RACIAL SOLIDARITY AND ECONOMIC
INDEPENDENCE
By Dr. Conrad W. Worrill
(January 13, 2012)
In this present
era of economic and educational onslaught against the African
Community in America, it is important
that we understand that the rise of the African Centered Education Movement
should be linked to our quest for economic independence.
We must free the
“African mind” through African Centered Educational activities so that we might
better understand the importance of economic self-reliance.
One model that we
draw strength from in pursuing economic and educational liberation
is the model established by the Honorable Marcus Mosiah
Garvey and the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) in the 1920s.
The more I read and study about Marcus
Garvey, the more I am amazed at the great contributions he made to African
people to become a self reliant and self sufficient people. At the core of Marcus Garvey’s
program was his urging of African people to acquire education and economic power.
As he always started, “A race without power is a race without respect.”
When we examine
the economic condition of Africans in America
This was one of the major problems that
the Honorable Marcus Mosiah Garvey addressed during his lifetime and that
Minister Louis Farrakhan continues to
address.
As Dr. Tony Martin writes in his book Race First, which is one of the
best books written on the works of Marcus Garvey, “Marcus Garvey, unlike his
major rivals in the United States, built a mass organization that went beyond
civil-rights agitation and protest and based itself upon a definite, well
thought out program that he believed would lead to the total emancipation of
the race from white dominion.”
To implement his program, Garvey set up
the Negro Factories Corporation (NFC). Its objective was to build and operate factories
in the big industrial centers of the United States, Central America, the
Caribbean, and Africa. The NFC established a chain of cooperative grocery
stores, a restaurant, a steam laundry, tailor and dressmaking shop, a millinery
store, and a publishing house.
Mr. Garvey also established a steamship
company, The Black Star Line. He envisioned a fleet of steamers carrying
passengers and establishing trade among African people of the United States,
Central America, the Caribbean, and Africa.
In the summer of 1920, Garvey launched
his full blown program at the First Annual Convention of the Universal Negro
Improvement Association (UNIA) of which he was the founder and first President
General.
On August 2, 1920, after a massive
parade of thousands of well drilled, uniformed ranks of the UNIA, 35,000
delegates from allover the United States and some twenty-five countries
convened at Madison Square Garden, in New York City. It was, according to the New
York Times, one of the largest gatherings in the history of the hall.
Dr. Martin explains that, “Central to
the ideological basis underpinning Garvey’s program was the question of race.
For Garvey, the Black man was universally oppressed on racial grounds, and no
matter how much people try to shy away from this issue, the fact is, this is
still true today.”
As Malcolm X used
to say, it was our Blackness “which caused so much hell not our identity as
Elks, Masons, Baptists or Methodists.” If we are ever to become a liberated
people this idea must be deeply rooted in the day to day organizing and
mobilizing of our people as we seek economic and educational liberation. Far too
many Africans in America have abandoned this idea in their organizing projects.
Mr. Garvey
understood that the foundation of our liberation was economic and educational
independence based on racial solidarity. There are numerous lessons we can
learn from the legacy of the Honorable Marcus Mosiah Garvey. Without economic
independence tied to the acquisition of political power, African people in
America and African people everywhere will continue to be the subjects of the
whims of other people.
In this regard,
Garvey said, “...you can be educated in soul, vision and feeling, as well as in
mind. To see your enemy and know him is a part of the complete education of
man... Develop yours and you become as great and full of knowledge as the other
fellow without entering the classrooms.”
Conrad Worrill
National Chairman
National Black United Front (NBUF)
NBUF Homepage | The Bush Telegraph | Worrill's World