HAPPY BIRTHDAY MARCUS GARVEY

By Gloria Dulan-Wilson

Hello All:

We are living in some strange times.  Times that make you wonder what the heck is going on - it feels as if the entire world has lost its mind - we feel as though we're under siege by the forces of evil, and that God is likewise putting us through our paces for being so lazy, greedy, ignorant, unfaithful, and  just plain blind.  And when I we - I'm primarily talking about Black people - even though the entire world is in an uproar with the plandemic spreading throughout the world.

Today, August 17, is Marcus Garvey's birthday.  I wonder what he would do - what he would say - how he would lead- especially after over 100 years when he tried to get us out of a country that treated us like trash - like dirt under their boots - not like secondclass citizens - but like unwanted interlopers - even though they were the ones who kidnapped us from our homeland in the first place.

I've known about Garvey at least since I was 5 years old.  I heard about back to Africa.  I knew in my family he was sort of a legend.  I also knew that somehow or other we ended up not going back to Africa.  In our history classes, especially during Negro History Week, there was always some one in our class who made Garvey's speech UP YOU MIGHTY RACE - YOU CAN ACCOMPLISH WHAT YOU WILL.  Of course, at the time I had no idea that Garvey had a Jamaican accent.  I never thought that he was that attractive, as a kid, but I knew that he was powerful - because they were still talking about him decades after his death.  They talked about the parades, about the classes, about the businesses that were started from his teachings on independence; and about his flamboyant dress.  


The Honorable Marcus Garvey Founder of the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA)

However, it wasn't until I was in college that I truly began to have a deep appreciation for Garvey.  After having participated in civil rights activities as a child in Oklahoma since the age of 10, and having the push back by rednecks who didn't want us to eat, shop, entertain, or be educated with them, by the time I was 18, I had had enough and had decided that I was no longer participating in marches to integrate with whites.  It was then that I totally understood why he was trying to get us to move back to Africa and be in our own country, with our own people, our own government, and our own wealth and economy. 

As a student at Lincoln University (Black in the day), all seniors were required to submit a senior thesis and defend it in order to graduate. Mine happened to have been about W.E.B. DuBois and Marcus Garvey. I read their philosophies, biographies, writings, and news articles about them.  It was such a wonderful revelation because of so many things I learned through Garvey's own voice.

 

To my dismay, however,  I learned that W.E.B. DuBois was against Marcus Garvey, and was used as a tool by whites to try to paint Garvey as a charlatan. They even had front page articles in white news papers with DuBois putting Garvey's concepts and ideas down. This is deeply disturbing because of all the wonderful things he had written that I was required to read in High School in OKC. The irony of the whole thing was that Garvey was sabotaged by his white detractors who were hell bent on keeping Africans and African Americans form reuniting. He was falsely accused of mail fraud because Black people sent him money in the mail to purchase the ships that would transport them back to Africa. He purchased the ships - however, due to sabotage, they were unseaworthy. The rest is travesty and white hidstory. 

 

Ironically still, DuBois ended up expatriating to Africa - Ghana to be exact - when he began to be persecuted by the same whites who played on his ego and got him to denounce Garvey in the first place. He ended up apologizing for having been involved in the destruction of the BACK TO AFRICA MOVEMENT. Too little too late - and here we are - the descendants of 12 million Black Americans who were all ready to go home and reunite with their families - undermined by whites who had vested interests in the rape of Africa, and who wanted to retain us as their cheap labor force.

 

TODAY, AUGUST 17, 2020 IS MARCUS GARVEY'S 133rd BIRTHDAY ANNIVERSARY. 

 

My Grandmom was a Garveyite, as were many Oklahomans - there were many who were ready to pull up stakes, get out of this racist redneck environment and regroup in a country where their origins lie. There were many who were not. The bottom line is that we might have become the Wakanda depicted in the movie BLACK PANTHER, had we not been undermined. 

 

So,  we are still here!!   And how many can say that we have it any better  today than we did when Garvey first came here and tried to wake Black people up Black then? 

 

As you celebrate GARVEY'S BIRTHDAY ANNIVERSARY PLEASE MEDITATE ON WHAT WE WHO APPEAR TO BE STUCK HERE CAN DO TO MAKE OUR LIVES BETTER TOGETHER; AND HOW WE CAN ALSO JOIN WITH OUR BROTHERS AND SISTERS IN THE MOTHERLAND IN MAKING THEIR LIVES BETTER AS WELL. 

BLACK LIVES MATTER - 

AFRICA FOR THE AFRICANS, AT HOME AND ABROAD; 

WE ARE FAMILY! 

UP YOU MIGHTY RACE, YOU CAN ACCOMPLISH WHAT YOU WILL!!

 

There have been several pieces written about Garvey - much of them really don't do this wonderful brother justice. There is a filmstrip from History.com that is pure hogwash!! 

 

If you don't take the time to do your own homework, you will get the distorted version of this wonderful charismatic, genius who galvanized 12 MILLION BLACK PEOPLE without Instagram, FaceBook, TV - just his intelligence, love, fervor, and the courage to stand for what he believed. 

 

The link below is the closest i've come to contemporary information about all Marcus Garvey - the JAMAICAN BROTHER WHO WOKE AFRICAN AMERICANS UP!

http://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/tserve/twenty/tkeyinfo/garvey.htm

Marcus Garvey and the Universal Negro Improvement Association
David Van Leeuwen ©National Humanities Center	Links to online resources Related info in   "Getting Back to You" Works cited

Marcus Garvey presiding at the 1922 UNIA convention, Liberty Hall, New York City Courtesy The Marcus Garvey and UNIA Papers Project, UCLA

Marcus Garvey and his organization, the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), represent the largest mass movement in African-American history. Proclaiming a black nationalist "Back to Africa" message, Garvey and the UNIA established 700 branches in thirty-eight states by the early 1920s. While chapters existed in the larger urban areas such as New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles, Garvey's message reached into small towns across the country as well. Later groups such as Father Divine's Universal Peace Mission Movement and the Nation of Islam drew members and philosophy from Garvey's organization, and the UNIA's appeal and influence were felt not only in America but in Canada, the Caribbean, and throughout Africa.

Garvey's philosophy and organization had a rich religious component that he blended with the political and economic aspects.

Considering the strong political and economic black nationalism of Garvey's movement, it may seem odd to include an essay on him in a Web site on religion in America. However, his philosophy and organization had a rich religious component that he blended with the political and economic aspects. Garvey himself claimed that his "Declaration of Rights of the Negro Peoples of the World," along with the Bible, served as "the Holy Writ for our Negro Race." He stated very clearly that "as we pray to Almighty God to save us through his Holy Words so shall we with confidence in ourselves follow the sentiment of the Declaration of Rights and carve our way to liberty." For Garvey, it was no less than the will of God for black people to be free to determine their own destiny. His organization took as its motto "One God! One Aim! One Destiny!" and looked to the literal fulfillment of Psalm 68:31: "Princes shall come out of Egypt: Ethiopia shall soon stretch forth her hands unto God." 

Garvey was born in 1887 in St. Anne's Bay, Jamaica. Due to the economic hardship of his family, he left school at age fourteen and learned the printing and newspaper business. He became interested in politics and soon got involved in projects aimed at helping those on the bottom of society. Unsatisfied with his work, he travelled to London in 1912 and stayed in England for two years. During this time he paid close attention to the controversy between Ireland and England concerning Ireland's independence. He was also exposed to the ideas and writings of a group of black colonial writers that came together in London around the African Times and Orient Review. Nationalism in both Ireland and Africa along with ideas such as race conservation undoubtedly had an impact on Garvey.

However, he later remembered that the most influential experience of his stay in London was reading Booker T. Washington's autobiography Up From Slavery. Washington believed African Americans needed to improve themselves first, showing whites in America that they deserved equal rights. Although politically involved behind the scenes, Washington repeatedly claimed that African Americans would not benefit from political activism and started an industrial training school in Alabama that embodied his own philosophy of self-help. Garvey embraced Washington's ideas and returned to Jamaica in 1914 to found the UNIA with the motto "One God! One Aim! One Destiny!"

Initially he kept very much in line with Washington by encouraging his fellow Jamaicans of African descent to work hard, demonstrate good morals and a strong character, and not worry about politics as a tool to advance their cause. Garvey did not make much headway in Jamaica and decided to visit America in order to meet Booker T. Washington and learn more about the situation of African Americans. By the time Garvey arrived in America in 1916, Washington had died, but Garvey decided to travel around the country and observe African Americans and their struggle for equal rights.

What Garvey saw was a shifting population and a diminishing hope in Jim Crow's demise. African Americans were moving in large numbers out of the rural South and into the urban areas of both North and South. As World War One came to an end, disillusionment was beginning to take hold. Not only was the optimism in the continuing improvement of humanity and society broken apart, but so was any hope on the part of African Americans that they would gain the rights enjoyed by every white American citizen. African Americans had served in large numbers in the war, and many expected some kind of respect and acknowledgment that they too were equal citizens. Indeed, World War One was the perfect opportunity for African Americans to fulfill Booker T. Washington's requirement for equality and freedom. Through dedicated service in the armed forces, they could prove their worth and show they deserved the same rights as whites. However, as black soldiers returned from the war, and more and more African Americans moved into the urban areas, racial tensions grew. Between 1917 and 1919 race riots erupted in East St. Louis, Chicago, Tulsa, and other cities, demonstrating that whites did not intend to treat African Americans any differently than they had before the war.

After surveying the racial situation in America, Garvey was convinced that integration would never happen and that only economic, political, and cultural success on the part of African Americans would bring about equality and respect. With this goal he established the headquarters of the UNIA in New York in 1917 and began to spread a message of black nationalism and the eventual return to Africa of all people of African descent. His brand of black nationalism had three components—unity, pride in the African cultural heritage, and complete autonomy. Garvey believed people of African descent could establish a great independent nation in their ancient homeland of Africa. He took the self-help message of Washington and adapted it to the situation he saw in America, taking a somewhat individualistic, integrationist philosophy and turning it into a more corporate, politically-minded, nation-building message.

In 1919 Garvey purchased an auditorium in Harlem and named it Liberty Hall. There he held nightly meetings to get his message out, sometimes to an audience of six thousand. In 1918 he began a newspaper, Negro World, which by 1920 had a circulation somewhere between 50,000 and 200,000. Membership in the UNIA is difficult to assess. At one point, Garvey claimed to have six million members. That figure is most likely inflated. However, it is beyond dispute that millions were involved and directly affected by Garvey and his message.

To promote unity, Garvey encouraged African Americans to be concerned with themselves first. He stated after World War One that "[t]he first dying that is to be done by the black man in the future will be done to make himself free. And then when we are finished, if we have any charity to bestow, we may die for the white man. But as for me, I think I have stopped dying for him." Black people had to do the work that success and independence demanded, and, most important, they had to do that work for themselves. "If you want liberty," claimed Garvey to a meeting held in 1921, "you yourselves must strike the blow. If you must be free, you must become so through your own effort."

But Garvey knew African Americans would not take action if they did not change their perceptions of themselves. He hammered home the idea of racial pride by celebrating the African past and encouraging African Americans to be proud of their heritage and proud of the way they looked. Garvey proclaimed "black is beautiful" long before it became popular in the 1960s. He wanted African Americans to see themselves as members of a mighty race. "We must canonize our own saints, create our own martyrs, and elevate to positions of fame and honor black men and women who have made their distinct contributions to our racial history." He encouraged parents to give their children "dolls that look like them to play with and cuddle," and he did not want black people thinking of themselves in a defeatist way. "I am the equal of any white man; I want you to feel the same way."

Garvey organized his group in a way that made those sentiments visible. He created an African Legion that dressed in military garb, uniformed marching bands, and other auxiliary groups such as the Black Cross Nurses.

Marcus Garvey with Potentate Gabriel M. Johnson of Liberia, Supreme Deputy G.O. Marke of Sierra Leone, and other UNIA leaders review the parade opening the 1922 UNIA convention, New York City Courtesy The Marcus Garvey and UNIA Papers Project, UCLA

He was elected in 1920 as provisional President of Africa by the members of the UNIA and dressed in a military uniform with a plumed hat. At the UNIA's First International Convention in 1920, people lined the streets of Harlem to watch Garvey and his followers, dressed in their military outfits, march to their meeting under banners that read "We Want a Black Civilization" and "Africa Must Be Free." All the pomp brought Garvey ridicule from mainstream African-American leaders, but it also served to inspire many African Americans who had never seen black people so bold and daring.

While racial pride and unity played important roles in Garvey's black nationalism, he touted capitalism as the tool that would establish African Americans as an independent group. His message has been called the evangel of black success, for he believed economic success was the quickest and most effective way to independence. Interestingly enough, it was white America that served as a prime example of what blacks could accomplish. "Until you produce what the white man has produced," he claimed, "you will not be his equal." In 1919 he established the Negro Factories Corporation and offered stock for African Americans to buy. He wanted to produce everything that a nation needed so that African Americans could completely rely on their own efforts. At one point the corporation operated three grocery stores, two restaurants, a printing plant, a steam laundry, and owned several buildings and trucks in New York City alone. His most famous economic venture was a shipping company known as the Black Star Line, a counterpart to a white-owned company called the White Star Line. Garvey started the shipping company in 1919 as a way to promote trade but also to transport passengers to Africa. He believed it could also serve as an important and tangible sign of black success. However the shipping company eventually failed due to expensive repairs, mismanagement, and corruption.

With all his talk of a mighty race that would one day rule Africa, it would have been foolish for Garvey to underestimate the power of religion, particularly Christianity, within the African-American community. The churches served as the only arena in which African Americans exercised full control. Not only did they serve as houses of worship but also as meeting places that dealt with social, economic, and political issues. Pastors were the most powerful people in the community for they influenced and controlled the community's most important institution. Garvey knew the important place religion held, and he worked hard to recruit pastors into his organization. He enjoyed tremendous success at winning over leaders from almost every denomination. One of those clergymen, George Alexander McGuire, an Episcopalian, was elected chaplain-general of the UNIA in 1920. McGuire wrote the UNIA's official liturgy, the "Universal Negro Ritual" and the "Universal Negro Catechism" that set forth the teachings of the UNIA. He attempted to shape the UNIA into a Christian black-nationalist organization. Garvey, however, did not want the organization to take on the trappings of one particular denomination, for he did not want to offend any of its members. McGuire left UNIA in 1921 to begin his own church, the African Orthodox Church, a black-nationalist neo-Anglican denomination that kept close ties with the UNIA.

The UNIA meetings at Liberty Hall in Harlem were rich with religious ritual and language, as Randall Burkett points out in his book Black Redemption: Churchmen Speak for the Garvey Movement. For even though Garvey rejected McGuire's effort to transform the UNIA into a black-nationalist Christian denomination, he blended these two traditions in his message and in the form of his UNIA meetings. A typical meeting followed this order:

• The hymn "Shine On, Eternal Light," written specifically for the UNIA by its music director
• A reading of Psalm 68:31: "Princes shall come out of Egypt: Ethiopia shall soon stretch forth her hands unto God."
• The official opening hymn "From Greenland's Icy Mountains," stating a commitment to the Christianization of Africa
• Recitation of the official motto, "One God! One Aim! One Destiny!"
• "The Lord's Prayer" and other prayers spoken by the chaplain
• A sermon or some brief remarks
• The business meeting
• The closing hymn, either "Onward Christian Soldiers" or the UNIA's national anthem, the "Universal Negro Anthem."

Garvey's black nationalism blended with his Christian outlook rather dramatically when he claimed that African Americans should view God "through our own spectacles." If whites could view God as white, then blacks could view God as black. In 1924 the convention canonized Jesus Christ as a "Black Man of Sorrows" and the Virgin Mary as a "Black Madonna." Garvey used that image as an inspiration to succeed in this life, for African Americans needed to worship a God that understood their plight, understood their suffering, and would help them overcome their present state. Garvey was not interested in promoting hope in the afterlife. Success in this life was the key. Achieving economic, cultural, social, and political success would free African Americans in this life. The afterlife would take care of itself. Perhaps Garvey's greatest genius was taking that message of material, social, and political success and transforming it into a religious message, one that could lead to "conversion," one that did not challenge the basic doctrines of his followers but incorporated them into the whole of his vision. One of Garvey's top ministers gave witness to the powerful effect of that message when he claimed in 1920, "I feel that I am a full-fledged minister of the African gospel."

Garvey's message of black nationalism and a free black Africa met considerable resistance from other African-American leaders. W.E.B. DuBois and James Weldon Johnson of the NAACP, and Chandler Owen and A. Philip Randolph of the publication Messenger, had their doubts about Garvey. By 1922 his rhetoric shifted away from a confrontational stance against white America to a position of separatism mixed with just enough cooperation. He applauded whites who promoted the idea of sending African Americans back to Africa. He even met with a prominent leader of the Ku Klux Klan in Atlanta in 1922 to discuss their views on miscegenation and social equality. That meeting only gave more fuel to his critics. In 1924 DuBois claimed that "Marcus Garvey is the most dangerous enemy of the Negro race in America and in the world." Owen and Randolph, whose paper saw the race issue as one of class more than skin color, called Garvey the "messenger boy of the Klan" and a "Supreme Negro Jamaican jackass" while labeling his organization the "Uninformed Negroes Infamous Association." The federal government also took an interest in Garvey and in 1922 indicted him for mail fraud. He was eventually sentenced to prison and began serving his sentence in 1925. When his sentence was commuted two years later, Garvey was deported to Jamaica. With his imprisonment and deportation, his organization in the United States lost much of its momentum. Garvey spent the last years of his life in London and died in 1940.

Guiding Student Discussion

In my experience with undergraduates, I find that students know little if anything about Marcus Garvey. The simplest way to get their attention is to tell them that Garvey's UNIA was bigger than the Civil Rights Movement, which most of them do know something about. Telling them that Garvey's influence extended well beyond the borders of the United States to the Caribbean, Canada, and Africa may also pique their interest. Pointing out that Garvey's message had a tremendous influence on later groups such as the Rastafarians and the Nation of Islam is also important. Much of what he said concerning racial pride and the potential for great racial success can be heard in later figures such as Malcolm X and even Stokely Carmichael, leader of SNCC (Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee). Garvey, Malcolm, and Carmichael are all considered more radical than the mainstream civil rights protesters, yet it was Booker T. Washington, someone considered quite conservative by most scholars, who had a profound influence on Garvey. Exploring that connection between the accommodationist philosophy of Washington and the black nationalism of Garvey and the other leaders might generate the most interest and help the students see the important place that Garvey holds in American history.

You might also bring up Garvey's insistence that African Americans should see God, Jesus, and Mary as black. What is Garvey trying to do here? Why not throw out the religion of Christianity, which was used as a rationale for keeping slaves and viewing blacks as inferior people, and form a new religion that could communicate the hopes and desires of people of African descent? Why not do as the later group, the Nation of Islam, and remove all white influence? You might talk about Christianity itself, how blacks identified with so many of the stories of the Bible, the people of Israel, the suffering of Jesus, and how African American's understanding of Christianity in many ways may already have been "black." You might also talk about the role religion plays in a group such as Garvey's. Why is religion so important here; why does it play any role at all? Why couldn't Garvey simply preach black nationalism in economic, political, and social terms? What does religious expression do for people in an organization like the UNIA?

Historians Debate

Scholars have debated the influence and relevance of Garvey, with assessments ranging from Garvey as little more than a demagogue whose uniqueness points to his irrelevance, to Garvey and his organization as earlier embodiments of the political battles of the 1960s. This debate is partly due to the fact that, until quite recently, sources for any study of the Garvey movement were difficult to obtain. Many were destroyed when the government deported Garvey, and some were lost in the air raids in London where Garvey spent the last years of his life.

E. David Cronon's Black Moses: The Story of Marcus Garvey and the Universal Negro Improvement Association (1969) is an example of a more negative assessment of Garvey. Tony Martin's Marcus Garvey, Hero: A First Biography (1983) and Race First: The Ideological and Organizational Struggle of Marcus Garvey and the Universal Negro Improvement Association (1976), along with Theodore Vincent's Black Power and the Garvey Movement (1971) are much more positive about Garvey and his influence. Vincent provides some valuable information about later groups that were influenced by Garvey. For example, Elijah Poole, later known as Elijah Muhammed, was a Garveyite in Chicago and later became leader of the Nation of Islam. Judith Stein in The World of Marcus Garvey: Race and Class in Modern Society (1986) attempts to occupy some middle ground in the debate, not seeing Garvey and the UNIA as a precursor to the politics of the 1960s but also not dismissing Garvey as irrelevant. 

An article that present a good summary of Garvey and his movement is Lawrence Levin's "Marcus Garvey and the Politics of Revitalization" in Black Leaders of the Twentieth Century, edited by John Hope Franklin and August Meier (1982). For the religious aspects of the Garvey movement in the United States, look to Randall K. Burkett's Black Redemption: Churchmen Speak for the Garvey Movement (1978) and Garveyism as a Religious Movement: The Institutionalization of a Black Civil Religion (1978).

The most important contribution to studies on Garvey is Robert A. Hill's The Marcus Garvey and Universal Negro Improvement Association Papers (1983). Hill essentially brought the Garvey archive together by traveling the world and collecting every piece of paper he could find that had something to do with Garvey. He covers the UNIA's activity in the United States, the Caribbean, and Africa. He explores the influence of Ireland and its struggle for independence on Garvey's thinking and suggests that New Thought may have had some influence on Garvey as well. His general introduction and his more specific introduction, which are available online (see links) are outstanding and provide a concise summary of Garvey and the UNIA.

Just so you'll know, I deliberately reprinted the entire article on Garvey - it's well written but still much too abbreviated to give a true sense of what he really stands for.  

If you read this much, you'll be much farther ahead than most.  I urge you to get hold of his book and really study this wonderful, charismatic genius and Black activist.   

It's amazing to me still how he was able to galvanize millions of Black people when in today's world we're hard pressed to get 3 Black people to stick together.  It appears to me that we need to stop being so smug about our contemporary world and give credit to this great Black man.  More importantly, we would do well to study and inculcate his philosophies and methodologies.  We might just begin to develop the unity and autonomy we need to move our people forward.

Again HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO MARCUS GARVEY - THANKS SO MUCH FOR ALL YOU DID FOR BLACK PEOPLE.

NOW THAT YOU KNOW
WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO ABOUT IT?

Stay Blessed & 
ECLECTICALLY BLACK 

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Black Panther's WAKANDA AND MARCUS GARVEY Is There A Relationship between them???

By Gloria Dulan-Wilson

Hello All:

By now, a goodly number of us have had the pleasure of seeing the movie BLACK PANTHER - and have been blown away with the awesomeness and magnitude of how truly wonderful and massive our Black culture, and we Black people, truly are. 

The Honorable Marcus Garvey seated in a place of honor -
Garvey was a super hero in his own right
Notice how ornate the chair is 

February is Black History Month - a fitting and proper time for the release and introduction of such a magnificent Black film - and make no mistake about it, regardless of how many whites you may see in an ancillary position, this IS A BLACK FILM - top to bottom, front to back, side to side - 

Regardless of what our militant, or christian, or negrified, or activist, or African or African American/American African brothers say, of those who try to detract from it by trying to throw shade on the story and its writers, and originators:    THIS IS A BLACK FILM.  And  I am so proud of us - them - all.

There seems to be a need to downplay the Black superhero angle of the story, as if we are somehow being duped by such a concept.  As one who cut her teeth on reading at the tender age of three, when my uncle introduced me to my first hero, CASPER THE FRIENDLY GHOST, I say you're full of it.  I seriously doubt if there are many among us - especially you guys - who didn't read some sort of comic book - well, at least the guys in my age group - when you were kids. We started out with Superman, Batman, Aquaman, Green Lantern, and perhaps the plethora of science fiction oriented comic books. 

Truth be told, all young people need superheroes - and if we don't give them good ones, they tend to fashion their own out of whatever is around.  It's a natural part of human nature. Imagination is the beginning of creation.  Nothing that you see anywhere around you was created without first using you imagination  - and it's much better to have one that centers around something positive and empowering, than otherwise - so Superhero versus gang activity, drug dealers, dope, shoot outs - which do you prefer? 

 As a kid, I was a comic book junkie.  Read them from beginning to end, and sometimes over again.   I loved the drawings, the action, the thought bubbles, the imagnative speech, the story line that is either concluded, or continued in the next comic book.  Did you know they even had a comic book where there was a Black Prince and a white prince from Natal South Africa - can't remember his name, but remember that he was drawn very handsomely, and they were friends.  

At the age of 7 I had no concept of conflict in Africa or racism.   I didn't find out about that until I was 10, but that did not stop my love for GOOD COMIC BOOKS - not the stuff that you see today.  Our comics only cost 10 cents then, and I didn't long to see a Black hero or heroine, 
I was in for the story line - pure and simple.  I thought it was amazing that the writers could tell a story like that with just those pictures and dialogue and you could actually follow it.   I didn't just read about superheroes,  I also read  Bugs Bunny, Nancy and Sluggo, Sylvester and Tweetie - along with Captain America, Red Ryder,  Katie Keen,  Archie Comics, Millie the Model - and the list goes on.   It had nothing to do with whether white comic  books had Black characters. Actually, for me, it still doesn't. 

 I eventually outgrew my love of comics and graduated to MAD MAGAZINE - at 15, I was more sophisticated and knowledgeable then; a veteran Civil Rights Activist, and loved their tongue in cheek jabs at the government.  That did not stop my love for Comic books - just changed the selection somewhat. 

By the time my Handsome son became an adolescent, the kids were reading Teen Age Mutant Ninjaa Turtles, and The Transformers; and he was illustrating his own comic books -  I used to wonder whether or not he somehow vicariously got that through my genes - LOL.  Though I never drew - my sister was the family artist - I was the family bookworm/actress/activist. When I found out that they had gone from 10 cents to one and two dollars, that took it totally off my wavelength.  I didn't care who the super hero was!!  I thought, what a gyp!! Charging little kids so much money for a pleasure they should have every right to. By the way, the cost of the comic did not sully their love or their interest - and when Comicon came around, my son was right there with the rest of them - totally knowledgeable about the heroes - especially the new Black comic book heroes who were now coming on the horizon. 

That was the first time I heard about Black Panther the Comic Book - not much, but a beginning of something that Black kids could relate to. This was the early 80s, when Derek Dingle, now Vice President of Black Enterprise, and a group of Black artists, had begun the development of the Black Panther as a Comic Book series.  Of course, I didn't know about it at the time, and probably would not have ever known, had SyFX not run a special on The Black Panther Comic Book at 3:00AM - my prime time for writing - and there he was, along with Reginald Hudlin.  Of course, there we were again, trying to cram too many messages into a simple story, and the upshot of the Comic book was that it jeopardized the good standing with the publishers; and after a few more jabs against protocol, met its demise.   

And now, here we are, and it's only 1l days since I saw the movie, the Black Panther, and my head, like the rest of yours, is still full of the imagery that filled the screens.  The one thing  thought as I was leaving was, wow, I wish I had seen this in 3-D!!  

The other thoughts hadn't come quite as swiftly.  It had to marinate for a while. I hadn't been prepared for so much Afrocentricism; I  really hadn't  done that much in the way of research about the movie or the story line.  I was going for two reasons:  I love Chadwick Boseman's work, and consider anything he's in worth seeing, no matter what it's about.  Two, my Sorority, Delta Sigma Theta Incorporated was hosting a special Red Carpet for the movie, which is what we do when we honor, respect and support the artists, the theme, and the actors - it was held in Philly at the UA Regal Cinema on Christopher Columbus - they sold out so fact that even I didn't get a ticked, so I say it at the Regal in Manayunk - so that  would at least be able to support the movie in its opening week.  So glad I did that!  Amazing, fantastic, epoch making, inspiring, all the accolades and the some!!! (PS: Don't you just love it when they called the white guy "COLONIZER?" LOLOLOLOL)

So, when I had an AHA moment the otter evening- and it really made me go hmmmmm.......  Wakanda is so much more than a futuristic land of highly intelligent, highly technologically and spiritually aware BLACK people.  Wakanda is who we would have become, had the greatest Afro-Futurist of all time, MARCUS GARVEY,  succeeded in returning BLACK PEOPLE to Africa in the 1920s. Wakanda is who we would have become, who we would have evolved into - African/African Americans - repatriating back to our homeland, taking with us the technology and skills and education, and melding with the technology, skills, traditions, wisdom, knowledge and understanding of our African Brothers and sisters, who had been colonized and subjugated as well. 

Wakanda is the consolidation of the best of the best of who we are - a full reunification of ourselves with ourselves, and taking all that we are and building something so splendid, superior, and scientifically off the chain, it defied the imagination or accomplishment levels of most whites.

Garvey  knew that we were wasting and our lives here in America among our oppressors; by the same token, there were parts of Africa where the colonizers were still dictating and destroying African societies.  

WAKANDA, AFRICA 

Garvey's exhortation, up you mighty race, you can accomplish what you WILL, is written all over Wakanda - it's every where - Garvey knew that, unleashed to just be, do, have and expand, Black people can create wonders.  Without white interference, we would proliferate life-giving, spirit raising, joy making, programs that benefit all of us - not just a handful.  He knew we would seek the highest level of education for us all.  Rather than wars and hostile competitions, there would naturally be exhibition games and feats of wonder that we would indulge individual and collective challenges, and progress on our own merits without detracting from those of others. It's basically who we already are - but even more so.  

Wakanda is not a world of B-words, n-words, brothers hanging their pants off their behinds; it's not a world where some flourish while others starved.  It was not a world where Black people were afraid of, or mistrustful of each other.  If you look at the pictures of Garvey - long before there was any concept of a Black super hero, and you will notice that he dressed like a king,  even in the 20s.  He led large groups of Black people -more than 12 millon - people who he inspired to own their own homes, start their own businesses, run their own schools, hospitals, social clubs - marry and honor each other.  No bleached blonde, or processed hair of wannabes, but Black men and women who were accomplished and proud of who they were. 

Ryan Coogler, in an interview, specifically stated that they were very careful to depict only natural hair styles, so that Black men and women in Africa and other parts of the world would be proud of who they are in their most natural essence.  

But Garvey's world, like Wakanda, is also about transformation - and that is what this represents.  There were people who had been through hell at the hands of whites in the America of the 1920s who suddenly found someone who saw them for who and what they were and taught them to take pride in it, and not be afraid.

It was about people like Malcolm Little's parents (also known as Malcolm X), who raised their children on being united and self sufficient, and were persecuted by jealous, hostile, ignorant, backwards, hateful murderous whites for their efforts.   This made Garvey realize all the more that Africa is the only place where Black people can truly be Black people - productive, healthy, happy, prosperous in their own land.  It's that truth that  caused my Grandmother, who was a beautiful Cherokee woman married to my grandfather - a Fine Black Man -  after seeing their hostility-  to become a part of the Garvey movement in Oklahoma. - after crazy whites threatened to burn them off the 180 acres of land they owned and had been thriving on.  She felt sure that they and their six children (my mother, her four sisters, and one brother) would do better in Africa than on the Texas Oklahoma border, where whites would sneak across and try to intimidate them.  Garvey's message of UP YOU MIGHT RACE, YOU CAN ACCOMPLISH WHATEVER YOU WILL!"  came through loudly and clearly - and Black in the day they didn't have TV, Cinema, cell phones, instagram, Facebook, or any of the other modern conveniences.

I am taking nothing away from Ryan Coogler, who no doubt had his own epiphany when he visited Africa: 

https://www.rollingstone.com/movies/features/ryan-coogler-why-i-needed-to-make-black-panther-w517100    I'm willing to bet these are some of the images and visions  that were in his subconscious  mind - his psyche for quite some time.  Thank God he put that vision out there for us all.  It's much too strong, too visceral for these to just been special effects, engineered for the please and amusement of a Black audience.  This brother had a mind meld with the African Holy Spirit!!

This truth is that our own "Wakanda in us" has been around for 95 years, since Garvey led his first parade down the streets of New York City.  The problem is that because he chose to make it public, in order to wake other Black people up, the whites began to do what they could to destroy it  However, that would not have been so bad; if they don't want Black people to flourish in America, surely they would have no objection to our returning home to our homeland - Africa - where we would be of no further bother to them; where we, at last, would no longer live in shanties, be treated as second class citizens, where we  reunite with our own people; because apart, nether of us are very happy or effective, but united, we would thrive, grow and take our rightful place in the world.  Surely whites - especially red necked racist, confederate flag waving lynching lying, raping crackers - would be especially happy to see the last of our Blackness.  

Garvey took investments from the members to pool their money, start the Black Star Line Luxury Ocean Liner Company and purchase  the three ships to return home and build our own Wakanda.  Can you imagine if we had been left alone and allowed to do so, where we would be today nearly 100 years later?  We,  the geniuses behind the internet, the incandescent light bulb, the traffic light, the iron and the ironing board, the - you name it, we did it - look it up!!! And TV would have been an entirely different thing if we had invented it.  

This was in Garvey's mind, his dreams, his imagination.  He spoke beauty and power into us, and  so we arose and prepared to return home to Africa.  And as we were doing so, whites  sold us "Leaking Lena" ships that were  either not seaworthy, or deliberately sabotaged.  Then they charged Garvey with  bogus mail fraud allegations, fed us a made up religious movement, and did all they could to block, thwart the development of a place where we  RE-AFRICANIZED AMERICANS could at last leave the horrors of racism and jim crowism behind.  And why was that, you ask:  Greed, jealousy, selfishness - Great Britain and the US and the Good Year Rubber and Tire company were afraid that if we came back, they would no longer be able to bamboozle millions of Africans out of their lands and steal the rubber for tires.  The diamond thieves knew that they would no longer be able to exploit Africa's diamonds - with Africans and African Americans re-united - things would change dramatically.  Not with a Killmonger type of hostility, but a glad to be home/glad to have you back home unity.  

Garvey's vision for us was in a kingdom of our own, in Africa, with our own people, working together in an communalistic society, developed and maintained for the pleasure and benefit of all.  I.E.  For African people, by African people and of African people.  And if you read his works, you can see it in his speeches, his concepts, his philosophies.  

Garvey didn't go around trying to find out how many whites were in his family tree, or talking about reconciliation - he was more than well aware of all the wonderful things we had done, and would surely continue to do;  as was Dr. Carter G. Woodson who extolled all the powers and mighty accomplishments of Black people though his historic research and writings; just as had W.E.B. du Bois, who did in depth research on Black people and laid out in epistemological sociological research and study.  

We have the genius, creativity, intelligence, skill, knowledge, and capacity to create a WAKANDA right now today, and shame on us if we don't.  We've had Wakanda in us all along - this is why we resonated so strongly and so viscerally to the movie  - and I  think of what that really means.  Had this vision/dream/aspiration not  already been there,  lurking in our subconscious, in our genes, in our DNA, in our very being - crossing all age barriers and generations, we probably would not have even seen this as anything more than a good science fiction movie.  We would have enjoyed it and talked about the special effects; how beautiful Angela Bassett looked, how fine both Chadwick Boseman and Killmonger were.  We would have definitely talked about how proud we were of Lupita Nyong'o  and her natural beauty, but the fad would have worn off in a few days and we would have been on to the next JZ or Beyonce~like person. 

But Wakanda hit home so powerfully!!!  You could see and feel the transformation of the entire audience as we shared a collective "WOW!!' as a sense of intense pride welled up in us - from those of us who were in the movie theatre, through the directors, actors, technicians, stunt men and women, down to the smallest role played in the production and portrayal of the movie - that collective WOW was - Look at us!  Look who we are!  Look who we can become! Look what we can do!  Look what we can produce.  The profound sense of,  "I told you so!, I knew it all the time.    This is what I'm talking about!"  We resonated to Wakanda because it was in our soul, as  originally enunciated by Garvey in 1923, and brought to fruition by Coogler in 2018 - 95 years later.

Getting inside their heads and seeing us through their eyes - their colossal belief in and love for Black people, this is how they walked around in their souls all their lives!!

Don't for one moment doubt that we couldn't create Wakanda right now, today, in Africa and make it as magnificent and even more wondrous than the one depicted in Black Panther! Because we can. However the issue is more like this: Now that the secret is out, will we?  Will we now own up to our genius and make it happen?  Will we, like four of the five tribes of Wakanda - consolidate, amalgamate, synthesize, and unify our genius and create out own Wakanda.  Drop the artificiality of tribe, geography, education, wealth (or lack thereof), and roll up our collective sleeve, and collectively make it a reality.   I keep emphasizing Africa - because I seriously doubt that we could create a kind of autonomous Black world here in America -were the depraved become president, with millions of immoral morons as his followers.  

We possibly could have some limited, altered version of it here in America; but we run the risk of shootings, raids, allegations, aspersions and all manner of attacks against us by jealousness, rogue cops,  compounded with hate and aggression.  The US, as it is truly constituted, would be the last place Garvey would have chosen.  He galvanized the 12 million  oppressed Black men and women throughout the US to unite and began to demonstrate their true African heritage and creativity.  The white backlash was terrible, and was why he tried to purchase ships to transport us all back to our Motherland where we could safely BEGIN BEING  who we really were/are all along. And Brother Ryan Coogler, without really knowing it, channeled this vision through his creative genius onto the big screen for us all to see; in glorious color, big as life and infinitely more beautiful than even he would have described.   And we all got the message, the injection at the same time.  The innoculation was a success - the patient lives!  We are now energized, inspired, motivated, activated, and regenerated!!!  We've got work to do!!

Wakanda is now viral in our systems.  We are now inoculated against the miasma of mediocrity that whites have been trying to inundate  and contaminate us with, using their minions and ministries of mis-education, misdirection, social disintegration through their warped social meanstream media.   Through the Black Panther and Wakanda, we have seen the Victors and it is us!!! 

Now is the time for life begin to imitate art and develop Wakandas of our own - here in our communities, in our neighborhoods - and for those of you who can - at home in our Motherland Africa!  

NOW THAT YOU KNOW

WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO ABOUT IT?

Stay Blessed&

ECLECTICALLY BLACK

Gloria