Negro with a Hat

by Colin Grant

  On 3 December 1927, a snappily dressed Marcus Garvey, wearing a light brown checked suit and carrying his trademark silver-headed malacca cane, stepped out of the police car and into the rain. Several of his followers volunteered umbrellas and they huddled around him as he crossed the wharf and made his way up the gangway to the SS Saramacca. Garvey’s name had travelled before him. Up to a thousand supporters assembled at the dock in the New Orleans drizzle to pay their respects to their leader before his forced departure into exile. ‘A lot of people gathered very early so to make sure that they caught a glimpse,’ remembered Virginia Collins. ‘The people could stand on the levee close to the river … they were for miles and miles, a lot of people.’ Their long coats and black umbrellas gave them the air of mourners, and from the deck, just before the ship pulled away, Garvey tried to rally the crowd, reminding them of how far the movement had come, and that there was still cause for celebration. Reporters from the New York Times were amongst scores of journalists there to record his farewell speech: ‘I leave America fully as happy as when I came, in that my relationship with the Negro people was most pleasant and inspiring,’ Garvey told the crowd. ‘My entire life will be devoted to the support of the cause. I sincerely believe that it is only by nationalising the Negro and awakening him to the possibilities of himself that his universal problem can be solved.’30 The UNIA president waved a handkerchief as the Saramacca started to steam down the Mississippi. ‘The ship was high, way up,’ remembered Collins. ‘Those that were close enough could see him but people in general, they was just waving, waving, waving and crying and waving … because it was just like you was losing your own, or losing yourself … What are we gonna do now? That was uppermost in people’s thoughts.’ The straightforward answer was that Garvey’s followers in America would have to continue without him. The Saramacca was charged with returning their leader to Jamaica. His grand ambition, in the USA at least, had come to an inglorious end.

  17

  SILENCE MR GARVEY

  Gwine home, won’t be long

  Gwine home, sure’s you born …

  I’m gwine home, I can’t wait

  ’Cause I’ve got the West Indies Blues

  ‘West Indies Blues’, Dowell and Williams, 1923

  FROM New Orleans to Kingston: from a funereal Mardi Gras to ecstatic Carnival. In the two-week passage Garvey’s mood brightened as the Saramacca steamed towards his homeland. The Jamaican celebrants would be kept waiting a little while longer, for en route, the ship stopped at Cristobal in Panama. Down at the pier, supporters – their numbers swollen by West Indian dockworkers – gathered ‘eager to see the martyr’, reported the Star and Herald, and all the men lifted their hats simultaneously, ‘in respect [of] the immortal hero’. The nervous authorities, though, would not allow Garvey to disembark. A committee of six UNIA officials were permitted aboard; they held a two-hour conference with their leader and presented him with a bouquet of flowers and a purse filled with cash donations, collected from its 2,000 members. The funds would be added to the $10,000 American UNIA members had bequeathed to their leader to help him settle in Jamaica. The next day Garvey was transferred to the SS Santa Marta, and set sail on his final passage to Kingston.1

  ‘From early morning a seething mass crowded the thoroughfares where the procession was likely to pass,’ reported the Daily Gleaner. In fact, so many people turned up outside the UNIA headquarters at Liberty Hall in the Jamaican capital that the authorities, fearing an accident, persuaded Garvey to postpone his address to the faithful until a larger venue could be found to accommodate them the next day. On 10 December 1927, Garvey’s motorcade had spluttered haltingly through the overwhelming mass of well-wishers en route to his reception. ‘No denser crowd,’ the Daily Gleaner reported, ‘has ever been witnessed in Kingston.’ Garvey’s estranged sister Indiana was amongst the dignitaries who greeted him. She brought along her daughter Ruth. Garvey lifted her up and embraced her in front of the crowd. The three-year-old did not understand all that was going on but years later she recalled, ‘I knew that it was something of very great importance because there were thousands and thousands of people shouting, cheering and waving banners.’2 Outside Liberty Hall, Garvey clambered up on to the roof of his car and gave a short electrifying speech, excoriating the American authorities who had maliciously imprisoned him. ‘They dragged me through the streets of Harlem like a common thief,’ he cried, ‘but oh, thou God of Ethiopia, who when the Assyrians spat upon thee and Jews jeered thee, remember, it was Simon of Cyrenia, a Negro who helped you to bear your cross. Can you forget the Negro now?’ Vivian Durham, who was in the crowds, remembered that at the end of his powerful oration, tears rolled down the cheeks of even the men; the crowd’s applause crested and the brass band broke into a rousing rendition of the UNIA anthem. This, then, was no chastened prodigal son but a returning hero, still nominally the head Negro of the World.

  But not everyone had been looking forward to his return. In an earlier editorial, entitled ‘Trouble Coming’, the Gleaner asserted that ‘there can be no doubt that he [Garvey] will prove a dangerous element in Jamaica’, and anticipated that on his release ‘we may have a problem on our hands unless we act with a firmness and determination’.3 The ‘we’ referred to the middle and upper classes for although the Gleaner was distributed and read widely throughout the island, contemporary critics argued that it primarily ‘served the interests of the planting and business community’.

  At the Ward Theatre, the nation’s largest venue, Garvey formally addressed Jamaicans and set out his plans for his ‘sojourn’ on the island, during which he promised to ‘do absolutely nothing to create any cleavage between the people living here’. But as a patriot and descendant of slaves he could not avert his gaze from ‘the naked … dirty and diseased condition’ of the people, and while they die in poverty ‘let the Chinaman and Syrian sap the wealth of the country’. Garvey was echoing the populist sentiments of politicians from preceding decades who agonised over coolie immigration. The latest immigrants, the Chinese and Syrians, were easy targets. Garvey was too shrewd not to realise that the major subjugation of the black population came not from this tiny group but the long-established brown elite, but he was also savvy enough not to make that link – at least at this early stage, forty-eight hours after his return.4

  It would be misleading to suggest that the supporters who helped Garvey to realise nearly £100 in collections in his first week back were only drawn from the working classes. His admirers, noted Governor Jelf, included middle-class men of ‘undoubted ability’ such as the former Mayor of Kingston, H. A. L. Simpson, but whom, alas, betrayed signs of ‘few scruples’.5

  The authorities immediately revealed their approach and interest in Garvey by assigning one of the most able detectives in the constabulary, Charles Patterson, to shadow the UNIA leader wherever he went on the island. Patterson was a careful and fastidious man with a curious, almost writerly eye for detail. Among the points of interest Patterson highlighted in his first report was that at the end of his speech, Garvey ‘demonstrated how the people should shake hands in an orderly manner when greeting anyone in a large audience’. President-General Garvey had evidently not abandoned the core idea inherent in the title, Universal ‘Negro Improvement’ Association – a philosophy of personal development for black people. Garvey wandered down from the balcony, reported Patterson, to the ground floor of Liberty Hall ‘and every person in the premises went and shook his hand’.6

  It was apparent that Marcus Garvey had returned with a grandeur and majesty never before witnessed on the island. The colourful diversion would be temporary. President-General Garvey had no intention of establishing a permanent base on the island. The clue was to be found in his use of the word ‘sojourn’. Once the glitter and fanfare of his homecoming ended and he reflected on his expulsion from America, having been forced to give up a dazzling international stage, Garvey anticipated that he would not be able to settle for the village hall. The i
sland’s Governor, A. S. Jelf, also tried to second-guess Garvey’s next move. Writing to Sir Vernon Kell, the head of the British Security Service, Jelf observed that ‘an island the size of Jamaica affords little scope for a man of his magnificent ideas’.7 Garvey would have to make do with Jamaica in the short term.

  In their haste to banish him from their shores, the US authorities had allowed Marcus Garvey no time to settle his professional or personal affairs. His wife had remained behind to organise the removals. Garvey had amassed a library of 18,000 books and hundreds of precious antiques.8 With only passing reference to the magnitude of the task, Garvey wrote magisterially to his wife, ‘I do not want you to leave even a piece of paper behind for I want all my books.’ Jacques was instructed to include 500 volumes of his Philosophy and Opinions in the shipment as he planned to send a copy to each member of the British parliament.

  That same afternoon, he wrote again in a spin of excitement, eager to start this new phase of his life. He was languishing in Kingston waiting for her arrival but would sail for a tour of Central America by 14 January. ‘If you delay in America, you will have to look after yourself, because I will be gone,’ he added brusquely. ‘Have the packers pack the things and don[’]t attempt to waste time doing that yourself.’ That morning, Garvey had rushed down to the post office and discovered a registered letter from her, complaining about the packing. Jacques had called several firms but, given the delicacy of the antiques and the large number of precious items including a grand piano, only two firms would offer quotes. ‘I could not leave until the furniture was on the freighter’, ‘and the bill of lading handed me by the packers’, Jacques later grumbled, as anything could have happened to ‘Garvey’s things’. One month out of the Atlanta penitentiary, and the old obsessive Garvey, neglectful of domestic life, was reasserting itself. He had no thought ‘or remembrance of the promised vacation together alone’, said Jacques, overtaken with a sense of foreboding, for ‘if the last three strenuous years didn’t warrant it, then what more would?’9

  Garvey did not pause to consider his wife’s needs, but even if he had, then her tetchiness and disappointment would be offset by the exciting news that he had ‘purchased on the 15th a nice little home for my Mopsie on the Lady Musgrave’, costing $1,200. Garvey had set his sights on a reincarnation in Jamaica. The property which he named ‘Somali Court’, was close to the English Governor’s mansion, in an exclusive residential area ‘inhabited primarily by upper-class whites’. President-General Garvey swooned over the scale of the property, which included piazzas, outhouses, a flower garden and more than an acre of land. The black American newspapers described Somali Court as ‘a lovely mansion with liveried servants’ and dubbed it ‘Garvey’s Black House’. But Amy Jacques would eventually find a property bought from a lady ‘whom contractors had deceived in the construction and cost. There was no tile work, and the finish was poor.’10

  Amy Jacques arrived on 26 December, and her resentment over that period had not deserted her when she came to write her memoirs forty years later. ‘When the furniture arrived, he arranged it just where he wanted it.’ Any romantic ideas that she might have harboured, of a reunited couple blissfully setting up home together, were finally dispelled when Jacques realised that she was only allowed ‘to sort and classify the books’. Neither wife nor husband’s humour was much improved by an unwanted, early Christmas present from the Daily Gleaner which alerted Jamaicans to the news that Amy Ashwood planned to ‘sue Marcus Garvey in our courts’, as the first wife still ‘contends she was never divorced’. The paper also maintained that Garvey had no passport; that the authorities were disinclined to issue him with one; and that he was, consequently, a virtual prisoner in Jamaica of the British Government. The allegations were enough to elicit from an unamused Garvey the first threat of litigation (should no retraction be promptly forthcoming) since his return to Jamaica. Though the Gleaner’s defence, that it was merely reproducing a story that had first appeared in the Panama American, was disingenuous, Garvey had been frustrated, and would continue to be so, by a mundane but deadly British Colonial bureaucracy, whose end result, whether official policy or not, was to confine the UNIA leader to his homeland.11

  In Garvey’s conceit, the headquarters of the organisation would be wherever its president-general happened to reside. Now that Liberty Hall in New York was virtually lost, he set about recreating a new Liberty Hall to serve as the cradle of the movement, at 76 King Street in Kingston, Jamaica. At the beginning of January, Detective Patterson noted work had begun remodelling the upper floor of the building which now housed ‘six Royal Type-writing Machines, new fixtures of oak tables, chests of drawers [and a] new set of wicker chairs’.12 Back in Jamaica, Garvey toured the districts, reaching out to the peasants so disparaged by Hubert Harrison as the ‘hoe and cow tail brigade’. But his lectures and speeches at the Ward Theatre and the other large venues on the island were targeted at the petit-bourgeois middle classes, the artisans such as the former teacher and now farmer, Theo McKay (brother of the writer, Claude McKay), and the contractor and builder A. W. Henriques (rumoured to be one of the wealthiest black men in Jamaica) who did not baulk at the few shillings’ admission charge on the door. To give the poor who couldn’t afford the fee a chance to hear him, Garvey would regularly speak for free at Liberty Hall and later at Edelweiss Park. One Sunday morning, the railway worker Isaac Rose put on his best shirt and starched trousers and made a special trip to hear him speak at Edelweiss Park. Everybody was dressed as if they were attending church, and when Garvey appeared, Rose was stupefied. He had been a boyhood friend of Marcus Garvey, and couldn’t believe the transformation. Six uniformed bodyguards made an arch with their swords under which Garvey walked to the stage. He was immaculate, remembered Rose. ‘Garvey wore a black pants and a white sash with three different colours on it across his chest, and a regalia, a robe over him. It yellow. And he had something like a crown on his head. Not even the King of England dressed like him. So knowing him as I know him and never seeing him dressed like that I said, “Me Ass, look Marcus!” … People felt proud of him. Proud!’ But like so many who were touched by Garvey, it was primarily what he had to say with his ‘commanding voice’ that so impressed Rose. ‘He spoke ordin ary, plain talk … but he wasn’t no ordinary man. Anything he told you came to pass … Garvey was a prophet, a man that was sent from God.’13

  In 1927, with the prophet on a leave of absence from America, other messianic figures emerged. During Garvey’s incarceration, the organisation had been fractured and riven with doubt; it had passed through a succession of leaders, each one initially elevated as loyal and upstanding only to be discarded once the extent of their disloyalty was made plain. In E. B. Knox, the present incumbent in New York, Garvey believed he had found a true and honest disciple. In the last few months of his imprisonment, Garvey had turned to the Bible for wisdom and understanding. Whilst reading the letters of Paul to Timothy, the parable of the false imprisonment and persecution of Paul struck Garvey as a template of his own life; it had touched him to the core. On the eve of his deportation from New Orleans, it had been Knox who accompanied Garvey up the gangway, Knox into whose care he had delivered his followers and from whom he’d extracted the promise not to swerve from the course of Garveyism. Just as Paul had urged his disciple Timothy to stay behind and preach the word to the timid followers of Ephesus whilst he went on to Macedonia.

  On 9 January 1928, E. B. Knox, acting in his capacity as the personal representative of the president-general, published a special message to the officers of the UNIA. Taking out a full page advert in the Negro World, Knox announced in bold, screaming headlines that ‘The Parent Body is to Function as Before’.14 That notice, suggesting more than a hint of desperation, could not conceal the cracks that had begun to appear in the organisation, and not just in New York.

  In Florida, the young and mesmerising ‘Princess’ Laura Adorker Kofey, a former member of UNIA, had already lured members away from
the organisation. The thirty-five-year-old preacher aroused the exaltation of poor urban black people, along the way inspiring a cultish devotion that flourished even more so in the absence of the organisation’s president-general. In the spring of 1927, whilst Garvey was still locked up in Atlanta, Kofey had become a sensational field-worker for the movement; in a campaign through the South, excitedly followed each week by the Negro World which kept score of new members, she won over thousands of recruits for the organisation in the black belts of Miami, Tampa and Jacksonville. On 9 July, one correspondent enthused over the Gold Coast Princess who ‘stormed St Petersburg when one thousand Negroes heard her upholding the principles of Africa for the Africans and its founder, Hon. Marcus Garvey’. She’d professed her admiration for Garvey when visiting him in the penitentiary in the autumn. But by October, the Negro World was issuing warnings to the divisions not to entertain ‘Coffey, alias Princess Coffer and Lady Coffe who has been collecting funds from members … under the guise of sending them to Africa, etc. Should she make further appeals, members should have her arrested.’15

  At a time when a flood of Africans, trading on their exoticism, claimed royal heritage, ‘Princess Kofey’s origins were disputed by the UNIA. They suspected she was actually born in Atlanta and was intent on exploiting the name of the movement to fraudulently obtain funds and build up a membership of her own. When Kofey was expelled from the organisation, she took hundreds of the new recruits with her to form the African Universal Church which not only had similar aims to the UNIA, but an identical motto, ‘One God, One Aim, One Destiny’, much to the irritation of local Garveyites. That irritation was said to have boiled over on 8 March, when Kofey opened her Bible to preach to 300 followers at a converted storefront in Miami. Eyewitnesses claimed that after Kofey was introduced by another preacher, he stepped back and gave a sign. Immediately a gunshot rang out from the back of the hall. Maxwell Cook, Kofey’s former UNIA bodyguard, was immediately set upon by the enraged congregation who beat and stamped him to death. Two other Garveyites were later arrested and acquitted of her murder, and national newspapers rushed into print with unfounded allegations, implicating the UNIA leader. ‘Deported “Liberator” is said to Have Sent Agents to Kill Woman Opposing Him’ was actually the headline in the New York Times but it could easily have been any of the major dailies who took the same line and tone in their reports.