Selected Writings and Speeches of Marcus Garvey

by Marcus Garvey

Book Overview

One of the most important and controversial figures in the history of race relations in America and the world at large, Marcus Garvey was the first great black orator of the twentieth century. The Jamaican-born African-American rights advocated dismayed his enemies as much as he dazzled his admirers. Of him, Martin Luther King, Jr., said, "He was the first man, on a mass scale and level, to give millions of Negroes a sense of dignity and destiny,...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0486437876
• ISBN13: 9780486437873
• Release Date: January 2005
• Publisher: Dover Publications
• Length: 194 Pages
• Weight: 0.40 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.2" x 8.2"

Customer Reviews

Marcus Garvey

I found this interesting and motivating. I learned so much about Mr. Marcus Garvey from his speeches. All were in context and little narratives were given about where and what he was doing and situations that occured in the background which lead to some of the speeches. It was a little heavy reading at times and took me a while to get through flimsey a book as it is. But worth a read, it's a huge page in black history. .

Historically Fascinating Visions in Need of Getting Adjusted to the New Times

The title should have made clear that the selected speeches and writings of Marcus Garvey cover his years in the US only, from 1917-25. It is very rewarding, from a historical point of view, to read authentic words of that most important public figure, so much has been said, written, and filmed about. Especially, since Garvey remains very controversial and a lot has been misinterpreted to this day. Maybe as a result of the limited time frame covered, some speeches and writings are lacking, which Garvey is most famous for. Among these are more direct references of Ethiopia and her coming King of kings; that Jesus was black-skinned; Garvey's stand on contemporary emerging africanist prophets in the Caribbean and the US. Considering that the introduction avers that Garvey in some twisted way made positive remarks towards Mussolini and Hitler, the corresponding proof of that is most definitely missing in this book, I might say. All these omissions are responsible for the subtraction of a star in my rating. The still high rating has to be seen in providing authentic texts by Garvey himself, not necessarily that I share all the views of Garvey. This is not a book BY Garvey, but a compilation of his speeches/articles, made available to the public. To make that clear: I venerate Marcus Garvey for that what he pushed forward, for challenging the racist system, for following up his visions, for being a human of action, for organising incredible international work and for his martyrdom of the contemporary racist judicial system of the US. Still, he is a product of his times and as RastafarI I am very much aware that both, lacking knowledge and the system's conditioning of all sorts of separation cannot be overcome on a single day or in fact, in a single generation. It is important to enter that path at all. Therefore, some of Garvey's visions and speeches are very much up to date, others are hilariously outdated. In fact, very racist. I am not talking about his vision of "black supremacy", because that is, what is usually said about him (and wrongly interpreted). I am talking about his belief in races, down to the point of actively and sort of forcibly thinking about preventing a "mixing of races", in fact by that agreeing with the KKK, with which he held a meeting (and elaborates on in this book). His vision of very literal repatriation of all the black-skinned to Africa has since been re-interpreted to a metaphorical return of the mind. His fighting for the use of that certain N-word instead of "Coloreds" is most certainly not top of the political correctness as of today, but in a way mirrors interestingly today's controversy of "Black" v "African American". Also, the use of extremely derogatory racist vocabulary hurled at his direct black civil rights rivals is most certainly unacceptable in today's world. In fact, Garvey makes it clear that he thinks of those rivals, such as W.E.B. DuBois as worse enemies than all the white supremacists imaginable. W