Negro with a Hat

by Colin Grant

  Garvey wasn’t essentially voicing opinions markedly different from those he had held before. At Liberty Hall, in March, he’d held up a press report from Missouri and simply read out the disturbing bulletin: ‘A carefully organised campaign of intimidation has driven more than 2,000 Negro workers from their jobs … Negro leaders charged that threats were sent by white labourers fearful of losing their jobs … Ambrose Young a Negro appealed for protection. Young said … “I found [a] note on my front porch. It said: ‘Nigger, if you can’t read, run. If you can’t run, you’re as good as dead.’”’62 In that same Liberty Hall meeting, Garvey had concluded, ‘What has happened in this Missouri town is going to happen all over America.’

  Marcus Garvey’s position hadn’t changed in October. His new idea was simply an old idea that he was advocating more forcibly than ever before: that black people pack up their bags and go. He even devised a letter in the form of a questionnaire that was sent to the Attorney-General and a number of senators. The letter canvassed the opinions of senators as to whether they might assist in his call for the large-scale repatriation of black people to Africa. Garvey’s enemies were bemused by this disturbing twist in his thinking, namely the open solicitation of white support beyond the Ku Klux Klan. Some settled on cynical explanations. The editor of the Pittsburgh Courier viewed the letter as Garvey pitching for a pardon and, worse still, nakedly ‘selling his whole race for a pardon’.

  Paradoxically, Garvey had emerged from prison advocating much more political engagement. In a speech the week after his release he implored the audience to ‘get registered wherever you are. If you are citizens, for your own convenience and for the convenience of carrying on [our] programme you must get naturalised … because when the final time comes, we are not going to beg this question, we are going to force it.’63

  Up until now Garvey had largely eschewed conventional politics in America. He’d always maintained that the UNIA should remain a social organisation. The sudden volte-face had an immediate effect on the political landscape – especially as far as the NAACP was concerned. Samuel Redding grew up in a NAACP stronghold and recalled how ‘the coming of the Garveyites shattered the defensive bulwark around the protective community of Negroes’. In the district, with a large black population, black folk had enjoyed political control: ‘The same men had been returned to office again and again. What they did there seemed not nearly as important as just being there. They had enormous prestige … and they had not had to fight to keep it.’ But in the elections that year Garvey sent out agents from Harlem, and the local UNIA divisions put up their own candidates who split the black vote. The campaign, wrote Redding, ‘smelled of pitch and brimstone and led to street brawls … and while Negroes fought one another, whites won the offices’.64

  William Du Bois watched the resurgence of Marcus Garvey and this disturbing turn of events with dismay. The spring of the following year brought even more alarming news. Du Bois and his colleagues were stunned when, after the fiasco of the Black Star Line, Garvey announced in the pages of the Negro World that he had incorporated a new steamship line, to be called the Black Cross Navigation and Trading Company. ‘No stock will be sold in this new company, but all interest will be held by the UNIA and its members,’ and in a tone of high, seriousness but quiet triumph, Garvey continued, ‘It is expected that this ship will sail on September 1, carrying the first organised group of colonists to Liberia.’ Du Bois was dumbfounded. Hadn’t he already dispatched his enemy? Hadn’t Garvey been dragged through the courts and unmasked as nothing but a common criminal? Du Bois was amazed, as Amy Jacques put it, that after the successes of the ‘Garvey Must Go’ campaigners revealing to the nation the menace of the man, ‘Garvey hadn’t gone yet’.65

  Du Bois could no longer abide the casual vituperation heaped on the race, and on its guardian and champion, W. E. B. Du Bois. In praising the honesty of the Ku Klux Klan, Garvey was ‘not attacking white prejudice, [but] … grovelling before it and applauding it’, argued the editor of the Crisis. And now he mustered all his energies for one last exterminating essay that would answer one simple question: Is Marcus Garvey ‘a lunatic or a traitor’? By the article’s close it was clear that Du Bois considered him both: ‘The American Negro has endured this wretch too long with fine restraint and every effort of cooperation and understanding. But the end has come. Every man who apologises for or defends Marcus Garvey from this day forth writes himself down as unworthy of the countenance of decent Americans. As for Garvey himself, this open ally of the Ku Klux Klan should be locked up or sent home.’66

  Du Bois was cursing into the wind as Marcus Garvey had already begun to roll out his plan for the re-colonisation of Africa. It had been three years since the first UNIA mission to Liberia. Three officials, the Princeton-educated Sir Robert Poston, Milton Van Lowe (the organisation’s new attorney) and the indefatigable Lady Henrietta Vinton Davis, were chosen now as delegates to go to Monrovia. They were to finalise arrangements for the settlement of colonists on the land in Grand Bassa County that had been provisionally set aside for them. The delegates set sail for Liberia on board a Cunard vessel, the SS Britannia, on 11 December, full of excitement and expectation for their symbolic sojourn in the motherland and relishing the weight of their historic mission. They would arrive a month later, having stopped off first at Lisbon in Portugal, and would just miss out on all of the festivities surrounding the inauguration of President King of Liberia – not that they had been invited. It was with some nervousness that Garvey noted the announcement, also in December, that the US President, Calvin Coolidge, had appointed Du Bois as special minister plenipotentiary to represent him at the inauguration (a privileged appointment he’d lobbied hard for by calling in a favour from the official William H. Lewis). Du Bois would arrive ahead of the UNIA envoys, and the prospect of him interfering with their plans worried Garvey sufficiently to seek advice from John E. Bruce, who had strong contacts in Africa. Bruce thought of sending a cable to his old Ghanaian friend, J. E. Casely Hayford. He wrote to Garvey on 2 January:

  Dear Chief,

  If you think it worthwhile (I think it is), you may cable in my name the following to Hayford at once: Dubois – Crisis – on trip to Africa, bent on mischief, due to failure of his ‘Pan African Congress’. Financed by Joel Spingarn, a Jew, and other interest (white) inimical to African independence. Watch him … Bruce Grit.

  Garvey had entrusted his envoys with a letter to be hand delivered to the President of Liberia, which reminded him of the bitter internecine struggles, of the ‘tremendous fight of the lighter element against the darker ones’, namely the conflict between Garvey’s camp and Du Bois whom Garvey imagined even now was strutting around the Liberian court like a pompous proconsul. Marcus Garvey wasn’t fully aware of his rival’s close relationship with leading members of Liberia’s hierarchy; and he hadn’t factored into the equation the NAACP leader’s own detailed plans for how Liberia, through American aid and investment, might be freed from the quagmire of near bankruptcy. Those plans, detailed to both President King and Secretary of State Hughes, left no room for the spurious and fanciful option proposed by the UNIA. Nonetheless Garvey’s envoys were treated cordially in Monrovia, and their plan for a first wave of 3,000 immigrants was put to the president when they met him on 11 February. President King gave assurances for three colonies at the Cavalla, Sino and Grand Bassa, and when Lady Henrietta spoke with admiration about the geographical layout of Cape Mount that had so impressed the visitors when the Britannia came into port, the president replied, with careless munificence, ‘You can have land there also.’ Robert Poston was so elated by the day’s negotiations that he sent a telegram back to Garvey with one word: ‘SUCCESS.’ Robert Poston was not party to the press release composed by the commercial intelligence bureau which revealed that President King would only partake in an unofficial interview. The memo stipulated that ‘any proposal suggesting location for 3,000 immigrants to Liberia must ultimately be denied’.67 Meanwhile
the envoys bashed out plans with the advisory board, including that preference should be given to emigrants from the USA under the age of fifty with strong physiques and determination to become citizens of Liberia; that all emigrants needed to possess at least $1,500 in cash, and that emigrants would not be sent out in groups of more than 500 at a time. Although Garvey worried over Du Bois’s influence, President King, the internal memo pointed out, was ‘keeping his mind on the obligation of Liberia to the great powers, and as much to the maintenance of the independence of the republic’. Liberia bordered French and British colonies and was keen not to provoke them. Indeed the British legation in Monrovia, monitoring the UNIA, was especially anxious about rumours of a plan to establish at least two settlements along the Liberia–Sierra Leone border which might lead ‘native Africans to insurrection against the rule of the white man’.68 The resurgence of Marcus Garvey was sufficient for a nervous High Commissioner of the Union of South Africa to remind British Passport Control that Marcus Garvey and his officers were to be denied entry to South Africa.69

  Garvey’s emigration scheme also sparked editorial debates in other parts of British Colonial Africa. Ahinnana (thought to be the pseudonym of J. E. Casely Hayford), writing in the Gold Coast Leader, asked cogently, ‘At the present moment throughout the African colonies and settlements European enterprise of every description is encouraged and welcomed. Why, in the name of reason, should any obstacles be placed in the way of the enterprise of the African abroad?’70 The African abroad should remain there according to the Nigerian Pioneer. Its editor placed his patriotism firmly in the eye of the reading public when it declared, ‘“Africa for the Africans” like other beautiful and hysterical political cries will end in smoke. West Africa has inseparably and indissolubly woven her destiny with that of Empire.’

  The ardour of Garvey’s emissaries would not be dampened, even with the tragic death of Robert Poston at sea, when the party was travelling back to New York. Poston had contracted a fever and eventually died from lobar pneumonia on board the SS President Grant on 16 March 1924. The chief steward, J. Milton Batson, later reported that he had met Poston shortly before his death when he was ‘in the pink of health but obviously broken from despondency as a result of the failure of the [UNIA] delegation’. Robert Lincoln Poston had stuck by Garvey during the fallout from the purges of 1922. He had remained conspicuously loyal, cheering Garvey on from platforms up and down the country. Poston had stood at Garvey’s shoulder offering the barely audible ‘all right’ and ‘yessum’ and ‘tell ’em Marcus’; Poston, with a pronounced lisp, had sung his praise of Garvey from his own unique ‘amen corner’, encouragement that had raised the UNIA leader’s power of oratory to ever greater heights. Now Poston was dead and would not, and could not, be replaced. Poston would be eulogised and posthumously appointed ‘prince of Africa’ but the future prince had told Batson that he was returning to the USA with bad news about the UNIA’s prospects in Liberia. News that he was not sure how President-General Garvey would take because ‘no one could tell what Marcus Garvey would do, as no one knew what Marcus Garvey would do until he did it’.71

  Robert Poston’s death meant Marcus Garvey was spared his emissary’s message; Poston’s fellow delegate to Liberia, Henrietta Davis, had a far more optimistic tale to tell. Davis spoke triumphantly to a hushed audience at Liberty Hall on 19 April, of the magical moment when she first touched Liberian soil, and Scott’s ‘Lay of the Last Minstrel’ shot into her mind: ‘Breathes there a man with soul so dead, who never himself hath said, “This is my own, my native land.”’ President King, she recalled, had spoken with ‘a zeal, enthusiasm and appreciation that could not have been excelled by the Hon. Marcus Garvey himself’. The proposed settlements would be located in the most fertile lands, and the first step should be to ‘send material [and] artisans to lay out the land and build homes.’72 Davis counted herself worldly enough to be able to distinguish between diplomacy and duplicity, and Garvey took her at her word. By that stage, of course, he was hardly prepared to countenance advice that differed from his views. After all, wasn’t this the same President King who, when back in 1920 it was intimated that Garvey wanted to set up headquarters in Liberia, is reported to have said, ‘Well, let them come!’73

  A team of UNIA technicians – including a carpenter, builder and mechanical engineer – was hurriedly assembled to set sail for Liberia. Liberty Hall was filled to capacity on 4 June, to bid farewell to the men who would ‘form the vanguard of African Redemption’. The mining engineer Wallace Strange, whom Garvey, with his usual measure of moderation, introduced as ‘our Colonel Goethals’ (the principal engineer of the Panama Canal) mesmerised the audience with his calm and earnest speech. Wallace Strange believed his whole life had been ‘a special preparation for this moment’. His heart was filled with trepidation, with the responsibility of finding the technical solution to Marcus Garvey’s fantastic dream. He, like everyone in the audience, belonged to Africa and he assured them, ‘I am going to give all that is within me to start its development.’ As he finished, the admiring crowd pressed close for a farewell handshake.

  Two weeks later Garvey took out an advert in the New York World announcing plans to raise a fund of $2 million ‘to bear the cost of constructing and establishing the first colony’ to which more than seventy people had so far contributed just over $4,000. But the surge of optimism did not last.

  The New York World, along with every other major paper in New York, as well as the major black papers, was the recipient of a strange press release from the Liberian Consul General in the US on 10 July. When that press release was published in the following days, it effectively put an end once and for all to Marcus Garvey’s settlement schemes in Africa. The most damaging aspects of the release left no room for a mollifying reinterpretation: ‘No person or persons leaving the US under the auspices of the Garvey movement in the US will be allowed to land in the republic of Liberia. All Liberian Consuls in the US are instructed and directed not to visa the passports of any persons leaving the US for Liberia under the direction of the movement.’

  The contingent of UNIA engineers and planners, including Wallace Strange, were still on the high seas when the news came through. As soon as they arrived at Monrovia, they were immediately arrested and summarily deported. The thousands of dollars of UNIA equipment was impounded and later auctioned off to pay for the cost of storage.

  Even by the standards of the troubles that had landed on Marcus Garvey’s desk over the last few years, the Liberian rejection and the means of its presentation were shocking. Garvey was still reeling three weeks later. It called for a response but the news had induced a catatonia of disbelief. For once, Garvey faltered. The fourth international convention was about to open, and overnight the main plank of his programme had disappeared. His eventual letter to President King was sad and meek and clung desperately to the faintest possibility that the statement ‘attributed’ to King might yet be false; might prove to be a terrible mistake. For Garvey could not believe that the president ‘could be responsible for doing anything that would tend to dampen the spirit of love’ that the UNIA held for Liberia.

  It was clear to him, though, once the smoke and fug of confusion had cleared, who was to blame. Not the good people of Liberia, nor their oleaginous head of state. His adversary, W. E. B. Du Bois, had bent the ear of President King at his inauguration and prevailed upon him to oppose the UNIA. Du Bois threw his hands up in all innocence at the suggestion. Though his protest that he had ‘nothing at all to do with the relations between Garvey and the Republic of Liberia’ was not entirely convincing,74 Garvey had undoubtedly under estimated Liberian nervousness about how their association with his movement might be perceived by their potentially hostile neighbours. And then there was the Firestone Rubber Company. Marcus Garvey’s envoys had been unaware of a bigger player in the field, courting the Liberian authorities for a favourable deal on land. The Firestone Rubber Plantation Company had its sights on 1 million a
cres of Liberian land, which they would eventually secure at 5 to 10 cents per acre.

  There are divergent accounts surrounding the issues but it is suggested from communiqués between President King and his cabinet that, from the outset, the Liberian authorities had little intention of granting concessions to the UNIA. The two unflattering reports on Liberia (the first commissioned by Garvey from Elie Garcia and the second, unsolicited, account from the disenchanted Crichlow) that were eventually leaked to the Liberians certainly damaged the UNIA’s chances. But circumstances had further conspired against the UNIA with the marginalisation of the UNIA potentate, Mayor Gabriel Johnson, once he’d accepted a highly attractive and lucrative government position in the Spanish-run, West African colony on the island of Fernando Po.

  The trouble for Garvey was that the idea of an African escape route had moved from being a Utopian ideal, to a desperately sought practical alternative to life in the USA. There could be no turning back from this African place in the sun, and such was the degree of Garvey’s self-delusion that for much of 1924 the Negro World was still advertising one-way fares to West Africa.

  Despite years of negotiation, despite all the financial inducements and pilot projects, the Liberian deal was dead in the water. Back in the USA, Garvey’s expensive lawyers would not be drawn on the likely outcome of the appeal against his conviction, and now his emergency exit doors to Liberia were locked and chained from the outside.

  16

  INTO THE FURNACE

  Stand with us in our struggles for

  The triumph of the right,