Happy Birthday Marcus Garvey!

Today on Wanda's Picks Radio Show," we honored the memory of the first Pan Africanist, the Honorable Marcus Mosiah Garvey. Born in St.Anne’s Bay, Jamaica, August 17, 1887, Garvey is a treasure whom black people world wide do not know. Opening with a recorded speech where Garvey talks about his organization, the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA). When I think about what is wrong in the world, more specifically the ills plaguing black communities, the poorer and less developed areas in one of the richest nations in the world, it is the absence of this historic lesson Garvey stood for and continues to stand for, that makes the remedy so expensive when folk-medicine is a surer and more effective cure.

Our kids don’t do better, because they don’t know any better, nor do their parents. We have multiple generations who are as the Honorable Elijah Muhammad stated, “dead to the knowledge of self.” If one doesn’t know oneself Garvey says he or she will continue to be duped. It is not by chance that we are not prospering. It is not a surprise that all resistance is being squashed whether it is in Britain or in East Oakland.

In 1921 Garvey spoke of a New Negro, decades later African in America speak of a New Afrikan and a Republic of New Africa.

Garvey says: “That we suffer so much today under whatsoever flag we live is proof positive that constitutions and laws, when framed by the early advocates of human liberty, never included and were never intended for us as a people. It is only a question of sheer accident that we happen to be fellow citizens today with the descendants of those who, through their advocacy, laid the foundation for human rights.

“The white man has succeeded in subduing the world by forcing everybody to think his way. The white man’s propaganda has made him the master of the world. And those who have come in contact with it and accepted it have become his slaves.

“They subjugate first, if the weaker peoples will stand for it; then exploit, and if they will not stand for SUBJUGATION nor EXPLOITATION, the other recourse is EXTERMINATION”

“Liberate the minds of men and ultimately you will liberate the bodies of men.”

See http://africanamericanquotes.org/marcus-garvey.html
For recorded speeches of Garvey visit: http://www.international.ucla.edu/africa/mgpp/sound.asp
For the radio show broadcast: Visit www.wandaspicks.asmnetwork.org (August 17, 2011)
More scholarly work: http://www.international.ucla.edu/africa/mgpp/lifeintr.asp