Black Nationalism: UNIA

The UNIA was a Black Nationalist movement led by Marcus Garvey. The movement made up a unique gender hierarchy and poor class membership that grew to extend all across the world’s geography. With the criticism of opponents, and the help of allies, the UNIA would come to stand as one of the most significant Black Nationalist movements.
The UNIA maintained a hierarchal gender system that enforced female domesticity and male breadwinning. The female domesticity included caretaking and homemaking tasks, such as nursing and clothing production. One of the nursing programs, the Black Cross Nurses, “once a week learnt first aid and Medicare under the tutelage of a registered nurse who was a UNIA member (Lewis 68)”. For clothing production, women manufactured and designed various materials for the organization. Martin notes, “Women’s Manufacturing Department and Bazaar, which made Black Cross Nurses’ uniforms, Panama hats, and other millinery, shirts and ties” (Martin 34). Given the military culture of the UNIA, women also found themselves engaging in more soldierly activities. For instance, “Another uniformed auxiliary was the Motor Corps for females, both adult and teenage. These women met once a week to practice military drills as well as learn to drive” (Lewis 68). The gender structure of the UNIA was frequently met with criticism and examination through debate forums. Topics might include, “Is the intellect of woman as highly developed as that of man’s?” (Martin 33) or “Women or men, whose influence is more felt in the world” (Martin 33). Amy Jacques Garvey, the wife of Marcus Garvey, argued for women to find a place outside of the home. Specifically, she demanded that New Negro Women “work on par with men in the offices as well as on the platform – practice actual economy and thrift – and to demand absolute respect from men of all races” (Taylor 79). While Amy Garvey argues for feminism within the organization, it should be noted that nationalistic endeavors took precedent, and that progress for gender equality took a back seat to the forefront of black power. The hierarchy of gender also extended to domestic violence within the UNIA where women suffered from the power of patriarchy. For example, “Garveyites – in extreme cases black women were punished for interracial liaisons, through violent patriarchal and misogynistic practices” (Rolinson 137). This case sheds light on the dichotomy of gender structure within the UNIA where women found freedom and imprisonment within the culture of domesticity.
The class and race system of the UNIA was made up of mostly poor and uneducated blacks. Cyril Briggs notes, “the main social base of the movement was the Negro agricultural workers and the farming masses – leadership consisted of the poorest stratum of the Negro intellectuals – a split away from the official Negro bourgeois leadership of the NAACP” (Briggs The Communist). Most of these members found solace in the capitalist goals of the UNIA and given that “Garvey himself lacked education” the members felt a further sense of comradery. E. Franklin Frazier points out that, “The negro who is poor, ignorant, and weak naturally wants to place the blame on anything except his own incapacity” (Frazier Nation). This way of thinking allowed members to consider themselves victims of racial discrimination and prejudices within the American court system. These sentiments led to the power that Marcus Garvey and the UNIA witnessed, with Assistant General Wilford Smith noting, “There has not been a man who stirred into expression the consciousness of the Negro peoples to the extent that he succeeded in doing – negroes all over the world have come to think of themselves as a Race – one in hope and destiny, as never before” (Elmes Garvey and Garveyism – An Estimate). Garvey appealed very strongly to the disgruntled and uneducated blacks by inspiring a black race consciousness that sought black power and autonomy, ideas that African Americans had been hungry for a very long time. It should also be noted that the class and race system were very diverse, such that among the leading UNIA members, “thirty-six were from the West Indies, eight from Africa, and one from India” (Vincent 120). The diversity among leaders reflects the global scope of the UNIA and its extension into all regions of black life.
The UNIA faced both internal and external opposition. Internally, the UNIA suffered from accusations of capital mismanagement, specifically with salaries paid to leaders within the organization. Robert Minor notes “with every internal dispute there came an ousting of some officer and a consequent law suit of the officer for the enormous salaries stipulated in the contract of the employment” (Minor After Garvey – What?). This was a terrible problem for the UNIA because fellow officers drained the treasury and put the movement in a difficult financial situation. Externally, the UNIA found itself a target by the British Consul who established a pro-British magazine to offset the propaganda that Garvey perpetrated. In fact, the “head of the British legation announced that he had mounted his own propaganda campaign – to counter Garvey’s” (Martin 103). As well, the UNIA faced harassment on multiple counts, with most of it specifically directed towards their leader, Marcus Garvey. Garvey served jail time for alleged mail fraud and was also denied a Visa. Marcus Garvey’s lawyer Armin Kohn noted “I have never handled a case in which the defendant has been treated with such manifest unfairness and with such a palpable attempt at persecution as this one” (Kohn Philosophy and Opinion) At one point, Garvey and the UNIA tried to work with the KKK and upon inviting the Grand Cyclops to speak at a convention on the Black Star Line he was met with a “storm of criticism rose among negroes and kept Garvey explaining, contradicting, and repudiating the unholy alliance, and finally drove it under cover” (Du Bois Back To Africa). His attempted alliance with the KKK, while strategic in effort, proved to be futile in efforts, as members and leaders alike opposed his irrational methods for strategy.
The UNIA found allies in men such as Hubert H. Harrison who was the leader of the liberty League of Afro-Americans. In fact, Harrison said the UNIA, “was welcomed – and given a favorable introduction at a mass meeting of Afro-Americans held by the Liberty League in Bethel A.M.E. Church in Harlem” (Clarke 217). At the time, the UNIA also found support from prominent black rights leaders such as W.E.B Du Bois. He felt that given the UNIA objectives, “American Negroes can, by accumulating and administering their own capital, organize industry, join the black centers of the South Atlantic by commercial enterprise and in this way ultimately redeem Africa” (Clarke 217). Other allies include was T. Thomas Fortune who was the editor of the Negro World and E. Franklin Frazier. Frazier noted, “as a leader of a mass movement among negroes, Garvey has no equal” (Clarke 198). Furthermore, Alain Locke, saw in Garveyism “the sense of a mission of rehabilitating the race in world esteem from the loss of prestige for which the fate and conditions of slavery have so largely been responsible (Clarke 199). Overall, allies admired the UNIA’s sense of race autonomy and the objectives of creating capital wealth for those who lacked any means of financial independence.
Lastly, the UNIA was very diverse geographically. The organization operated in numerous locations such as Latin America or wherever there were large Caribbean communities. In places that were far west, “black residents – in Honolulu, for example, a visiting sailor carrying copies of the Negro World started a UNIA division which even received contributions from a number of Japanese and Chinese” (Vincent 137) Furthermore, the UNIA was very strong in Jamiaca and held half a dozen divisions that mostly relied on the islands laboring masses. Garvey claimed to Jamaicans, “Don’t let anybody cow you! You have your constitutional rights! Demand them! You lazy good-fornothing Jamaicans, wake up”!” (Kingston Gleaner). The UNIA also flourished in places such as Cuba, Haiti and Mexico with membership consisting “largely of immigrant laborers from the British West Indies” (Vincent 140). It should be noted that geographically, the UNIA struggled in places like colonial Africa because “the UNIA was simply too radical for most middle-class Africans” (Vincent 143). In the states, specifically the south, the relationship was somewhat tenuous because members were poorer and supporting the capital structure demands of the UNIA proved difficult. Regardless, there were still nearly “one-hundred divisions in the thirteen southern and border states” (Vincent 133).
Overall, the UNIA, with broad membership of poor black men and women, scaled the globe and came close to attaining true black autonomy, a goal set in its Black Nationalism roots.

Works Cited
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