Negro with a Hat: The Rise and Fall of Marcus Garvey

Colin Grant

Mar 2008 · Oxford University Press

About this ebook

New in paperback, this groundbreaking biography captures the full sweep and epic dimensions of Marcus Garvey's life, the dazzling triumphs and the dreary exile. As Grant shows, Garvey was a man of contradictions: a self-educated, poetry-writing aesthete and unabashed propagandist, an admirer of Lenin, and a dandy given to elaborate public displays. Above all, he was a shrewd promoter whose use of pageantry evoked a lost African civilization and fired the imagination of his followers. Negro With a Hat restores Garvey to his place as one of the founders of black nationalism and a key figure of the 20th century. "A searching, vivid, and (as the title suggests) complex account of Garvey's short but consequential life." --Steve Hahn, The New Republic "The story of Marcus Garvey, the charismatic and tireless black leader who had a meteoric rise and fall in the late 1910s and early '20s, makes for enthralling reading, and Garvey has found an engaging and objective biographer in Colin Grant.... Grant's book is not all politics, ideology, money and lawsuits. It is also an engrossing social history.... Negro With a Hat is an achievement on a scale Garvey might have appreciated." --New York Times Book Review "Dazzling, definitive biography of the controversial activist who led the 1920s 'Back to Africa' movement.... Grant's learned passion for his subject shimmers on every page. A riveting and well-wrought volume that places Garvey solidly in the pantheon of important 20th-century black leaders." --Kirkus Reviews (Starred Review) "This splendid book is certain to become the definitive biography. Garvey was a dreamer and a doer; Grant captures the fascination of both." --Publishers Weekly (Starred Review) "Grant's strength lies in his ability to re-create political moods and offer compelling sketches of colorful individuals and their organizations.... An engaging and readable introduction to a complicated and contentious historical actor who, in his time, possessed a unique capacity to inspire devotion and hatred, adulation and fear." --Chicago Tribune "A monumental, nuanced and broadly sympathetic portrait." --Financial Times

Ratings and reviews

Growing up in Jamaica, Marcus Garvey is a familiar figure to me, as he is featured on the half-dollar bill and the fifty cent piece. But since you learn Jamaican history in elementary school and I moved to Jamaica in junior high, I really had no idea who he was or why he was important (the same with George William Gordon and Noel Newton Nethersole, who were on the 10 and the 20 dollar bill respectively). So I read this book. And I learned a lot. But it was a haul. This tome suffers from either piecemeal construction by the author or horrible editing. Or both. People are introduced and then reintroduced, often using the exact same phraseology and, sometimes, within pages of the first introduction. While this was handy for someone with the sieve-like brain I possess, it made one question the scholarship and accuracy of the book as a whole. But learn about Garvey I did. Poor Jamaican. Self-taught. Eventually settled in Harlem where he created an empire called the United Negro Improvement Association (UNIA)in the early 20th century. Just how he managed such a feat is rather glossed over and unclear but he was apparently a dynamic and emotion-tapping speaker (though the only description of a speech is an early one where his voice was squeaky and weak so that's what stuck in my mind). The main tenet of the UNIA (and of Garvey) was not integration but resettlement in Africa. America, Britain, etc., were white countries. The black man would never be treated equally so why not create an empire of negros to stand on solid footing independently. With this philosophy (and with his suspected charlatanism and flamboyant mannerisms and style) he irrevocably crossed the other main leader of blacks in America at the time, W.E.B. DuBois of the NAACP. DuBois wanted equality and integration and often bemoaned Garvey's very existence, as it took members away from his group and, often, caused legitimate politicians and governments to lump any quest for Negro equality into the Garvey circus, which may have slowed DuBois' quests for equality down considerably. Garvey's downfall began when he cited that he and the KKK had similar agendas; negroes belong with negroes and not with whites. His alliance, if it can be called that, with the Grand Imperial Wizard of the KKK lost him much support. He also aligned himself against Halie Selassie during the Italian-Ethopian war after Selassie fled for exile, which, to Garvey, was evidence of his traitordom towards the black cause. Halie Selassie was revered by most as being one of the first black leaders of a large African nation, one of the main goals of many black movements of the day. Garvey was finally indicted for mail fraud, served a two-year prison sentence in Atlanta and was then summarily deported to Jamaica (all under the watchful eye of a BOI (the early FBI) lieutenant J. Edgar Hoover) He felt penned in by Jamaica (and was also indicted there, for libel)and moved to London, where he ended where he began; on a ladder on a street corner in Hyde Park.

Colin Grant gives a scholarly but personal account of Marcus Garvey's storied life and shed's new light on his legacy. I really enjoyed reading every page, Grant makes you feel like you are there.

About the author

Colin Grant is an independent historian who works for BBC Radio. The son of Jamaican parents, he lives in London.