Garvey was born on August 17, 1887, in St. Ann's Bay in the northern part of Jamaica. His father Marcus was a stonemason, and his mother Sarah was a religious woman considered to have high moral values. He was the youngest of 11 children, 9 of whom died during childhood.
His educational background has been questioned by many of his biographers, who tend to be highly skeptical of any information reported by Garvey himself. They agree on the fact that he may have attended the local elementary and grammar schools at St. Ann s Bay, but his claims that he attended universities in England and was privately tutored remain unsubstantiated.
He moved to Kingston and began work in the Jamaican government printery. Later he became publisher of his own newspaper. Our View, and an important tabloid The Watchman. In 1909-1914 Garvey traveled to Panama and Costa Rica, making contact with large numbers of expatriate black West Indians and Jamaicans, and then to London, where he spent 1912-1914 and became acquainted with early Pan Africanists.
Upon return to Jamaica in July 1914, Garvey organized the United Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) to unite all black people and establish “our” country and government. Part of his effort centered on developing black leadership in black colleges, using Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, directed by his friend Booker T. Washington, as a model. When Washington died in 1916, just prior to Garvey’s departure from Jamaica to meet with him, the trip evolved into a 38-state lecture tour and Marcus Garvey did not return to Jamaica until 1927.
While in the United States, Harlem became the center of Garvey’s movement. By 1919, 30 UNIA branches with 2 million members had been established throughout the United States. Total membership exceeded 5 million by 1927. This rapid increase owed much to a weekly publication Garvey initiated in 1919, The Negro World.
At the UNIA convention held in 1920, with 25,000 delegates from the Caribbean, Central America, and the United States, Garvey proclaimed return to Africa as the ultimate goal. The convention drafted a Declaration of Rights of the Negro Peoples of the World demanding self-determination for blacks, political and legal equality, and liberation of Africa.
Garvey’s detractors ranged from racists to black leaders such as W. E. B. Du Bois, to the U.S. government. Du Bois found an opportunity to attack him when the Black Star Line which Garvey had initiated in 1919 failed in 1922, largely as the result of incompetent management, and Garvey was indicted for fraudulent use of the mails, although these charges still remain dubious. Garvey was imprisoned for nearly three years between 1924 and 1927. Upon his release, he was deported to Jamaica.
Back home, Garvey began publishing the Black Man and later the New Jamaican. In 1929 he also founded the People’s Political Party (PPP). Franchise restrictions hampered the PPP, which won no parliamentary seats and only his election to the Kingston Corporation. Garvey was even sentenced to a three months’ imprisonment for a campaign speech attacking fairness of the electoral system. Disillusioned with Jamaica, Garvey departed for London in 1935, where he died, penniless.
In 1964 the government of Jamaica brought his remains back to Jamaica for interment, and proclaimed him a National Hero of Jamaica. In addition, the government of Jamaica placed Garvey’s bust in the Pan American Union building in Washington, D.C., as a representation of their nation’s most important hero.
Garvey founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA). Following the motto "One God! One Aim! One Country!" Garvey sought to have all black people unite and to eventually return to Africa, in a program he called "Back to Africa." He wanted to instill a sense of economic self-sufficiency and racial pride in blacks. The objectives of UNIA were:
1) to establish a universal confraternity among the races; 2) to prompt the spirit of pride and love; 3) to reclaim the fallen; 4) to administer and assist the needy; 5) to assist in civilizing the backward tribes of Africa; 6) to assist in the development of independent Negro nations and communities; 7) to establish commissionaires or agencies in the principals countries and cities of the world for the representation and protection of all Negroes irrespective of nationality; 8) to promote a conscientious spiritual workshop among the native tribes of Africa; 9) to establish universities, colleges, academies and schools for the racial education and culture of the people; 10) to conduct a world-wide commercial and industrial intercourse for the good of the people; and 11) to work for better conditions in all Negro communities.
In 1920, his association held a major convention attended by more than 25,000 delegates from the United States, the Caribbean, and Latin America. The delegates approved the Declaration of Rights of the Negro Peoples of die World, which consisted of a preamble listing 15 grievances faced by blacks around the world and made 54 demands or calls for action advocating for self-determination for blacks.
Garvey was an imposing character, filled with pride and determination. He toured the United States giving speeches in which he advocated pride and self-respect for the black race, and he motivated blacks to work toward self-sufficiency and independence. Dressed in imposing uniforms festooned with gold and glitter, Garvey held elaborate and ornate parades where he proclaimed himself the provisional president of Africa and awarded his members and friends nobility ranks and titles such as "Commander of the Sublime Order of the Nile," and Distinguished Service Order of Ethiopia."
At the age of 32 in 1919, Garvey married his first wife, Amy Ashwood Garvey. Amy Ashwood Garvey was also a founder of The UNIA-ACL. She had saved Garvey in the Tyler assassination by quickly getting medical help. After four months of marriage, Garvey separated from her.
In 1922, he married again, to Amy Jacques Garvey, who was working as his secretary general. They had two sons together, Marcus Mosiah Garvey, III, who was born 17 September 1930, and Julius Winston (born 1933 on the same date), Also had a son named Derrick H. Clowers (born 22 March 1937). Amy Jacques Garvey played an important role in his career, and would become a lead worker in Garvey's movement.
