Marcus Garvey isn’t much of a public figure in the U.S. these days. If this were 1923 instead of 2023, however, you’d know who he was. By examining some Marcus Garvey quotes and other statements, we can learn about why he was important and what the U.S. was like when Garvey’s influence was at its peak.

To be honest, I’ve always enjoyed learning about Marcus Garvey. Not necessarily because I think he was a great man or that everything he said was prescient, but because he wasn’t afraid to challenge the prevailing attitudes of his day. Furthermore, Garvey went beyond words and into the realm of action with his ideas. The fact that his movement ultimately failed makes it no less interesting or informative.

Marcus Garvey was born in Jamaica but made a name for himself in Harlem during the 1910s and 1920s. He was colored, and thus was one voice debating the future of Africans Americans in the United States.

Marcus Garvey Quotes – A Sample

Let me give you a flavor of his ideas through the following quotes. (Taken from his speech at Liberty Hall in New York City on March 18 of 1923.)

“All white men in America feel like the Ku Klux Klan, but the only difference is that the Klan is honest enough to give expression to its opinion and carry out its attitude in defiance of any other opposition whilst others are not honest enough to give expression but feel the same way.”

“The white man is going to carry out a program of white supremacy, and there will be absolutely no chance or opportunity between now and eternity for the colored man in America to take an equal place socially, politically, and economically with the white race that dominates. The one alternative is for the Negro not to waste his time and energy and ability in contributing to that which will make the other man great, but to use his energy and ability in contributing to build for himself.”

“William Jennings Bryan (former presidential candidate and Secretary of State for part of the Woodrow Wilson administration) is as big a Klansman as the Imperial Wizard himself.”

“Understand that when any group of white men get together in this country and talk about doing something, you had better get busy and look out for yourselves and don’t think that appeal to humanity or any appeal to their Christian conduct is going to help you; it is not going to do it.”

“Dependent races and dependent nations will be ignored, will be pushed aside, will be weeded out, will be exterminated.”

Explaining the Importance of the Marcus Garvey Quotes

Clearly, Garvey held a low opinion regarding the potential for equality in the U.S. Like many militant figures, he believed that equality must be fought for and earned. What made him different, though, from later civil rights leaders who did exactly that was that Garvey believed in a combination of nationalism and separatism.

He felt that people of color should not want to emulate Whites, and that Whites would never acknowledge Black greatness. His solution, then, was the creation of a movement separate from Whites economically and socially. Eventually, he hoped for political separation as well, preferably in Africa, believing that the historical separation of American Blacks from Africa had hurt their development as a group.

To that end, Garvey created the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) in 1916. It claimed a membership of 3 million people at its height; roughly one of every five Black Americans. It’s debatable if these membership numbers reflected reality, but even if exaggerated, this was still a major achievement. The UNIA used traditional African titles and declared that darker skin was better than lighter. Silly as it might sound now, this was a big deal in the 1920s. At that time, many Blacks attempted to appear more light-skinned, thinking that would help them in White society. Garvey proclaimed the opposite.

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Fate of the UNIA

What makes the organization’s popularity even more remarkable was that all its funding was internal from its members. As you might imagine, the concept of Black separatism was not popular with wealthy White philanthropists. Nor was it favored by most existing African American leaders and organizations.

That separatism also made the UNIA a target. The Justice Department investigated its finances. (The UNIA owned its own businesses to promote its objectives, like the Black Star Line of ships, groceries, laundries, restaurants, and so forth.) The Justice Department indicted UNIA leaders for mail fraud in 1922 and Garvey went to prison a few years later. In 1927, President Calvin Coolidge commuted his sentence and ordered his deportation as an undesirable alien.

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What Garvey’s Career Shows Us About 1920s America

Read over the selection of Marcus Garvey quotes again if you need to. Garvey spoke at length about the KKK. That’s because membership in the Klan exploded in the 1920s. National membership drives pushed its number of followers to several million across the country. Racism, it appeared, was growing more popular rather than less.

The last quote I provided refers to the concept of social Darwinism. (Taking Darwin’s theory of natural selection and applying it to human societies.) But Garvey wasn’t speaking only of ideology. When he made that statement, he pointed to the fate of Native Americans in the U.S. as obvious evidence of its verity.

Another reason I wanted to mention Marcus Garvey and share Marcus Garvey quotes is that people need to know that, at one time, his views held considerable popularity. Many Americans hold a very whitewashed view of the Civil Rights Movement today. We hear about equality, nonviolent protest, “I Have a Dream,” and so on. People tend to forget that more militant views have always existed alongside those we remember more favorably.

And the response of the power structure in the U.S. to those militant organizations hasn’t changed much, either.  After Garvey’s arrest, the UNIA broke apart. Garvey died in obscurity. It calls to mind the fates of other militant organizations such as the Industrial Workers of the World, the Black Panthers, or the later years of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.

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