Established in 1914 in Kingston, Jamaica, by Marcus Garvey, the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) became the most significant Pan-Africanist and black nationalist movement of the early 20th century. The UNIA was intimately tied to Garvey who founded it and whose 1923 conviction on mail fraud charges led to the organization’s demise. In the brief decade of its viability, UNIA was dedicated to promoting African-American communities and businesses and in establishing a country and government solely for Africans and people of African descent.
The initial platform for the UNIA, as established by Garvey in 1914, called for caring for the needy of the race, civilizing backward African people, and developing schools and colleges for African and African-American youths that would teach a commitment to racial brotherhood around the globe. In addition, it called for the establishment of agencies around the world to protect the rights of Africans and for the creation of commercial and industrial trade among them.
The UNIA was not very successful in its first two years. The organization had only 200 members by 1916. In an effort to strengthen the organization, Garvey came to the United States in March 1916. He undertook a tour of the
United States in which he tried to raise funds for UNIA. During his tour, Garvey was impressed by the conditions of African Americans in relation to those faced by Africans in Jamaica. He hoped that the relative wealth of the African-American community in America and the existence of black leadership would help his organization. In 1916 he decided to move UNIA’s headquarters to Harlem in New York City.
The UNIA enjoyed a measure of success in the years following its move to the United States. Answering Garvey’s call for the establishment of black-owned businesses, the UNIA bought its own building in Harlem, opened a restaurant, began a newspaper, the Negro World, and established a steamship line, the Black Star Line. The Black Star Line was the most visible manifestation of UNIA’s philosophy. Garvey believed that the line could function as the core of a worldwide black economy. The black-owned and operated Black Star Line would not only carry black immigrants back to Africa but also would foster trade among blacks in the United States, the Caribbean, and Africa. This trade would form the basis, according to Garvey, of the worldwide black economy of the future. UNIA raised the money needed to buy steamships by selling stock in the Black Star Line. Many African Americans embraced the idea, and UNIA had no trouble selling the stock.
In 1920, UNIA held its first international convention in Madison Square Garden. For one month, 25,000 delegates met to establish the UNIA as an international organization. The convention elected Garvey as the provisional president of Africa and approved a Declaration of Negro Rights. The declaration called for equal rights for Africans throughout the world. It named the injustices suffered and demanded equal treatment before the law, access to economic opportunity for blacks, an end to colonialism, and the return to Africa to African rule, and it adopted an African national anthem.
UNIA began to unravel soon after the convention. In 1920-21, the United States suffered through an economic recession. As unemployment skyrocketed among African Americans, sales of Black Star Line stock plummeted. In addition to its financial troubles, UNIA began to suffer from opposition to Garvey’s leadership. Critics questioned his financing of the Black Star Line, charging that he was selling more stock than legally allowed. In 1922, Garvey added further fuel to the fire when he met with the second-in-command of the Ku Kiux Klan. His critics charged that he had made a deal with the Klan to remove African Americans from the United States, leaving it as the white man’s country that Garvey had always claimed it was. He responded to these charges by purging his critics from the UNIA’s leadership. Garvey did not last long enough to take advantage of these moves. He was convicted of mail fraud in a federal court in New York City in June 1923.
The court sentenced Garvey to five years in prison and a $1,000 fine. After losing his appeal, he began to serve his sentence in 1925. In 1927, President Calvin Coolidge commuted his sentence, and Garvey was deported to Jamaica. The UNIA did not survive Garvey’s trial and deportation. He attempted to re-create it in Jamaica, but by the mid-1930s both UNIA and Garvey had fallen into obscurity. In an era of SEGREGATION, the UNIA was a popular expression of African-American discontent. It provided a means for African Americans in the urban North to organize economically and politically. For many, the UNIA was a way station on the journey toward civil rights activism.
Further reading: Robert Hill, ed., Marcus Garvey and the Universal Negro Improvement Association Papers, 9 vols. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983-95); Cary D. Wintz, ed., African-American Political Thought, 1890-1930: Washington, DuBois, Garvey, and Randolph (New York: M. E. Sharpe, 1996).
—Michael Hartman
World History
