Negro with a Hat
Page 61
7 Green, on Isaac Brown’s arrest and conviction, p. 84.
8 See Jacques, ‘The Early Years of Marcus Garvey’, extracted in Clarke, p. 35.
9 Daily Gleaner, 1911: Sydney Olivier at the Universal Races Congress.
10 Du Bois, p. 722; Lewis, pp. 439–442.
11 Lewis, p. 442.
12 Ibid.
13 TNA: PRO CO 554/35/55259. See also Garvey Papers, I, p. 26.
14 The quotation ‘a noxious farce’ is in Duffield, extracted in Niven, p. 154.
15 ATOR, July 1912.
16 TNA: PRO CO 554/35/55259.
17 New Age: ‘White Women and Coloured Men, the Other Side of the Picture’, 21 January, 1909
18 Blunt, quoted in Duffield, extracted in Niven, p. 152.
19 ATOR, July 1912.
20 Ibid.
21 ‘The British West Indies in the Mirror of Civilization’, ATOR, October 1913, printed in Garvey Papers, I, pp. 27–31.
22 ATOR, 14 April 1914.
23 W. B. Yeats’s Evening Circle of poets met regularly at his flat in Bloomsbury.
24 The dates of Garvey’s arrival in England have not been found and scholars differ as to whether he preceded or followed his sister. According to Garvey Papers, I, p. 34, Indiana joined her brother in the summer of 1912. However, according to Rupert Lewis, ‘His only surviving sister, Indiana, had paid his passage to England and she helped him during his stay as she herself lived there.’ Lewis, Marcus Garvey: Anti-Colonial Champion, p. 45.
25 ‘Garvey’s Niece Remembers …’, Flair magazine, 17 August 1987, pp. 12–13.
26 Marcus Garvey to T. A. McCormack, 14 January 1914, printed in Garvey Papers, I, pp. 34–35.
27 Marcus Garvey to Alfred E. Burrowes, printed in Garvey Papers, I, p. 35.
28 The marriage ended in the divorce courts towards the end of January 1902. Kitty’s allegations of brutality against her husband caused a great outpouring of public indignation. The Daily Express wrote: ‘We pity the misguided girl, but we cannot regret the discouragement her case must bring to any others who might feel inclined to go and do likewise.’ And the president of the Divorce Division, Sir Francis Jeune, was not surprised that ‘the instincts of the barbarian husband awoke, and [that] blows, kicks, bites and beatings … were the portion of this white woman who had abandoned her caste and stooped to marry a savage’. Both quoted in Shepherd, p. 176.
29 Journal of the Royal African Society, Vol. 12, No. 8 (July 1913).
30 Garvey Papers, I, p. 39.
31 TNA: PRO CO 351/20; CO 351/21. Quoted in Green, p. 58.
32 The Tourist, 19 June 1914, pp. 61–63. Printed in Garvey Papers, I, pp. 40–43.
33 Garvey Papers, I, p. 5; Garvey, p. 3.
34 Ibid, p. 57.
3. In the Company of Negroes
INTERVIEWS AND CORRESPONDENCE: Carolyn Cooper, Vivian Crawford, Cecil Gutmore, Robert Hill, Bernard Jankee, Rupert Lewis, Wayne Modest, Mariamne Samad. SOURCES: BBC Radio 4, Up You Mighty Race – A Centenary Celebration of Marcus Garvey, 5 August 1987; TNA: PRO, CO 137/705; PUBLICATIONS: Amy Ashwood, Portrait of a Liberator; Edward Wilmot Blyden, Christianity, Islam and the Negro Race; Valentine Cunningham, The Penguin Book of the Spanish Civil War; Daily Chronicle, 26 August 1915; Robert Hill, Garvey Papers; Daily Gleaner, 23 September 1915 and 25 September 1915; Robert Hill and Barbara Bair (eds.), Marcus Garvey: Life and Lessons [hereafter Hill, L&L]; Amy Jacques, The Philosophy and Opinions of Marcus Garvey, Vols. I and II; Herbert G. de Lisser, Jamaica and the Great War; William Pringle Livingstone, Black Jamaica; Richard Smith, Jamaican Volunteers in the First World War: Race, Masculinity and the Development of National Consciousness; Lionel M. Yard, First Amy Tells All
1 Basutoland, formerly a British Crown Colony, gained its independence in 1968 and was renamed the Kingdom of Lesotho.
2 Jacques, II, p. 126. During his life Garvey offered several subtly different accounts of this ‘epiphany’. I have combined the various versions.
3 An abbreviation of Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities (Imperial) League.
4 Christianity, Islam and the Negro Race was published in 1887, the year of Garvey’s birth, and Garvey was so impressed with it that he quoted the book extensively.
5 BBC Radio 4.
6 Letter from Garvey to Booker T. Washington, 8 September 1914, Garvey Papers, I, p. 66.
7 Jacques, II, p. 127.
8 Yard, pp. 9–10.
9 Ibid, p. 21.
10 Westwood High School for girls opened in January 1880. It had its origins in the prejudice prevailing at that time which strongly objected to black or darkly coloured girls being educated with those of fairer complexion. This prejudice was manifested a few years earlier, when a well-established school in Falmouth was broken up because they admitted as pupils the daughters of two native ministers.
11 Jamaica Times, 17 October 1914, quoted in Garvey Papers, I, p. 105.
12 TNA: PRO, CO 137/705, quoted in Garvey Papers, I, p. 78.
13 De Lisser, p. 1, quoted in Smith, p. 33.
14 Booker T. Washington Papers, Vol.2, introduction p. xxviii, University of Illinois Press.
15 Ashwood, p. 64.
16 Garvey Papers, I, p. 37; Ashwood, pp. 19–20.
17 Yard, p. 24.
18 Ashwood, pp. 70–72.
19 Cunningham, Stephen Spender’s ‘War Photograph’, p. 413.
20 Jamaica Times, 17 October 1914, quoted by Smith, p. 71.
21 Daily Chronicle, 26 August 1915, printed in Garvey Papers, I, pp. 132–136.
22 Exchanges of letters between Garvey and Pink rumbled on throughout September and October in the local papers. Daily Gleaner, 23 September 1915 and 25 September 1915.
23 Garvey Papers, I, p. 120.
24 Livingstone, pp. 234, 201.
25 Yard, p. 15.
26 Ashwood, chapter 3.
27 ‘The Tuskegee Machine’ was the name given to Booker T. Washington’s powerful network through which he and his associates exerted a huge influence over black American life. The ‘tools’ of the Tuskegee Machine were the vocational college, the Tuskegee Institute, the numerous black papers which uncritically reported Washington’s good deeds, and his connections with Southern white politicians who promoted his suggested candidates for patronage appointments to government jobs.
28 Booker T. Washington to Garvey, 17 September 1914, printed in Garvey Papers, I, p. 71.
29 Marcus Garvey to Booker T. Washington, 12 April 1915, printed in Garvey Papers, I, p. 116.
30 Marcus Garvey to Emmett J. Scott, 4 February 1916, printed in Garvey Papers, I, p. 173.
31 Marcus Garvey to Robert Moton, 29 February 1916, printed in Garvey Papers, I, pp. 177–183.
32 Ibid.
33 Yard, p. 20.
4. An Ebony Orator in Harlem
INTERVIEWS AND CORRESPONDENCE: Ralph Crowder, Robert Hill. SOURCES: BBC Radio 4, Harlem Speaks; PBS, In the Whirlwind of the Storm; History Matters: Burned into Memory, http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/67. PUBLICATIONS: Jervis Anderson, This Was Harlem; Amy Ashwood, Portrait of a Liberator; Black Man, October 1937; A’Lelia Bundles, On Her Own Ground: The Life and Times of Madam C. J. Walker; Champion, January 1917; Ralph Crowder, John Edward Bruce: Politician, Journalist, and Self-trained Historian of the African Diaspora; Domingo, ‘Tropics in New York’, Survey Graphic, 1925; Harold Evans, They Made America; Amy Jacques, Garvey and Garveyism; James Weldon Johnson, Black Manhattan; Charles Johnson, ‘Black Workers and the City’, Survey Graphic, 1925; David Levering Lewis, When Harlem Was in Vogue; Claude McKay, A Long Way From Home; Claude McKay, Harlem Metropolis; Frank Moss, Story of the Riot (NY: Citizens’ Protective League, 1900); New York News, 28 August 1926; New York Times, Current History magazine, Vol. XVI, No. 2, May 1922; Opportunity: A Journal of Negro Life, December 1926; Survey Graphic, March 1925 (editorial); Irma Watkins-Owen, Blood Relations: Caribbean Immigrants and the Harlem Community, 1900–1930
1 McKay, A Long Way from Home, p.
150.
2 Duke Ellington, quoted in BBC Radio 4’s Harlem Speaks, reflecting on the inspiration for his musical number, ‘Harlem Airshaft’.
3 Moss, pp. 1–2.
4 Ashwood, p. 9.
5 Survey Graphic, March 1925 (editorial).
6 Anderson, pp. 49–56.
7 Johnson, ‘Black Workers and the City’, Survey Graphic, 1925.
8 Domingo, ‘Tropics in New York’, Survey Graphic, 1925.
9 Black Man, October 1937, pp. 8–11, the transcript from a speech delivered at Bethel Church, Halifax (Canada).
10 Lewis, preface, p. xxviii.
11 Jacques, p. 14.
12 Opportunity: A Journal of Negro Life, December 1926. (Opportunity was the official organ of the Urban League.)
13 New York Times, Current History magazine, p. 234.
14 In later life, Garvey set down the history of the UNIA in lesson 20 of his ‘School of African Philosophy.’ Writing of himself in the third person he recalled:
‘[In 1916], the founder sailed for America, and on his arrival there he visited the Tuskegee Institute on an outstanding invitation from the late Dr Booker T. Washington. He met at the Institute the then Principal, Robert Moton and Professor E. J. Scott, the Secretary-Treasurer. He discussed with them the purposes of the Organization which were similar to the present aims and objects in the constitution. He received very little encouragement and left Tuskegee in continuation of a trip throughout the United States.’ – from Hill and Bair, Marcus Garvey, Life and Lessons, pp. 319–320.
15 Madam Walker cultivated connections with black churches. In Pittsburgh, church leaders were persuaded to endorse her with a letter stating: ‘As a hair grower she has no equal … until her advent into this city … we did not believe in such a thing as a hair grower.’ Cited in Bundles, p. 96; See Evans pp. 254–257 for summary of Walker’s spectacular rise.
16 Champion, January 1917, pp. 167–168.
17 History Matters, ‘Burned into Memory’.
18 New York News, 28 August 1926, quoted in Watkins-Owen, p. 94.
19 Anderson, p. 78.
20 Ibid, p. 122.
21 Amy Ashwood to Marcus Garvey, printed in Garvey Papers, I, p. 204.
22 McKay, Harlem Metropolis, p. 135.
23 McKay, A Long Way From Home, p. 9.
24 Bruce, ‘Impressions of Marcus Garvey’, 1922 Bruce papers, B5-14 (#1885), Schomburg centre. Quoted in Crowder, p. 136.
25 James Weldon Johnson, Black Manhattan, p. 253.
26 PBS’s In the Whirlwind of the Storm – Virginia Collins (interviewee).
27 Garvey, ‘The West Indies in the Mirror of Truth’, Champion magazine January 1917, pp. 167–168. Also cited in Garvey Papers, I, p. 199.
5. No Flag but the Stars and Stripes – and Possibly the Union Jack
INTERVIEWS AND CORRESPONDENCE: Robert Hill, Judith Stein. SOURCES: AFRC, RG 163, Selective Service Card of Marcus Garvey, Selective Service Act; DNA, RG 165, File 10218–261/36. PUBLICATIONS: Jervis Anderson, This Was Harlem; John E. Bruce, ‘African American Plea for Organized Resistance to White Men’ (speech at undisclosed location, October, 1889) [John E. Bruce Collection, Folder No. 7, Schomburg Centre, New York]; Ann Charters, Nobody: The Story of Bert Williams; W. E. B. Du Bois, ‘The Black Man in the Great War’, Crisis, June 1919; W. E. B. Du Bois, ‘Close Ranks’, Crisis 16 July 1918; W. E. B. Du Bois, Writings; Scott Ellis, Race, War and Surveillance; Stephen L. Harris, Harlem Hell Fighters; Robert Hill (ed.), Garvey Papers; James Weldon Johnson, Black Manhattan; James Weldon Johnson, ‘Negro Loyalty in the Present Crisis’, New York Age, 29 March 1917; James Weldon Johnson, Writings; Philip Kasinitz, Caribbean New York: Black Immigrants and the Politics of Race; David M. Kennedy, Over Here: The First World War and American Society; Claude McKay, Harlem: Negro Metropolis; New York Age, editorial 8 November 1917; Mary White Ovington, Half a Man; Jeffrey B. Perry, A Hubert Harrison Reader; Emmet J. Scott, Scott’s Official History of the American Negro in the World War; Richard Slotkin, Lost Battalions
1 Johnson, Black Manhattan, p. 232.
2 Du Bois, ‘Close Ranks’, from Crisis, 16 July 1918.
3 Harris, p. 33.
4 Ibid, p. 33. Also reported in New York Age, 1 June 1916.
5 AFRC, RG 163. Selective Service Card of Marcus Garvey, printed in Garvey Papers, I, p. 206. Under the Selective Service Act, drafted by Brigadier General Hugh Johnson, it was the duty of every male citizen of the United States, and every other male person residing in the United States who was between the ages of twenty-one and thirty, to present himself for, and submit to, registration. Garvey was twenty-nine at the time, two months short of his thirtieth birthday.
6 Du Bois, ‘The Black Man in the Great War’, Crisis, June 1919.
7 Perry, p. 20.
8 Garvey Papers, I, p. 311.
9 Anderson, p. 101.
10 Garvey Papers, I, p. 214.
11 Johnson, ‘Negro Loyalty in the Present Crisis’, New York Age, editorial, 8 November 1917.
12 Johnson, Writings, p. 490.
13 Kennedy, p. 281.
14 Ovington, p. 96, quoted in Anderson, p. 26.
15 Bruce, ‘African American Plea for Organized Resistance to White Men’.
16 Revd Charles Martin, ‘The Harlem Negro’, quoted in Anderson, p. 99.
17 Kasinitz, p. 48.
18 McKay, p. 147.
19 Garvey Papers, I, p. 323 – an attachment of a British Military Intelligence report found in DNA, RG 165, File 10218–261/36.
20 Ibid, p. 234 (John E. Bruce to the New Negro).
21 Ellis, p. 80, quoting MIB officer from Ohio about the dangers of black morale and suspect loyalty.
22 Anderson, p. 107. The Espionage Act, passed by Congress in 1917, prescribed a $10,000 fine and twenty years’ imprisonment for interfering with the recruiting of troops or the disclosure of information dealing with national defence. By the end of 1917 nearly a thousand men were imprisoned under the Espionage Act.
23 Johnson, ‘Negro Loyalty in the Present Crisis’, New York Age, 29 March 1917.
24 Charters, p. 184, quoted in Harris, pp. 67–68.
25 Harris, pp. 101–102.
26 Slotkin, p. 144.
27 Johnson, Black Manhattan, p. 235.
28 Slotkin, p. 484.
6. If We Must Die
INTERVIEWS: Ralph Crowder, David Levering Lewis. SOURCES: The Diary of Ida B. Wells, Ida B. Wells Papers, Special Collections Research Centre, University of Chicago Library. PUBLICATIONS: John E. Bruce, Prince Hall, Pioneer of Negro Masonry, Proof of the Legitimacy of Prince Hall; Charleston News and Courier, 22 October 1916; Cleveland Advocate, 23 July 1919; Irvin Cobb, The Glory of the Coming; Ralph Crowder, John Edward Bruce: Politician, Journalist, and Self-trained Historian of the African Diaspora; W. E. B. Du Bois, Selected Writing; Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man; Barbara Foley, Spectres of 1919; Peter Fryer, Staying Power: the History of Black People in Britain; Robert Hill, Garvey Papers; Charles Holden, Inconvenient Material for Lynchers: The Conservative Critique of World War I and the Use of African Soldiers; Amy Jacques, Garvey and Garveyism; Amy Jacques, Philosophy and Opinions of Marcus Garvey; James Weldon Johnson, Writings; Theodore Kornweibel, Seeing Red; Claude McKay, A Long Way From Home; Claude McKay, Complete Poems; Linda McMurry, To Keep the Waters Troubled: the Life of Ida B. Wells; Jeffrey Perry, Hubert Harrison Reader; Richard Slotkin, Lost Battalions; Richard Smith, Jamaican Volunteers in the First World War: Race, Masculinity and the Development of National Consciousness; William M. Tuttle Jr, Race Riot: Chicago in the Red Summer of 1919; Washington Bee, 20 December 1919; Washington Post, 21 July 1919; Ida B. Wells, Crusade for Justice: The Autobiography of Ida B. Wells
1 Cobb, p. 188. See also Slotkin, p. 147.
2 Ibid, p. 295.
3 Wells, Crusade for Justice, p. 52. See also Linda McMurry, p. 135.
4 Charleston News and Courier, 22 October 1916: ‘A Lynching at Abbeville’, quoted in Holden, p. 9. Holden’s dissertation is a shr
ewd analysis of Charleston’s progressive approach to race relations in the early part of the twentieth century.
5 Walter White was a field officer for the NAACP, who with his fair hair and blue eyes and very light skin could pass unmolested through the South posing as a white man and collecting vital information for the NAACP on the activities of the Ku Klux Klan and the identities of the ringleaders of the lynch mobs.
6 Ellison, p. 17.
7 Jacques, Philosophy and Opinions of Marcus Garvey, p. 101.
8 Washington Bee, 20 December 1919, quoted in Foley, p. 19.
9 Ellison, p. 296.
10 Crowder, interview with author, April 2007 (telephone).
11 Jacques, Garvey and Garveyism, p. 29.
12 Garvey Papers, I, p. 236.
13 Bruce, pp. 1–12.
14 McKay, A Long Way from Home, p. 31.
15 McKay, Complete Poems, p. 177.
16 McKay, A Long Way from Home, p. 32.
17 Du Bois, ‘Returning Soldiers’, Crisis, May 1919.
18 Smith, pp. 130–131.
19 Tuttle, pp. 6–34.
20 Washington Post, 21 July 1919.
21 Cleveland Advocate, 23 July 1919.
22 Fryer, p. 297.
23 Johnson, p. 482.
24 Quoted in Kornweibel, p. 37.
25 Garvey Papers, I, p. 332, memorandum 11 December 1918.
26 Colonel J. Dunn to Major W. H. Loving, 17 December 1918, printed in Garvey Papers, I, p. 326.
27 Major Loving to Director of Military Intelligence, 17 February 1919, printed in Garvey Papers, I, p. 363.
28 Military Intelligence report from Bethel AME Church, Baltimore, 21 December 1918, printed in Garvey Papers, I, p. 332.
29 Perry, p. 210.
30 Wells, The Diary of Ida B. Wells, 12 June 1886.
31 In 1886 there had been an anarchist/labour scare culminating in the Haymarket bombing.
32 John E. Bruce to Major Loving, 13 January 1919, printed in Garvey Papers, I, pp. 349–350.
7. How to Manufacture a Traitor
INTERVIEWS AND CORRESPONDENCE: Robert Hill, David Levering Lewis, Arthur Miller. SOURCES: William J. Gordon, Black Newspapers and America’s War for Democracy; Bolton Smith, The Negro in War-Time, Public 21; Survey Graphic – A Study of Negro Life, March 1925 special edition, reproduced in Garvey Papers, I. PUBLICATIONS: Jervis Anderson, Portrait of A. Phillip Randolph; Amy Ashwood, Portrait of a Liberator; The Bible, Exodus 12:7–14, King James Version, Regency Publishing House, Nashville/New York, 1976; John H. Clarke (ed.), Marcus Garvey and the Vision of Africa; Daily Gleaner, 15 June 1925; Wilfred Domingo, ‘Tropics in New York’, Survey Graphic 1925; Harold Evans, American Century; Barbara Foley, Spectres of 1919; Robert Hill, Garvey Papers; Amy Jacques, Garvey and Garveyism; Julian Jaffee, Crusade Against Radicalism: New York During the Scare, 1914–1921; Winston James, Holding Aloft the Banner of Ethiopia; James Weldon Johnson, Black Manhattan; Lagos Weekly News, VI, 16 March 1985; Alain Locke, ‘Enter the New Negro’, in Survey Graphic, 1925; Clayton R. Lusk, ‘Radicalism Under Inquiry’ in The Review of Reviews, February 1920; Hollis R. Lynch, Edward Wilmot Blyden: Pan-Negro Patriot; Claude McKay, A Long Way From Home; Ras Makonen, Pan Africanism from Within; Tony Martin, Race First; The Nation, 17 April 1920; Negro World, 1 March 1919; Negro World, 29 March 1919; A. Richard Newman, African American Quotations (Oryx Press, Phoenix Arizona, 1998); A. Mitchell Palmer, The Case Against the Reds; Jeffrey Perry, A Hubert Harrison Reader; Todd Pfannestiel, Rethinking the Red Scare: The Lusk Committee and New York’s Crusade Against Radicalism, 1919–1923; Philadelphia Inquirer, 3 May 1919; John Reed, Ten Days that Shook the World; George Schulyer, Black and Conservative; Richard Slotkin, Lost Battalions; Judith Stein, The World of Marcus Garvey: Race and Class in Modern Society; Charles Edward Stowe, Harriet Beecher Stowe: the Story of Her Life; Charles Rumford Walker, Steel: the Diary of a Furnace Worker; Washington Bee, 1919; Lionel M. Yard, First Amy Tells All