Marcus Garvey’s Speech in Philadelphia, 1919 Jamaican-born Marcus Garvey (1887-1940) had to leave school as a teenager and trained as a printer. After living for a time in Central America and England, he returned to Jamaica where he and Amy Ashwood founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) in 1914. Garvey travelled to the United States hoping to get Booker T. Washington to support the UNIA’s efforts to build a school like Tuskegee in Jamaica. Washington’s death and the mass murder of African Americans by white mobs during World War I caused Garvey to change his strategy. He began establishing UNIA branches in Harlem and other northern cities with increasingly large black populations who were fleeing the racist terror of the U.S. south and attracted by the new job opportunities opened up by the war. Garvey was spectacularly successful in building the membership of the UNIA, and was especially successful in attracting the support of black soldiers returning from fighting in the war in Europe. Garvey’s charisma was due in no small part to his fiery oratory, an example of which appears below in this excerpt from a speech he gave to his supporters in Philadelphia in 1919, while raising funds for the launch of a shipping company, The Black Star Line. Garvey was a firm believer in the idea of black-owned and run enterprises as a means of black advancement. The US government on the other hand, did not take kindly to Garvey’s activities. J. Edgar Hoover, head of the FBI, called Garvey, “a dangerous Negro agitator.” *********************************** We have our foe, our ancient foe, puzzled. He does not know what to do with the New Negro; but the New Negro knows what to do with himself. And the thing that we are going to do is to blast a way to complete independence and to that democracy which they denied us even after we left the battlefields of France and Flanders. We, the New Negroes, say there is no turning back for us now. There is nothing else but a going forward, and if they squeal in America or anywhere else we are going forward. Why, we are not organized as four hundred million yet, and they are so scared. Now, what will happen in the next five years when the entire four hundred million of us will have been organized? All the lynching in the South will be a thing of the past. We are determined in this association to bring the white man to his senses. We are not going to fight and kill anybody because he has more than we have. But if there is anybody taking advantage of the Negro, whether he be white, red, or blue, we are going to organize to stop him… I believe in the brotherhood of man. I believe in the fatherhood of God, but as man sinned and lost his purpose ever since the fall of Adam and Eve, I also realize that man has lost his closest connection, his closest tie, with his God. And since man is human, since man has lost his instinct divine, I am no ...

1. Marcus Garvey’s Speech in Philadelphia, 1919
Jamaican-born Marcus Garvey (1887-1940) had to leave school
as a teenager and
trained as a printer. After living for a time in Central America
and England, he returned
to Jamaica where he and Amy Ashwood founded the Universal
Negro Improvement
Association (UNIA) in 1914. Garvey travelled to the United
States hoping to get Booker
T. Washington to support the UNIA’s efforts to build a school
like Tuskegee in Jamaica.
Washington’s death and the mass murder of African Americans
by white mobs during
World War I caused Garvey to change his strategy. He began
establishing UNIA
branches in Harlem and other northern cities with increasingly
large black populations
who were fleeing the racist terror of the U.S. south and attracted
by the new job
opportunities opened up by the war. Garvey was spectacularly
successful in building the

2. membership of the UNIA, and was especially successful in
attracting the support of black
soldiers returning from fighting in the war in Europe. Garvey’s
charisma was due in no
small part to his fiery oratory, an example of which appears
below in this excerpt from a
speech he gave to his supporters in Philadelphia in 1919, while
raising funds for the
launch of a shipping company, The Black Star Line. Garvey was
a firm believer in the
idea of black-owned and run enterprises as a means of black
advancement. The US
government on the other hand, did not take kindly to Garvey’s
activities. J. Edgar Hoover,
head of the FBI, called Garvey, “a dangerous Negro agitator.”
***********************************
We have our foe, our ancient foe, puzzled. He does not know
what to do with the New
Negro; but the New Negro knows what to do with himself. And
the thing that we are
going to do is to blast a way to complete independence and to
that democracy which they

3. denied us even after we left the battlefields of France and
Flanders. We, the New Negroes,
say there is no turning back for us now. There is nothing else
but a going forward, and if
they squeal in America or anywhere else we are going forward.
Why, we are not
organized as four hundred million yet, and they are so scared.
Now, what will happen in
the next five years when the entire four hundred million of us
will have been organized?
All the lynching in the South will be a thing of the past. We are
determined in this
association to bring the white man to his senses. We are not
going to fight and kill
anybody because he has more than we have. But if there is
anybody taking advantage of
the Negro, whether he be white, red, or blue, we are going to
organize to stop him…
I believe in the brotherhood of man. I believe in the fatherhood
of God, but as
man sinned and lost his purpose ever since the fall of Adam and
Eve, I also realize that
man has lost his closest connection, his closest tie, with his
God. And since man is human,

4. since man has lost his instinct divine, I am not going to trust
man. From the attitude of
man, from the action of man today, I can see that everyone is
looking out for himself
where the question of race comes in. The white race is looking
out for the white race; the
yellow race is looking out for the yellow race or Asiatic race.
The time has come when
the Negro should look out for himself and let the others look
out for themselves. This is
the new doctrine today. It is the doctrine of Europe. Europe is
looking out for the white
man. It is the doctrine of Asia. Asia is looking out for the
yellow man. So should Africa
look out for the black man, the Negro. And since they (the
whites) have divided up Africa,
having a part in America, a part in Canada, a part in the West
Indies, a part in Central
America, a part in South America, and a part remaining in
Africa, we are saying that the
time has come that there should be a united Africa. And before
a united Africa comes,
Ethiopia, as scattered as she is, must stretch forth her hands

5. unto God…
And I want you men of Africa, you men of the Negro race, to
prepare for the day
when Africa will call for a judgment, and that judgment we
must have, and it will be a
judgment in favor of four hundred million oppressed people.
And the marshal who will
carry out the authority of the court will be the new Toussaint
L’Ouverture with the sword
and the banner of the new African Republic. You black men of
Philadelphia sit here
tonight as jurors in the case where judgment is to be given in
favor of the Negro, and I am
now asking you jurymen: Gentlemen of the jury, what is your
verdict? (Cries of: “Africa
Must Be Free!” heard from the crowd) Now, if Africa is to be
free it means, therefore,
that Philadelphia has given her verdict as we have in New York.
It is now for the judge to
give his finding. The judge will give his finding after all the
jurors of the Negro race, four
hundred million, will have given their verdict. And then after
the judge gives his finding
he will have to find a marshal to serve the writ, who will

6. require the New Negro to help
him to serve this writ, because the man to whom this writ is to
be served is of a desperate
character, because he prefers to shed blood and take lives before
he will give up what is
not his. You have to spill blood in Africa before you get what
belongs to you.
Therefore, you will realize that the Universal Negro
Improvement Association is
no joke. It is a serious movement. It is as serious a movement as
the movement of the
Irish today to have a free Ireland; as the determination of the
Jew to recover Palestine.
The Negro peoples of the world should be so determined to
reclaim Africa and found a
government there, so that if any black man in any part of the
world is abused we can call
the mighty power of Africa to come to our aid. Men, a Negro
government we had once,
and a Negro government we must have again. Tell me that I
must live everlastingly under
the domination of a white man, that I must bequeath to my
children white overlordship,
then I say, let me die now, Almighty God. If there is no better

7. future in the world for me
than to be the slave of a white man, I say, take the life you give
me. I do not want it. You
would not be my God if you created me to be a slave to other
men; but you are my God
and will continue to be my God if you created me an equal of
all men…
That is why we want the Black Star Line so as to launch out to
the Negro peoples
of the world, and today the richest people of the world are the
Negro people of Africa.
Their minerals, their diamonds, their gold and their silver, and
their iron have built up the
great English, French, German and Belgian Empires. Men, how
long are we going to
allow those parasites to suck the blood out of our children? How
long? I answer for those
who are active members of the Universal Negro Improvement
Association and African
Communities League, “Not one day longer!” No parasite shall
continue to feed off my
body, because I want to have a healthy body. I have not
sufficient blood to give to any
parasite, because when I get sick I will need every drop of my

8. blood to sustain me until I
am well, so while I am well I will have to take off that parasite
and throw it away. The
time has come for the Negro to exert his energy to the utmost to
do so. Men and women
of Philadelphia, the question is now for you to decide. Are you
ready tonight or are you
going to wait for two years more to be ready? (Cries of: “We
are ready now!” heard from
the crowd) Thank God there are millions of us who are ready
already, and when the
Black Star Line sails out, by the demonstration of the Black
Star Line, spontaneously and
simultaneously, millions of black people will become wealthy…