June and the month of August are special anniversary periods celebrating the life of our first National Hero Marcus Garvey. June 10 marks the anniversary of his death in London in 1940, while August 17 celebrates his birth in St Ann’s Bay, 1887. The occasions do not go unnoticed, as there are worldwide memorials recognising the awesome contribution and leadership provided by Garvey to the emergence and development of black consciousness, black pride, black dignity, and black culture.

Schools, colleges, highways, buildings have been named in his honour all over the world. In Africa, his name is revered in Cape Town, Ghana, Nairobi, Nigeria, and Kenya as a liberator. Nigeria has streets bearing his name. Nkrumah of Ghana named the country’s shipping line the Black Star and the national football team the Black Stars. In England there is a Marcus Garvey Library in Nottingham, a street named after him in Brixton, a Marcus Garvey Centre in Nottingham, a statue in Willesden Green Library, Brent, London. A plaque marks where he died at 53 Talgarth Road, London. In the USA there is a memorial park in Harlem, a public library branch in New York, and a major street named after him in Brooklyn. There is a Garvey Cultural Centre in Colorado, a Garvey Festival held annually in Pembroke, Illinois, and his bust is housed in the Organisation of the American States’ Hall of Fame, Washington.

Martin Luther King Jr paid tribute to Garvey on his visit to Jamaica in 1965, describing him as “the first man of colour to lead and develop a mass movement and to give millions of Negroes a sense of dignity and destiny, and to make the Negro feel he was somebody”.

The two anniversaries are being increasingly marked by lectures and festivals celebrating his philosophy, his teachings, writings, and liberating actions.

Coming up in England on August 17 is the Marcus Garvey pan-African presentation lecture at the Brent Museum in London.

The Marcus Garvey Memorial lecture 2019 was held on June 10 at the Goldsmith University also in London.

Our own Professor Rupert Lewis commemorated the 50th anniversary of the Walter Rodney riots in Jamaica with a lecture at Nova University, an institution familiar to many Jamaicans, with his lecture ‘From Marcus Garvey to Walter Rodney’.

Here in Jamaica the annual Garvey Lecture will no doubt be presented at Liberty Hall in Kingston on August 17. Also taking place in Kingston this year will be the 100th anniversary of the incorporation of Marcus Garvey’s Black Star Line Enterprise to be commemorated with two days of activities on June 28 and 29.

As pleased as he would be with the Liberty Hall lectures and other events in the capital city, this outstanding son of St Ann would be thrilled to know that the St Ann Homecoming and Heritage Foundation, the St Ann Parish Library, and the St Ann Municipal Corporation have ensured his memory is honoured at his birthplace with the staging of an annual Marcus Garvey lecture series in his hometown, St Ann’s Bay. Now in its eighth year, the lecture series is timed to coincide with the anniversary of Garvey’s death, and has drawn motivational and learned speakers each year. Consider presentations from Rex Nettleford, historian Arnold Bertram, The University of the West Indies lecturer Dr K’Adamawe K’nife, former Governor General Sir Kenneth Hall, well-known barrister Lord Anthony Gifford, retired educator James Walsh, director of the Institute of Jamaica Vivian Crawford, and this year’s lecturer on June 7 priest and scholar Rev Dr Gerard Reid.

The series continues to draw an increasingly wider audience each year, including students, teachers, civic and private sector persons who admit that the lectures sometimes provide information on the national hero that was completely foreign to them. As a long-time resident puts it, “The Marcus Garvey statue no longer enjoys exposure from the main road leading through the town, as motorists bypass this corridor and, instead, use the north coast highway. The Marcus Garvey High School has also been bypassed by the highway, and so both institutions and the man himself remain out of sight and out of mind.”

So congratulations to the homecoming foundation and to their partners for keeping Garvey’s name alive by the recognition of the two historical anniversaries.

Former custos of the parish Radcliffe Walters, the foundation’s patron, says, “The foundation is striving, through education and other avenues such as the lecture series, to ensure that St Ann never loses sight of its proud heritage and culture…”

The foundation has also proposed that a section of the busy town centre be renamed the Marcus Garvey Square. The area leads from his birthplace on Marcus Garvey Drive, embraces the area around the St Ann Parish Library and Lawrence Park, includes the square (that is, the area housing the police station with adjacent commercial buildings), and leads to the Old Wharf area adjoining the highway, and reaches out to the market, the clock tower, and the Anglican church.

In the meantime, highway or no highway, Marcus Garvey continues to enjoy first citizenship status in his hometown, where his statue dominates the lawns of the library, with the hero portrayed larger than life in grey bronze.

The statue is the work of Alvin Marriott and was unveiled on October 17, 1976. An imposing cut-stone wall was constructed around the statue bearing this quote from the hero: “We declare to the world, Africa must be free.”

There is a legend behind the inscription that bears retelling. Over time, and with several public functions held at the park, observers noticed that one stone at the top of the eastern section was missing. Questions were raised, and when the contractor, Hezekiah Green, was quizzed, he said that the humble workmen who built the wall had asked that the stone be laid only when all of Africa became free. In the face of this moving demonstration of a determined alliance with and loyalty to the African cause thousands of miles away, the request was upheld and gladly supported by the parish council.

On Sunday, February 11, 1990, we watched with the rest of the world as Nelson Mandela walked hand in hand with his wife Winnie from his imprisonment at the Victor Verstor penitentiary. And on August 17, 1994, following the first multiracial elections held in South Africa electing a black man, Mandela, as president, a small ceremony was held at Garvey’s statue in Jamaica. The Nigerian High Commissioner Professor Emmanuel Ugochukwa did the honours. Prayers were said. Garvey’s message was repeated. And the last stone was laid.

Seaga on Garvey

The lecture this year was also full of symbolism and storytelling about Garvey. Edward Seaga very clearly understood the monumental role that Garvey played in the reshaping of Jamaica and the identity of black people. Fittingly, the audience stood in silence as a mark of respect to Seaga. And a young man, Sadiki Gabbidon, read from Seaga’s speech which had been made at the service of reinterment for the body of Marcus Garvey in 1964.

“Garvey’s stage was not Jamaica; it was the continents of coloured peoples. Yet he is a national hero of Jamaica and his works carried a message that helped to shape and structure the whole character of the people of his own country, among millions of the other people throughout the world…

“Men shape, build and extend the boundaries of nations; some are the economic giants or ideologists who chart the relationship of man to man; others immortalise themselves in their contribution to art, science and technology; still others are heroes because they battle nature and extend the frontiers of knowledge; and then there are the national heroes, those who belong to no category because they are all. They shape the character of a nation and so build and unleash the spirit of the people that the germ of their works and thoughts affect all aspects of a nation’s life. Of such was the man Marcus Mosiah Garvey.”

According to Seaga, Marcus Garvey was one of the enlightened men whose unremitting work helped to shatter the last and toughest layers of that shell of intolerance, which had shackled, burdened, and retarded our society for generations. But Marcus Garvey stood on a pedestal of his own, which made his influence felt not only here and in this region, but in many other places across the world.

Garvey’s movement, he said, grew out of a burning passion to overcome the beliefs, prejudices, distortions, bigotry, half-truths, fears, conceits and propaganda of vested interests, which had progressively threatened and denied the humanity of people of African descent in this region for some 400 years.

Lance Neita is a historian, author and public relations consultant. Send comments to the Observer or lanceneita@hotmail.com.