Marcus Garvey, Jamaica’s first national hero, while in the US from 1916-1927, suffered the indignity of being jailed for a number of years and then being subsequently deported. The charge which led to his imprisonment was mail fraud, which ultimately was circumspect when viewed carefully and critically from a critical and discerning perspective.

One of the foremost Garvey scholars, Professor Rupert Lewis (1988) assessed some of the background and the prevailing atmosphere in the US leading up to the conviction of Garvey in his book Marcus Garvey: Anti-Colonial Champion. He writes in regards to Garvey’s harassment in the US that J Edgar Hoover’s (then director of the Bureau of Investigation [BOI], the forerunner for the Federal Bureau of Investigation [FBI]) memorandum to special agent Ridgely, dated October 11, 1919, is revealing as to the plans being conceived at that time to deport Marcus Garvey. According to Ridgely, “Hoover was transmitting herewith a communication which has come to my attention from the Panama Canal, Washington Office, relative to the activities of Marcus Garvey. Garvey is a West Indian Negro and, in addition to his activities in endeavouring to establish the Black Star Line Steamship Corporation, he has also been particularly active among the radical elements in New York City in agitating the Negro movement. Unfortunately, however, he has not yet violated any federal law whereby he could be proceeded against on the grounds of being an undesirable alien, from the point of view of deportation. It occurs to me, however, from the attached clipping that there might be some proceeding against him for fraud in connection with his Black Star Line Steamship propaganda.”

It is clear from this communication that the US authorities had from that time — from back in 1919 — developed a plan to imprison Garvey and discredit him.

With his growing popularity among the black masses in the US, as well as internationally, and his obviously ambitious entrepreneurial exploits after only being in the US some three years, Garvey came up on the radar of the US authorities and was ultimately deemed a threat and certainly ‘persona non grata’ even from back then.

Spotlight on Hoover

Notably, J Edgar Hoover, in August 1919, was appointed head of the BOI’s General Intelligence Division, which was also known as the Radical Division, because of its mandate to monitor and disrupt the work of domestic radicals who were deemed a threat to the national security of America. Hoover then goes on to become the deputy head of the BOI in 1921. On May 10, 1924, he is officially appointed as the fifth director of the bureau by incoming president, Calvin Coolidge. In 1935, the BOI becomes the FBI with J Edgar Hoover still at the helm as its director. In 1956 he formulates a covert “dirty tricks” programme, known a s COINTELPRO (Counter Intelligence Program). As well as targeting suspected members of the communist party in the US, such as Charlie Chaplin, he also notably targets Martin Luther King Jr. In the 1960s he notably targets, black leaders and notable black personalities such as Malcolm X, Muhammad Ali, Kwame Ture, (Stokely Carmichael), and leading members of the Black Panther Party, such as Bobby Seale, Huey P Newton and Eldridge Cleaver, eventually becoming successful in the implosion of this notable African American Organization.

So far as Marcus Garvey was concerned, not only did he fatefully become J Edgar Hoover’s first major victim, so to speak; but he also became prey for the deployment of the first-ever black undercover bureau agents courtesy of Hoover. So intent was he on bringing Garvey down that he thought nothing of deploying black agents as undercover operatives to successfully and effectively infiltrate Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), and thus ensure the inevitable impairment of his organisation. The inefficient way in which the Black Star Line Steamship Company was ultimately run, can be largely attributed to undercover black BOI officers, as well as other notable traitors within Garvey’s movement, such as a Joshua Cockburn, the ship captain for the Yarmouth (the first ship purchased for the Black Star Line Steamship Company), and one of the few black men at the time qualified to be a ship’s captain. Cockburn advised Garvey to pay an inflated price of US$165,000 for the ship and then secretly received a kickback payment from the seller of the ship for making such a profitable deal for him. The Yarmouth was a fairly old vessel and actually way past its prime. Garvey, not having prior experience in purchasing ships, relied on and trusted Joshua Cockburn because of his many years of experience in captaining ships.

The mail fraud court case

One of the leading experts on the court case/trial is Justin Hansford, a graduate of Georgetown University Center and is presently a professor of law at Howard University. According to an early article written on the trial (2011, Liberty Hall Street Journal) Justin is able to make the case by analysing the circumstances surrounding the trial and making key legal insights that Marcus Garvey was wrongly convicted, and has thus in effect proved to be a strong proponent in the drive for Marcus Garvey’s posthumous exoneration.

According to Justin, it was in February 1922 that Marcus Garvey, as well as Orlando Thompson, then vice-president of the Black Star Line Steamship Corporation; George Tobias, the treasurer; and Ellie Garcia, the secretary, were all indicted for mail fraud. Immediately after the indictment, the Government seized all the books and records of both Garvey’s UNIA and the Black Star Line Steamship Company .

The trial did not begin until over a year later in May 1923. Garvey notably dismisses his attorneys when they try to enter a plea of guilty. Feeling that these attorneys were setting him up for a legal trap, and intent on professing his innocence, Garvey decided to defend himself. Leaning on the legal knowledge that he was able to amass from attending some law lectures at Birbeck College, University of London, when he was in England in 1912, Garvey does the best that he can to defend himself during the trial.

Hansford points out that that, from the outset of the trial, the courtroom atmosphere was permeated with hostility and scorn. Notably, the trial judge, Julian Mack, jokingly remarked several times that he had to conduct a regular law school for Garvey’s benefit, displaying a certain amount of contempt for Garvey.

Notably, at the end of the trial, Garvey is the only defendant who is convicted, the other three officers of the Black Star Line Steamship Company, being found innocent on all counts. Garvey was ultimately found guilty on just one count (out of a total of 13 initial counts) of using the mail to defraud. For this he was given the maximum penalty under the law, five years imprisonment and a US$1,000 fine, which was a considerable amount of money at that time.

Hansford argues that for one thing Judge Mack should have recused himself from the case because of an obvious bias — that of being a member of the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People (NAACP), which was a rival organisation to Garvey’s and his consistent financial contributions to it.

Of interest is that Garvey had the wherewithal to file a petition for Judge Mack to recuse himself during the trial itself on the grounds that that Mack was a member of the NAACP, an organisation that was one of the leading entities that demanded an investigation into alleged dubious management of the Black Star Line Steamship Company. Judge Mack’s response was to deny the petition for recusal, by sternly denying that he was a member of the NAACP, although he admitted to contributing financially to the organisation and reading its regularly published magazine, The Crisis.

Read Part 2 in tomorrow’s Daily Observer, Monday, February 21, 2022.

Michael Barnett is a sociology lecturer in critical race theory at The University of the West Indies, Mona Campus, and a board member of the National Council on Reparation. Send comments to the Jamaica Observer or barnett37@hotmail.com.