Entrepreneurial Appetite

Justice For Marcus Garvey: A Conversation with Dr. Julius Garvey

• Julius Garvey • Season 6 • Episode 5

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Uncover the untold legacy of Marcus Garvey with our special guest, Dr. Julius Garvey, son of the iconic leader. Dr. Garvey sheds light on his father's extraordinary journey from Jamaica to becoming a beacon of Black empowerment across the globe. Through personal anecdotes and historical insights, we explore how pivotal events and figures like the Berlin Conference and Booker T. Washington shaped Marcus Garvey's vision, and how this legacy continues to inspire global Black communities today.

Dr. Garvey shares the compelling story of his father's politically charged trial, orchestrated by the FBI to tarnish and criminalize his revolutionary efforts. We dismantle the myths around Garvey, revealing the truth behind the accusations and the ongoing fight to restore his reputation. By drawing parallels with figures like Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, we underscore the persistent struggle against systemic oppression and the urgent need for historical justice and equality.

The episode also broadens its focus to the influence of Black booksellers as cultural bastions, the ideological dynamics between Garvey's organization and the NAACP, and the entrepreneurial spirit that fuels the Garvey legacy. Through contributions from cultural nationalists and legal experts, we revisit the powerful messages of unity and empowerment that Marcus Garvey championed. Dr. Garvey's personal stories and reflections offer a rich narrative on how historical legacies continue to shape modern entrepreneurial journeys and community leadership.

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Speaker 1:

Hey everyone, thank you again for your support of Entrepreneurial Appetite. Beginning this season, we are inviting our listeners to support the show through our Patreon website. The founding 55 patrons will get live access to our monthly discussions for only $5 a month. Your support will help us hire an intern or freelancer to help with the production of the show. Of course, you can also support us by giving us five stars, leaving a positive comment or sharing the show with a few friends. Thank you for your continued support. All right, everybody.

Speaker 1:

Once again, this is Dr Langston Clark, the founder and organizer of Entrepreneurial Appetite, a series of events dedicated to building community, promoting intellectualism and supporting Black businesses. And today I have the special honor of having Dr Julius Garvey here to talk about his edited book Justice for Marcus Garvey. Look for Me in the Worldwind. And as I was saying before, I hit the record button that I was really honored to have the opportunity to read the book.

Speaker 1:

And my mother had this picture of your father in my house growing up on the Schomburg Institute. You know, the classic photo of your dad with the hat. Yeah, yeah. So ever since I was a little kid I was like Mom I want that picture when I grow up. So when I got married my mom sent me that picture as one of my wedding gifts and when people walk in my house that photograph of your dad Well, I guess it's a painting now they painted that picture of your dad they walk into my house it's the first thing people see, so you're connected.

Speaker 1:

Oh yeah, and I have a cousin who lives in Buffalo who has got a Garvey identity. He's a hardcore pan-Africanist and so even from his father, my uncle Herb, all of the influences of Marcus Garvey, even a lot of ways running my family. His dad was in a nation of Islam and those influences there, and so I would say it was just a great honor to read this book and to have you here on the podcast. And before we get started into the content of the book, tell us a little bit about who you are before we start talking about who your father was.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, well, basically I'm the second son of Marcus and Amy Garvey and my older brother, marcus Jr. He passed away two years ago. So I'm the surviving son of Marcus and Amy Garvey. Basically, I'm retired at the present time. My career was a doctor, a surgeon, a cardiovascular and vascular surgeon. I retired about five years ago and I'm sort of taking it easy, as you can see behind me there. I read a lot, I'm reading books and doing a little writing. So that's kind of well. Yeah, I should say I have three kids and three grandkids. So a wife, three kids and three grandkids.

Speaker 1:

So that's me in a nutshell, that's wonderful, and you know we hear so much about black icons and you know a week almost a week from when we're recording this episode is MLK Day. We hear a lot about Rosa Parks. We hear a lot about black Americans right who have made contributions to the uplift of black folks not only nationally but globally. I think we lose sight of who Marcus Garvey is and who he was. People may have known the name, but I think we don't really know him, and so could you tell us a little bit about who your father was, why he remains being this important figure in Black history, not only in the United States but really globally?

Speaker 2:

Basically, my dad was born in Jamaica, west Indies, 1887. So, as you probably know, 1884, 1885, with the Berlin Conference, when the insider on the table in Berlin and divided up the African continent, so that was the beginning of colonialism. And you know, 1838 was the end of slavery in the Caribbean. Of course, in the United States it didn't end until 1865. But you know, so that was the period in terms of which my father grew up and he traveled extensively through the Caribbean and through Europe and came to the United States. But he founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Community League in 1914. After he got back to Jamaica and, as he said, when he traveled around the world as a young man he was in his twenties and when he traveled around the world he saw that Africans were at the bottom of everything and representation. As I mentioned, he had been through the Caribbean, south America, central America, et cetera, europe, and it came to him in a revelation, shall we say, as a matter of fact, he was on the boat coming back from Southampton, england, to Jamaica, laying on his bunk, thinking about these things, everything that he had seen, what he had learned about Africa, et cetera. It came to him that he's the one that had to do something about elevating the status of African people. So when he got back to Jamaica he founded the UNIACL I'll just use the acronym there, but that was 1914. He was also influenced by Booker T Washington because he read Booker T's book Up From Slavery and we had corresponded with Booker T. Booker T died in 1915, so he wasn't able to meet him.

Speaker 2:

But he up to the States in 1916 in order to get a closer look at Tuskegee Institute, because he saw that that was something that he could do in Jamaica to help to elevate, you know, the status of Jamaicans there, beginning, shall we say, the industrialization process from the ground up in terms of skill strengthening and education. So that was his purpose initially in coming to the United States and he came. Major Moten was then head of Tuskegee visited him and he visited, you know, all over the United States. He traveled through 38 states in one year because that's how he gained information. He read books, but he also was the first kind of knowledge person. So he went through 38 states all over the South and North of the United States On his own down show. He stayed in one year to get an understanding of the status of African people in the United States of America.

Speaker 2:

Anyway, with all of his travels, et cetera, it ended up that there was a need for him here and a lot of people wanted him to stay. He was based in Harlem, usa, new York, usa, and a lot of people wanted to stay and reform a branch of the organization here when he formed the branch, but he wanted to go back to Jamaica, but again the need was here, so they enticed him to stay. So then they the center of the organization, shall we say, was then moved to Harlem and the organization then, you know, grew from there. And from then, 1917 onwards, let's say 1920, when he had the first convention of the Negro people of the world, which was a massive convention with, you know, more than 2,000 delegates from all over the world, the organization grew by leaps and bounds because it met the needs of African people at that time, particularly, let's say, here in the United States. Because if you look at the historical period, this was just after the First World War in 1914, 1918, which was a war that was so-called fought for democracy. But what was happening at that time was that there was a significant movement of African-Americans from the South to the North because of the need. America was being industrialized at the time there was a need because of the war effort, young white Americans were going abroad. So there was a need for people to fill their places up north in the factories, in the industry to make the guns, the factories and the industry to make the guns, to make the bullets, to make the uniforms, et cetera, et cetera.

Speaker 2:

So if you look at the period from, say, 1915 to a decade after that, 1925, more than a million African-Americans moved to the north. So instead of doing the sharecropping and the Jim Crow in the south, they moved north. And then now you had a different, shall we say, kind of African-American meaning. You know, instead of being agrarian, it was a city life, shall we say. And so this was something novel, this was a change, and instead of African-Americans being isolated on the farm, so this being now, they were congregated in cities around you know, jobs where they were working. So you had this movement to, you know, chicago, detroit, philadelphia, new York, et cetera, and that was the development of the ghetto, because again, it was down South and it was up North. There were restrictions, just as much as there were in the South, and you know, what was on the minds of African-Americans at the time was to develop independent communities of African people, you know, living as they saw themselves within the confines of their own culture.

Speaker 2:

Again, this was a period, 1917, there was the atrocity in East St Louis. I'm sure you know the story and you can remember that, when white people essentially massacred black people because they wanted a lily-white town. 1919 was the Red Summer. We had riots, sound-raised riots, in Chicago and Philadelphia and Detroit, etc. You know, again, white people attacking black people because they didn't want them in their neighborhoods or what have you. All the way up to 1921, when the famous Tulsa, oklahoma, you know Black Wall Street and the burnt town there.

Speaker 2:

So blacks were trying to live independently within their own community and this was the ideology of Marcus Garvey independence and self-development. And that appealed to the mind and spirit of the African-American because they'd been living under Jim Crow racism, I mean, they were still being lynched At that time. The Klan was running riots in the South and you know, the government of the US could conceivably be said to be run by the Klan because, you know, nobody was reining them in. The Klan grew exponentially, shall we say, during that period After the First World War, people were being lynched, more than you know, one a week, shall we say, to terrorize the African-Americans. I mean, people were being, you know, lynched, even coming back from World War I in uniform, but this was the status. I mean, there was a lot of friction, if you want to put it that way, between the races, caused by the ideology of white supremacy and not knowing quotes what to do with the Negro, inner Merkel, the Negro question, so to speak. There were different ways to look at that and to, shall we say, plan in terms of how it's dealt with on a day-to-day basis or ideologically, as I mentioned, I think most African-Americans wanted, you know, independent self-development communities, and that's what you had in places like Rosewood and so on, and that's what Marcus Garvey preached, if you want to call it that, that's what the UNIA stood for and that's why it was such a popular organization. Now, there are other points of view.

Speaker 2:

At that time 1914 and 1917, was the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, so that we now had communism as an alternative to capitalism, and communism was, you know, a global entity, just like capitalism was a global entity, and communism was created to, shall we say, overturn capitalism. So there were those within the African-American community who saw communism or socialism as a way for the black man to make a way for himself in the United States, sort of a class brotherhood, so to speak, as if to say there would not be prejudice despite the ideology of socialism, anyway. So that was one group. And then the socialist, and part of that group was the African blood brotherhood they call themselves. They were, shall we say, diehard communists.

Speaker 2:

And then the third group really at that time was the NAACP, which had started in 1910. People such as W Du Bois, pickens and so on were leaders within the NAACP and the idea behind them was that integration is a movement. You know, the movement had been started by the white philanthropists, was supported by white philanthropists. Many of the leaders were whites who were favorable, shall we say, to African-Americans. So those were the three ideologies that were vying for prominence among African-Americans at the time.

Speaker 2:

As I mentioned, people were most accepting of the Garvey ideology, the UNIA ideology, which is self-development their own human dignity, shall we say, which is self-development, their own human dignity, shall we say, and development along their own cultural lines, because they had had 250 years of enslavement and they were in another 100 years of Jim Crow and sharecropping.

Speaker 2:

So they wanted their own communities and again that was the Garvey ideology.

Speaker 2:

So there was a battle for the mind, plan and arts of African-Americans at that time and you know that led to dialogue, shall we say, and some antagonism within the black community itself between these three groups and also, at the same time, because of the strength of the government movement, the UNIA, that caught the eye of what was to become the FBI, j Edgar Hugo, who was a young lawyer who had just been appointed to the Justice Department and set up a department that would become the FBI, looking for subversives or people who were, shall we say, in some way considered to be dangerous to the status quo.

Speaker 2:

So back in 1919, marcus Garvey caught his eye. We have that internal memo that said there's a Negro up in Harlem, a Negro agitator up in Harlem, marcus Garvey. He hadn't done anything yet for us to, you know, get him out of the country. But we have to keep an eye on him and find something on him to get rid of him. So that was the start of the FBI and the hired first black agents to infiltrate the organization etc. And you know, from then on it was an attempt to, shall we say, destroy the organization or destroy Marcus D'Ari as a leader of the organization, and you know we can go deeper into that, but that was the foundation leading up to the 20s.

Speaker 1:

This is related to what you just ended. Talk about the motivation for writing the book and your efforts to clear your father's name.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, but you know, basically, and again going back to the tragedy, if you will, because of the antagonism and because of JD Hoover and the FBI, they brought charges against Marcus Garvey for using the mails to defraud relative to the Black Star Line, which was a shipping line that the UNIA had started at, and they brought charges against him. He was convicted in court, he was imprisoned, et cetera, and again we can get back to that and deal with it in more detail. But what that did effectively was to criminalize a man who was leading an organization of more than 6 million people worldwide. So this was an organization that was within the United States, you could call it a civil rights organization, some people call it black nationalism but outside of the United States it was an anti-colonialist organization. It took aim, shall we say, at the colonization of Africa, and the motivation of the organization was Africa for the Africans, those that were abroad, and to colonize Africa and eventually free all of Africa again for Africans, as opposed to, you know, the French and the English and the Belgians, etc. Who had colonized Africa. So it was an anti-colonial as well as an anti-imperialist and an anti-apartheid organization, an anti-imperialist and an anti-apartheid organization.

Speaker 2:

What has happened since then of course, when you criminalize somebody, the judicial opinion, shall we say, becomes the basis of history. You see, when somebody says, oh, marcus Garvey, oh, he was the guy that committed fraud and he was in prison, so that's the first thing about the person that you think about. If you know that he was a criminal, so his reputation has been distorted over the years, of course widely in the United States, because, you know, there was really no evidence and everybody knows that the trial was a political trial, no fraud was committed and no evidence was put before the jury and there was perjury, etc. And of course, he's honored worldwide. And you know, he's the first national hero of Jamaica, he's a hero of the Organization of American States, ofco, which is a 32-member organization. You know, in terms of Latin America, the United States, canada, etc. As far as in Africa, there's statues all over the place, roads are named after him and so on and so forth. So he's honored worldwide.

Speaker 2:

But the point is that when you criminalize somebody, the other thing that happens is that the way in which history is written, it's written from the perspective of this judicial decision. That is honored, that is validated in the minds of people. Yes, you know, the court said so and so and so, therefore, it must be true. So the person that is looked through at the lens of a criminal and that distorts everything else about the person that you're looking at. So you know.

Speaker 2:

So we've been involved in an attempt to clear his name for many years, certainly myself personally, but of course you know the protest started right from that time, when he was in prison, back in the 20s. He was in prison in 1925. The sentence was handed down in 1923. And there were significant protests, as a matter of fact, to the extent where the incoming president, calvin Coolidge, commuted the sentence in 1927. After he had served three years, he was supposed to serve five years, after he had served three years, and then, of course, he was deported from the United States as an illegal alien or undesirable alien. I should say so you know, that's the background to that. So you know that's the background to that.

Speaker 2:

But the idea of the book is to correct the misperceptions that have been rampant, shall we say, because, you know, the whole idea of the trial and the persecution has been to deny the efforts of, you know, africans to evade themselves, not just within the American society but worldwide. Because, as you know, even today, when you know colonialism, shall we say, has been defeated to some extent, meaning that there are 55, you know different independent countries in Africa and in the Caribbean, there are 15 or so independent countries in the majority African population, but we still have neocolonialism in terms of the countries still being under the domination of the Euro-American system. And it's not just a matter of capitalism per se, but it's a pernicious system that doesn't really honor the average human being, whether it's an elitist system that doesn't function for the masses, it functions for an elite group. So that is still extant and it still needs to be rectified. Because, after all, what is life about? It's supposed to be about, you know, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for everybody, not just for, you know, the top 1% or top 5%. So the struggle continues from that perspective and there are people who identify with that struggle.

Speaker 2:

So the system that as it has developed, continues to deny that group of people who would change the way the society is developed. And you can see it subsequently with Martin Luther King, who understood Marcus Garvey's efforts in that direction in terms of civil rights. You can see it with Malcolm X, you can see it with the Panthers, huey Newton and so on. All those people have been executed over time and their only crime has been standing up for the black community. So this has been a problem within the United States and, of course, outside of the United States, we have had many African leaders who have been assassinated.

Speaker 2:

You know the word is regime change. You know, if they don't go away with a pocket full of money, then they get assassinated. So, but the regime change all the way from Patrice Lumumba up to Mandela and so on. So these things are rampant and these are things that Marcus Garvey stood against in terms of attempting to unify African people worldwide, because the system is a universal system, it's not just an American system, it's a Euro-American system, meaning that it's England, it's Europe, it's Australia and now it includes Japan in that sense. But those are the people who are hegemonic in terms of world domination. So the rest of us, shall we say, are fighting against that, continue to fight against that, locally, within the United States, or nationally, I should say within the United States, but internationally as well.

Speaker 2:

So the struggle continues and this is why you know it's been difficult to get to know who Marcus Garvey is and the only thing that you know about him is a distorted image that, okay, he was a criminal or he went to jail or okay, he had a bad traffic movement, as if to say that was the solution of Marcus Garvey for the problem of the Negro, if you will, the Negro problem. Put everybody in a ship and take them back to Africa. No such thing I mean. The Black Star Line was created for international commerce between Africa, the Caribbean and the United States. Of course people could travel back and forth and of course people needed to go to Africa to help to develop Africa. But it was not a simplistic, one-shot organization or policy. It was an international policy and it was comprehensive in terms of governmental development, civil rights and again, governmental development and Caribbean civil rights here in the United States. And again, also, you know autonomous governments in Africa and you know, you know autonomous governments in Africa.

Speaker 1:

And you know it's interesting, before we started recording, I told you that the image of your father that I have from my childhood is this picture that my mom got from the Schomburg Institute, where it's your dad in the classic, the big tall hat that he has on and he's got a military type suit. And so for me, the image I have of Marcus Garvey growing up is it isn't even his story of what he tried to do or how he was. He has been historically misrepresented through his conviction. It's that picture, it's not even the story behind it.

Speaker 1:

So I think it's interesting that there's, I think there's two ways for some folks and how they, how they've received Marcus it's, it's the narrative or it's the image, and the image I have of him, although it doesn't clearly, doesn't tell the whole story, that's a very regal image of your dad. I'm wondering because and I would say the thing that I love about this book going back to that image, because for me it's like, yeah, I know who Marcus Garvey is, but I didn't know who Marcus Garvey was until I read this book and there's so much information in here about him, who he was and what he was trying to do, and I really appreciated that you got the perspective of contributors who are in different fields, different backgrounds, and I'm wondering if you could tell us a little bit about how you chose, and why you chose a certain people to be featured in the book.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, obviously, in that sense I chose people who knew about Mark Garvey and who, shall we say, were Garveyites in that sense, who absorbed his ideology and had promoted it over the years. I mean, for example, somebody like Amolana Karenga. Karenga is, I think, he comes out of the Garvey School. As you know, you can call him a cultural nationalist and that's an essence or significant part of what Garvey was doing. And he came out. Karenga came out of the 60s, you know, I think he formed his group, but the holiday that he has created I think he created it back in 1906, kwanzaa, but he formed this group in that period of time promoted, shall we say, an ideology that is the same as Garvey's ideology Culture is everything, and Coringa has promoted that significantly and especially with linking our culture to its roots, meaning its Kemetic roots. And now about the civilization, which I think is of extreme importance, because, as you know, europe, and indeed the Arab world as well, has been trying to take Egypt away from us, considering that there was either some white people that came from somewhere or aliens that came from somewhere who created the Egyptian civilization. And, of course, you know, egypt has always been in Africa, has always been a part of Africa but they try to consider it as a part of the Near East or some such nonsense. And Arabs didn't get there until 700 AD and white folks didn't get there until maybe about 500 BC or 600-something BC. So it's definitely an African civilization and the most prominent civilization. And I said, coringa's reminded us of that, and I think that's of significant importance because an essence of Garbism was his approach to culture. You mentioned the hat with the plumes and the dress and so on. Well, you know he always wore a three-piece suit, he was always well-dressed. Did you see any other pictures of him? The way in which the organization was set up? They had different honorific titles, like Duke of the Nile and so on and so forth, who had done significant things within the organization. And you know they had significant cultural events at the Liberty Hall on the weekends, you know, saturday and Sunday, etc. So culture was a significant part of that. So that's why somebody like Nolana Coringo I asked him to participate and he gave us a really great chapter in the book.

Speaker 2:

Of course, then there's somebody like Justin Answell, and Justin is an amazing, you know, legal person. I was at Howard University in the law department. There he was involved with UNESCO and he has a similar upbringing to you. He kind of grew up in a Garvey household. He learned about Garvey at home, again in the sort of periphery of growing up, you know, not through a curriculum at school, but Garvey was in the air, so to speak, and in his home and again, that's very much like Malcolm X grew up. Malcolm X's and both his parents were Garveyites and they used to take him to the Garvey meetings in Michigan etc.

Speaker 2:

And I've known Justin over the years and Justin has done an independent book about the trial itself, showing all the illegalities of the trial. You know a judge that should have recused himself because he was a member of the rival organization. You know he could subscribe to it financially as well. He read their newspaper which had several articles that vilified Marcus Garvey. Clearly, legally he should have recused himself. And he even lied and said that he didn't support financially support the NAACP. So anyway, like I said, justin had a significant legal background and he studied the trial and he just pointed out all of the shortcomings the fact that there was no evidence, the fact that it was a single envelope with nothing in it and one had to imagine that something was in it that would incriminate Marcus Garvey. This is negative evidence. I mean there's no, there's no evidence. And the main witness perjured himself in terms of saying that he worked at the UNIA and was responsible for mailing this particular envelope when it turned out that he never worked at the UNIA at that particular time when they were talking about it, in 1921. And it was the prosecuting attorney that told him to save these dates. So you have perjury and an attorney who courts the witness in perjury. All of that should have been trials should have been thrown out. It should have been a retrial if that was documented in there.

Speaker 2:

And then there are other people who are chosen because, again, the way in which they have come to know about you know Marcus Garvey, the way in which they have come to know about you know Marcus Garvey, like Patrick News, the editor, kyle Rodney, and his whole saga in terms of over the years, you know, friend with Arabella Fonte and so on, and that relationship and how Garvey was a part of that relationship, in terms of their understanding the difficulties of living in America and being self-respecting because it was a dehumanizing environment. So you have that and of course we have also the legal firm that has represented us over the years, akin Gump, our pro bono, for the last 15 years we've been at it. I mean, you know, I've been at it since 1987. People, they've been there tooth and nail making presentations, first of all studying the trial and then making, you know, presentations, first of all to Obama, back in 2016, at the end of his second term, so, and then, of course, to Biden, you know, from 21, 2021 onwards, 2022, 2023, 2024. So they know the whole political process that we have gone through. I mean, they've been at the forefront of it. So, again, that's why they were chosen.

Speaker 2:

And then we have others, that many people, when they talk about Marshall Gabbard here in the United States, it was, oh, he was deported in 1927. And it's as if he fell off the planet and nothing has happened. Well, people who tell us about what he did in Jamaica. You know he formed the first political party there. He formed the first political, the first labor union. He was elected to the city council, and on and on. Of course, you know the British government hounded him, et cetera, and he was imprisoned there and again for contempt of court and forth against the charges, and so on and so forth. So he had a whole life and he laid the foundation for Jamaican independence. So all of that is also told in the book.

Speaker 2:

Well, when he migrated to London in 1935, that period is discovered up until his death in 1940. So we have a panorama. We have somebody like Adam Ewing who has documented the effect, shall we say, of Garvey-Garveyism around the world, particularly in Africa, in Africa, south Africa, in the Congo, in Kenya, in Malawi and on and on and on, to show how it was foundational in the anti-colonial movements in all of these countries and certainly relationships with, you know, kwame Nkrumah, joma Kenyatta, Lumumba Mandela and so on and so forth. So I think, as you have said, there's a lot of information there. For anybody who doesn't know who Marcus Garvey was, he can read that book and get a very good grounding and dimensions of Marcus Garvey and Garveyism.

Speaker 1:

I'm going to say this as we're in January. I'm a reader. My goal in life is to have bookshelves like yours in my house. I need to get books all over the house. That's. That's literally like my life. I can't buy any more books. That's what I want. I want. This is what I want when I'm your age. I want my wife to tell me I can't buy any more books, and we've only been married four years, but I told her I want a house full of books.

Speaker 1:

So in February, black History Month this year is going to be dedicated to really like learning more about Marcus Garvey, his philosophy and reading other texts and seeing if I can find documentaries about your dad, because, like you said, this book is actually a really good entry point into learning about who Marcus Garvey was and what happened to him, and I think it's important. Books to me are really really important part of my life and I'm wondering why it was important to have entire sections of the book that was dedicated to booksellers, part of this initiative to help clear your dad's name. But also what I thought was interesting was how they were working together and kind of going back to the whole thing that your dad was trying to do and even thinking about. You know Kwanzaa, the spirit of cooperative economics.

Speaker 2:

Talk a little bit about those booksellers who were part of this effort. I love that. That has to do with Paul Coates. You know Black Classic Press and Paul introduced me also to broadly both the publisher of this book. You know Paul has been in the publishing business and bookselling business for ages, so he's the man, shall we say, in that area. So we have been friends over the years and of course he has a very interesting son, ta-nehisi Coates. Ta-nehisi wrote the foreword.

Speaker 2:

You know booksellers are the mainstay of the Black. You know booksellers are the mainstay of the Black community. I remember when I, you know, came to the US first and part of what I did was I did part of my residency surgery at Harlem Hospital and of course I used to go on 125th Street there and there's a bookstore there I can't remember the name of the guy but it was famous and you know I used to go roaming in there and I used to buy. You know all my books then about, you know, by John Henry Clark and Dr Ben Stolen. You know you'd talk to people and they'd tell you have you read this book or read that book? And it was kind of like the barbershop in a way, you know, a cultural center. So I do have an affinity for booksellers in that sense. And of course, the Harlem House goes right next door to the Schomburg, so I used to go over to the Schomburg. Anyway, yes, black booksellers are the mainstay of how we get educated Because, as you know, very often the libraries and the bookstore the mainstream libraries and bookstores don't carry relevant books.

Speaker 2:

They may carry sanitized books about us or they may carry books that are outright propaganda against us. You know, telling us that we're in there for anybody, et cetera, et cetera, which they tried to do. As I mentioned, they tried to take Egypt, you know, out of Africa and put it in the Middle East, or some foolishness like that. As a matter of fact, if you go to Columbia University now and you want to study about Egypt, I think you have to go to the section that teaches you about the Middle East. It's not in the African section. It's a very, very important. People like Haki Madibuchi and so on over the years have known him as well. So you know, all you know is Mr Black Bookseller, mr Black Publisher. We are very happy to have them on board and they're very much helped with spreading the word in terms of getting petition out there to Biden Over the last couple of years they've been very instrumental and you know they're carrying our books and that's of extreme importance.

Speaker 1:

As I mentioned, I'm a reader and even in our conversation, before I hit the record button, I read this book and you know I was hurt because I didn't realize that so much of what happened to your father was because of the undermining of other Black organizations and Black individuals. Can you talk a little bit about what was going on and you talked about it before what was going on with these competing ideas, competing individuals and ideologies about what should happen to black folks as we move forward? But then also, how do we wrestle with that history? Because I know a lot about NAACP and the good work that they've done, but I'm like, have we been better off? It was you and I, like your dad's organization and so like, just just talk a little bit more about that, because I'm like man, I want to go talk to NAACP people where I live and be like yo. Can we have a conversation about this and how do we make it right?

Speaker 2:

you know, yeah, yeah, yeah. I think that's of extreme importance, you know, and that brought out very clearly in the book. Particularly Justin Antwood has brought that out very clearly in terms of the competing groups and unfortunately, it took on many different colors, shall we say, because one of the, shall we say, differences that was emphasized really was the fact that, you know, marcus Garvey was from the Caribbean, he was a Jamaican, he was not native-born American. So there was that difference, if you will, a perceived difference, on the part of Black Americans. Marcus Garvey is a foreigner and here he is coming and now we have this organization in a few years, much bigger than anything that we have, because what was happening at that time? For example, the NAACP was losing members. You know, people were just simply joining the Gavi. Like I said, it was more than 6 million member-based organizations, 6 million members, more than that Never happened before and never happened since. Okay, in terms of black people, that's right. So there was that competition. Same thing with the newspaper the Negro World. It had the highest circulation, weakest circulation and you know, it had its editorials in Spanish and in French, reached all over the world. No other black newspaper did that. I did mention some of this before.

Speaker 2:

The point is that it became very, very personal on the basis of one immigrants On the basis of two. Marcus Garvey looked like me I'm a black man and obviously quotes a Negro. Whatever that Negro is supposed to mean, it means that I'm African, it means that I'm one of the original human beings that God created. You know, and I'm very, very proud of that, you know, some people, because of their miseducation, because of an inferiority complex that had been instilled in them by white supremacy and enslavement over years, thought that light skin or aquiline features was something to be proud of, as opposed to looking like the phenotypical black man. So you know that was one of the things Du Bois called the fact of the black man. Somebody else called him one of the socialists did the same thing with protruding jaws, and you know that kind of thing.

Speaker 2:

So you could see the self-hate that was present in some of these so-called leaders are black people. So that was another aspect of it. And then there was the ideological. So it got very personal Again. The other aspect of aspect was that Marcus Harvey didn't have a PhD from Harvard and some people you know Du Bois had a PhD and he had gone to school in Berlin and he had this idea of the talented 10. So he was an elitist black person, a bougie. Now, marcus Harvey was not that, he was a servant leader. The others didn't understand what that meant to be a servant leader. So there were these differences. Now these differences, you know, did not have to create a divide, allowed to discuss them openly and make their own choices, which people were doing.

Speaker 2:

But the antagonistic group, shall we say, developed a group among themselves, the Garvey Must Go group. I think there are eight or so signatures to this Garvey Must Go, a letter that was sent to the district attorney to get rid of Garvey. This is self-defeating when a group of Negro organizations would try to destroy another Negro organization by using the group of people who are oppressing both. Yeah, you see how ridiculous. That is Crazy. You know, you're asking the white man to do your dirty work for you as a Black organization because you couldn't stand up to the other black organization on your own, two feet, openly, and again, of course, somewhat prejudiced I'd say. But you know, my dad, when he came to the United States, went to all of these so-called leaders looking for callers and so on and so forth, and Du Bois debated him, du Bois would never, you know, speak to him, so to speak, he always saw him as somebody who was a French person, whereas he was this Harvard graduate and even the elite of Black Americans. So there was that. So there was the arrogance and the narrowness in terms of ego. So those things played a part and that's a psychological analysis from my perspective, but I think it's pretty true. And because of that, there was this undermining Instead of an open discussion, and then the Black community then going in the direction in which they felt they should go, without any prejudice against any other group. This is what we want to do and this is the leadership that we're going to follow. That was not the case and because of that now again, I don't need to denigrate any particular group per se.

Speaker 2:

Over time, the NAACP has shown itself exceptionally in terms of it carrying forward its legal brief. It's been a very good organization standing up for civil rights from the legal perspective and clearly I got the civil rights legislation in 64, voting rights in 65, etc. And it's done great work along those lines. But in terms of community development, which is what the Marcus Garvey effort was all about, nobody has taken care of that. The socialists haven't, the NAACP hasn't, maybe the Urban League has tried.

Speaker 2:

But what's the status of black communities at the present time? Black communities are in disarray. They're ghettos, you know. We kill each other in the black communities and we steal from each other. And how many of us are in prison? Or how many of us are impoverished With the black population? We are 40% of the prison population, when we only make up 15% of the general population.

Speaker 2:

So the organization, shall we say, that has so-called triumphed, if you will have not done that good a job. There have been some improvements, yes, but fundamentally we have number one we have to respect ourselves as African people. So this business of if you don't look like a white person, you're not, you know, acceptable within polite society, it's really nonsense, it's self-hate. You know, and it's part of the miseducation that Dr G Woodson told us about. If you go to these universities and you learn the same ethics and you learn the same economics and you learn the same religion as the white people that have oppressed you, how are you going to turn out to be any different from the white people that have oppressed you? You can't. You're learning the same things that they have learned and they're teaching you, so you end up being just like them, and then you find somebody else to oppress. So you know, I'm not impressed by the PhDs of people in Narcissus, I wasn't impressed by the PhDs of these people etc.

Speaker 1:

We're going to ask the last question. One, thank you for joining us here on Entrepreneur Appetite and sharing your father's story and sharing your story and the efforts to clear your father's name. And because we have Origins as a book club, which is obvious, because we have your book here edited about your father, I want to know for the folks in the book club if there was an additional section or theme or group of people that you may have wanted to write about your father in a book.

Speaker 2:

What would that have been if you had more time or more space and to begin with, I wanted to write a full script on dealing with some of what we just we're just talking about because of the dialogue within the black community was not completed a hundred years ago because of the subversion by different ideological groups. We still have not had that dialogue in terms of what is the way in which the Black community should develop within the United States I'm not talking specifically within the United States, because Pan-Africanism taken off around the world again because of the independence movements in Africa and in the Caribbean. Within the United States, what is the status of African-Americans? What should the status of African-Americans be? What should be their ideological approach to living as a minority within America, honoring their culture and their own humanity, as well as history and traditions? That dialogue was not finished at that point in time and now we still have to have that dialogue at the present time Because, there's no question, a lot of us have been seduced, because we've been able to move up into the talented tents, because of our own achievements, you know, academic or economic, as entrepreneurs or athletes, et cetera, et cetera, and we're less the ghetto, shall we say.

Speaker 2:

But you know, the majority of our people are still, shall we say, ghettoized, if you will. Our communities are not thriving. Our communities, if you look at the statistics, the bottom of all the statistics are not just wealth. You know the average. You know European, american is seven times the wealth of us. But you know mortality rates, infant mortality, maternal mortality, suicides, violent deaths. You know teenagers problems and so on and so forth. All of those statistics show a significant difference between black community and the white community. So we're still disadvantaged. There's no diversity, equity and inclusion, and you can see that that's being trampled upon even more. So we need that discussion. So that would be a chapter that I would want to put in there.

Speaker 1:

Thank you, dr Garvey.

Speaker 2:

Thank you much Okay thanks, it's a pleasure, okay, and that's an interesting story about my dad's picture. I you much. Okay, langston, it's a pleasure, okay, and that's an interesting story about my dad's picture. I appreciated that, thank you.

Speaker 1:

Thank you for joining this edition of Entrepreneurial Appetite. If you liked the episode, you can support the show by becoming one of our founding 55 patrons, which gives you access to our live discussions and bonus materials, or you can subscribe to the show. Give us five stars and leave a comment.