Criticism Paper on Marcus Garvey's story Africa for the Africans - Essay Example

This movement he launched in 1914 in Jamaica, and it became the largest black mass movement in America at that time, with several million followers. Discussion: The article: Africa for the Africans written by Marcus Garvey is presented in the book edited by Patton and Honey (p.83). Garvey states that The Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) advocated the cause of Africa for the Africans – that is, the Negro peoples of the world should concentrate on the objective of building up for themselves a great nation in Africa.

It was very important that they should make a stand for their own identity as part of the human race, and not remain subjugated, dehumanized and abused as they had been for centuries. Intellectual negroes of the western world put forth several arguments against the colonization of Africa by the black race. They tried to scare negroes in America and the West Indies from taking an interest in the new program of building a racial empire of their own in their Motherland: Africa. (Patton, Venetria: Honey, Maureen (Eds) p.83). On the other hand, native people who were residents of Africa were enthusiastic to support Garvey in his great mission, and were ready to welcome warmly Negroes from other parts of the world, to form a united homeland in Africa.

Fighting opposition even from among people of the same race, and also garnering great support from millions of other black people as well as from influential whites, the propaganda spread all over the world.(pp.83-84). He offered the Africans a world parallel to the white world, and not equality for the blacks within the white world. (Mason, Michael p.241). Robert Hill (Ed.) p.lxxxiv is of the opinion that Marcus Garvey’s espousal of racial purity and separation was a calculated attempt to achieve a singular niche in Afro-American leadership circles, and to appease those in the white