The Age of Garvey: How a Jamaican Activist Created a Mass Movement and Changed Global Black Politics

by Adam Ewing

A groundbreaking exploration of Garveyism's global influence during the interwar years and beyond

Jamaican activist Marcus Garvey (1887-1940) organized the Universal Negro Improvement Association in Harlem in 1917. By the early 1920s, his program of African liberation and racial uplift had attracted millions of supporters, both in the United States and abroad. The Age of Garvey presents an expansive global history of the movement that came to be known as Garveyism. Offering a groundbreaking new interpretation of global black politics between the First and Second World Wars, Adam Ewing charts Garveyism's emergence, its remarkable global transmission, and its influence in the responses among African descendants to white supremacy and colonial rule in Africa, the Caribbean, and the United States.

Delving into the organizing work and political approach of Garvey and his followers, Ewing shows that Garveyism emerged from a rich tradition of pan-African politics that had established, by the First World War, lines of communication among black intellectuals on both sides of the Atlantic. Garvey's legacy was to reengineer this tradition as a vibrant and multifaceted mass politics. Ewing looks at the people who enabled Garveyism's global spread, including labor activists in the Caribbean and Central America, community organizers in the urban and rural United States, millennial religious revivalists in central and southern Africa, welfare associations and independent church activists in Malawi and Zambia, and an emerging generation of Kikuyu leadership in central Kenya. Moving away from the images of quixotic business schemes and repatriation efforts, The Age of Garvey demonstrates the consequences of Garveyism's international presence and provides a dynamic and unified framework for understanding the movement, during the interwar years and beyond.

Genres: History

304 pages, Hardcover

First published August 24, 2014

Reviews

[Lucas Miller · Rating 5 out of 5]

This read very much like an edited doctoral dissertation, but was still highly engaging and readable. I am more interested in the spread of Garveyism in American, but found the extended discussion of African Garveyite organizations and activism to be incredibly illuminating. There is always a bit of cognitive dissonance when you read a work that is challenging interpretations that you are unfamiliar with, but Ewing does an admirable job making specialized information connect to his broader themes and makes seemingly very narrow chapters play into a bigger whole. This was wonderful. This whole series of books seems really cool and engaging, and for the most part really buried. Interested to read more about this topic and from the series as well.

[Renee P · Rating 4 out of 5]

Adam Ewing’s The Age of Garvey: How a Jamaican Activist Created a Mass Movement & Changed Global Black Politics approached black intellectual thought and practice by placing Garvey in the context of his time. Garvey’s journalistic and political rise came about during a time of increased communication and agitation against Black exploitation by whites throughout many Caribbean, African, and American countries. While dense, Ewing’s considerable attention in placing Garvey among his contemporaries highlighted that Garvey’s role in Black intellectual thought was largely organizational. Garvey spread and synthesized ideas, specifically ideas of Pan-Africanism, and created momentum needed to challenge the white supremacy and imperialism so violently maintained. This is not to say that Garvey did not espouse any original ideas or views; rather it seemed his greatest success in global Black politics was to redefine the costs of racism and unchecked (though not for lack of effort) globalized white supremacy.

Garvey’s work with labor organizations sought to weaponize the very thing Black bodies were exploited for in the US and abroad: labor. Even through his rise, his “retreat from radicalism,” and later his recommitment to radical reform efforts, his rhetorical optimism and sureness in eventual karmic retribution of white supremacists was inspiring in both an action-oriented and a higher-road sort of way. Print media played an intensive role in Garvey’s political influence regarding labor as a tool of emancipation and empowerment. He began translating his leadership into advocacy early on, helping to lead a worker’s strike at a large printing shop in Kingston and later using that momentum as secretary of the National Club. His start in labor is especially interesting, given Ewing's later coverage of Garvey's mismanaging of funds contributed by working class and poor Black families.

Even his short-lived organizations, such as the ILDP, called to attention the exploitation of Black labor and resources internationally. Ewing’s focus on aligning Garvey’s work and messaging with the global discourse in and around the First World War lent considerable context to the timeliness of Garvey’s focus on international relations and politics.

[Matthew Rohn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Phenomenal book that links the Garvey movement to a broader international Black and anticolonial politics during the interwar years in the US, Caribbean, and colonized Africa. It covers a lot of ground quickly and is engaging from the jump. Probably best if you have at least a general familiarity with Garvey\UNIA but deep background knowledge isn't necessary

[W.B. Garvey · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent new effort describing the breadth of depth of Marcus Garvey's pan-Africa Movement.