of establishment figures, such as Nicholas Butler, who had been successfully courted in the early days of the fledgling organisation, were also invited. The honours system was to be rolled out again during the convention. At the top of the list was William Pickens, the writer and aspiring executive of the NAACP who’d written with understanding and sensitivity about the UNIA. Garvey intended, with conference hall’s blessing, a reshuffling of his cabinet. He first wrote to Pickens, reminding him that ‘there is always a place for you … not at the foot, but at the very head [of the organisation]’, and followed up with an offer of a cabinet position, notifying Pickens that his name had been put forward for one of the highest honours.24
Several months had passed since Garvey’s arrest. The trial date had been postponed on at least three occasions, leading Garvey and his advisers to conclude that the case against him was weak since the government had failed subsequently ‘to find any incriminating evidence’. But if those signs were correct, that in the near future he would ultimately escape the trap laid by the government, it would prove only a temporary reprieve. On 25 June 1922, he set himself a far bigger trap. From Atlanta – the centre of the
revived Ku Klux Klan – Marcus Garvey sent what might have appeared on the surface to be yet another boosting, self-congratulatory telegram to Liberty Hall but which, on careful reading, contained news of an extraordinary meeting:
Have this day interviewed Edward Young Clarke, acting Imperial Wizard Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. In conference of two hours he outlined the aims and objects of the Klan. He denied any hostility towards the Negro Improvement Association. He believes America to be a white man’s country, and also states that the Negro should have a country of his own in Africa. He denied that his organisation, since its reorganisation, ever officially attacked the Negro. He has been invited to speak at forthcoming convention to further assure the race of the stand of the Klan.25
Marcus Garvey believed that he had pulled off the most amazing coup. To have entered voluntarily the headquarters of an organisation that was morally, and at times directly, responsible for the most repulsive and heinous crimes against black people in America, required enormous personal courage. It also spoke of the kind of stupefying certainty that is the preserve of few; and of a colossal arrogance in disregarding how his actions might be perceived – even by well-wishers. In the immediate aftermath of the meeting, Garvey declined to broadcast any details, but his spokesman was quoted as divulging the bewildering news that ‘Garvey intends to reorganise the Black Star Line shortly, and it is possible [the Imperial Wizard] Clarke may buy stock in the new company’.26