PBS Portrayal of Marcus Garvey in the film:  " Marcus Garvey : Look For me in the Whirlwind "

Here are our visitors telling it like it is ...

" The recent documentary  on Marcus Garvey: For What Price the
Destruction of an African Hero?"  by Molefi Asante.

The recent television documentary on Marcus Garvey once again shows that the
handling of our national and international heroes can never be left to those whose desires appear to
be to serve the interests of their paymasters.

Stanley Nelson, the producer and director, and Marcia White, the scriptwriter, for the documentary
have done a grievous harm to the African community at home and abroad by their portrayal of Garvey. They have not presented Garvey to us, they have tried to undermine Garvey and their work
harks back to the deliberate attempts by the federal government and some
elements of the African American middle classes to discredit Marcus Garvey in
the l920s. A growing number of so-called Black intellectuals and artists believe that
the best way forward is to ride on the backs of their own people. They seek to emasculate the noblest
defenders of our human rights, to disestablish the reputations of our best thinkers, and to thrown bleach onto the memories of our most ardent activists for justice. Marcus Garvey, as the
central figure in African history over the past one hundred years, has not escaped the hammer of
misinformation and misrepresentation.

The recent television portrayal had all the makings of a useful historical documentary. It had the benefit
of Julius Garvey and Marcus Garvey, Jr., the two sons of Marcus Garvey,Sr., and three leading Marcus Garvey scholars in Tony Martin of Wellesley, Bobby Hill of UCLA, and Rupert Lewis of the
University of West Indies. However, regardless of the experts, a documentary is the brainchild of
the producer and director. You can make the necessary editing cuts to the impression you want to create.

While any film that did not bring in the words of the Garvey sons or Rupert Lewis or Tony Martin would
be considered anemic and not authoritative, using Bobby Hill, the keeper of the Garvey papers, as the expert consultant to cast dispersions on Garvey was meant to invalidate anything said
by the other authorities.

The truth of the matter about Garvey is simple. By the time the Universal Negro Improvement Association
and African Communities League held its huge meeting in August 1920 at Madison Square Garden, Garvey had become a household name among African people in the Americas. Ten years earlier he
had lit the fires of African self determination and political self assertion in scores of speeches
to thousands of people from the back of a train in the Limon province of Costa Rica. In the United States, he had surpassed the leaders of the National Association for the Advancement of
Colored People in his popularity.

By the force of his personality and character he had demonstrated that the NAACP missed the real feelings of the African people in America. So when 25,000 people assembled in the huge
Madison Square Garden under the banner of the UNIA and ACL the event brought more attention to Garvey than ever before. It was the beginning of the FBI?s attempt to sully his name with African American people. From that moment forward the United States government and his enemies outside of
the UNIA and ACL would do everything in their power to dishonor Garvey's operation. They would plant
articles in papers against him, sow seeds of distrust among members of the organization, create opportunities for t hose who wanted to curry favor with the white establishment to reveal any
inside information they had on the organization, and try to set up the officers for criminal activities.
What was worrisome to the national government was the fact that an African, without the support of the white media, had ascended to such heights in the popular imagination of the African
American people as to be able to call together more black people than the white president. Garvey was the pre-eminent spokesperson of the race and no one in any other organization could compete with him for the public mind.

What Stanley Nelson does  in his documentary is to "problematize" Garvey. This angers me because
the only people who believe that they have to "problematize" their heroes are soulless people without any sense of historical purpose or reality. Garvey was not fighting against some fantasy;
he was dealing with the everyday reality of black life. Was he human?

Of course, he was human, but was he guilty of some heinous crime? No! What Garvey was guilty of
was becoming the most courageous African public figure in our history. This was the crime and the government went out of its way to create a case against him. At Madison Square Gardens,
Marcus Garvey was elected president-general of the UNIAACL, the Declaration of Rights of the Negro Peoples of the World was written and disseminated, the formal leadership structure was proposed
and accepted, chapters were established with commissioners for each chapter, and demands were made.

Among the demands made by the Garvey movement was that black school children
should be taught African history. I certainly wish Marcia White had taken some Afrocentric classes in African history. She would not have written the script the way she did. Perhaps one of Marcus Garvey's greatest gifts was his ability to identify the values and the cultural motifs that resonated with the African people. He produced several cultural symbols that galvanized the membership. An anthem was created called the Universal Ethiopian Anthem, a flag of the colors red, black, and green was made and presented to the members, and small industries were created as places for workers to make a living.

Furthermore, Garvey dispatched representatives to Liberia to investigate the possibilities of colonies
in West Africa.  The failure of the Black Star Lines in l921 was an ominous sign but it was
the constant criticism of the African American middle class that led to infighting and disaffections.
This gave the government the opportunity to sow discord among the leadership.

When Garvey was indicted in 1922 the judge was Julian Mack, who claimed to be a member of the NAACP. Garvey appealed and in l925 he lost his appeal and was sent to the federal penitentiary in
Atlanta, Georgia. After a strenuous campaign on the part of Amy Jacques Garvey, who published Philosophy and Opinions of Marcus Garvey in l923 and 1925, to raise money for legal
expenses, he was released from prison and sent to Jamaica.  The fact that a documentary about Garvey does not emphasize the conspiracy against the rise of a black messiah but rather attempts to show that Garvey was some type of egomaniac goes to demonstrate how far away from the truth Nelson manages to get.

All black leaders who create a mass following will be called names in a white racist society that profits in keeping African people from considering their own heroes as heroic. In my mind, any
person who puts his or her life on the line for the sake of their people
must be considered heroic, full stop. "

" ..... The PBS film did NOT
treat  the UNIA's reach into Africa [which was]
continent-wide--north, west, east, central, and south.
Indeed, one would be hard-pressed to name a major
African anti-colonial leader who was not directly or
indirectly affiliated with or affected by the UNIA's
organizing and propaganda.

The same was true of the Caribbean and diaspora (or
"scattered Africa," as Mr. Garvey called them)
communities in Europe.



...I was deeply troubled by the film's
reinforcement of several insidious and, I thought,
long-discredited stereotypes of Mr. Garvey. There
were subtle suggestions that he was a charlatan, such
as the film's, to my knowledge, original suggestion
that he left Jamaica in 1915 under shady circumstances
rather than his stated reason of studying the work of
Tuskegee Institute. Of course, we have his letter to
Dr. Washington of a year earlier in support of this.

The narration, to my astonishment, referred to the
UNIA's uniforms as "outlandish" and this was
underscored by the quaint music used under photos and
film of the 1922 UNIA parade. While Mr. Garvey was
quoted responding to this, I found it outrageous that
the authority of the NARRATIVE VOICE was used to
support the characterizations of his ENEMIES (also
quoted in the film).

That at least one of the interviewees expressed her
pride in how her father looked in uniform might have
been outweighed by the presumptive voice of the
producer, supported by the comments of Mr. Garvey's
enemies.

Finally, Mr. Garvey was held responsible for his own
downfall. This demonstrates a regrettable lack of
appreciation of the context in which he
worked--namely, one infused with his cognizance that
he and the UNIA were targeted, not only of the "state
power" of the U. S., as Prof. Hill neatly puts it, but
also by the COMBINED machinations of SEVERAL Western
colonial powers.

Is it any wonder that he became distrustful of others
and increasingly dependent upon his own counsel? If
he didn't recognize Hoover's Black informants as such,
he surely knew that he was under constant surveillance
and that these powers were attempting to discredit him
and destroy the UNIA.

Moreover, Mr. Garvey surely knew that his black
opposition LEGITIMIZED these efforts.

This reminds me of an old CIA trick, as explained to
us by former case officer John Stockwell and former
"company" executive Victor Marchetti. According to
their memoirs, the agency was in a win-win position
when it attempted to destabilize "Third World"
governments.

If its operations succeeded, a threat was neutralized
(at least in the short run). If not, in attempting
to do so, the CIA would use its intended victim's
alarmed reaction and sometimes-desperate efforts to
defend itself as further "proof" of its "despotic" and
"paranoid" character!

The film's failure to properly locate the UNIA's
threat to Western colonialism makes Mr. Garvey's
protectiveness seem self-destructive, substituting
armchair psychology for historical analysis and
reducing a POLITICAL reality to a CHARACTER flaw.

Of course, such political pressures could and did
exacerbate certain tendencies in Mr. Garvey, but the
film fails to place these into their proper
socio-political context.

I am baffled by this, particularly in light of the
fact that the credits listed Prof. Hill as the senior
consultant and that Dr. Tony Martin, who has a
sophisticated read of this context, was an
interviewee.


Mr. Garvey was one of THE major historical figures of
the 20th century. I've invested 26 years of
serious study into this man and his movement..."

"  One of the first serious books that my father ever gave me was the biography 
of Marcus Garvey. I was greatly impressed, moved, in fact, by the eloquence, 
the majesty and the genius of The Honorable Marcus Garvey.... 

So, it was natural that this child of the sixties and television listings 
coordinator for a daily newspaper, here in the states, would have rejoiced 
when I saw advanced information about the KQED documentary. I was 
disappointed. But, heartened that [ Dr. Julius Garvey ]took the time to carefully and 
thoroughly set the record straight and that there are people like Kalamu of 
e-drum and the editors of The Daily Gleaner, that get the word out.

I'll pass it on." CPS

" I just wanted to commend the efforts of Dr. Julius Garvey in taking the time
to mention the name of not only his ancestor, but mine as well - as it
relates to foundation building, in the true and positive light that shines
around Marcus Garvey.

With a BLS in African-American Studies/minor in History and currently in
Graduate School studying Anthropology, I am continuously amazed by the 21st
Century Anglo-centric viewpoints that still color history with a gray tint
when it comes to famed people with African blood, especially men....


It was men such as Marcus Garvey that have inspired me to pick myself up,
dust off the dirt, and get back into the fight. Because of the lives and
times of these great leaders, I have never considered drugs or alcohol as an
answer to my problems of being black in America. If their lives served to
only save one African-American girl born of an incestuous type relationship
and raised by old and uneducated grandparents, then their living - including
making sacrifices and suffering disparaging remarks - was well done.

I will continue my small efforts of passing on the greatness of Garvey to
people that I come in contact with. As people of color we must never become
'too big' to mention and remember the ones who made it possible for me to
even consider obtaining a PHD in Archeology Anthropology - which by the way
is a field that is completely uncharted by African-American females."  LW.

" Is it not possible to approach someone like Spike Lee to produce the true 
story of Marcus Garvey? As his soon has stated it to be. " AH3

"...[This ] is why SOA teaches that:

WE MUST
WRITE / TEACH / MAKE
OUR (OWN) STORY

SOA PROGRAM ARTICLE TWO (2)
PROPER EDUCATION BEGINS AND ENDS WITH "OURSTORY!"
HISTORY - OURSTORY = FALSEHOOD
OURSTORY + HISTORY = TRUTH "   SOA