Today we celebrate the 135th birthday of one the most powerful Black men in history, MARCUS MOSIAH GARVEY.
Marcus Garvey’s legacy is Black excellence. He built an organization called the U.N.I.A. and united over 6 million Black people from across 40 countries. The mission statement was clear: “to unite all people of African ancestry of the world to one great body to establish a country and absolute government of our own.”
Marcus Garvey knew that Black entrepreneurship was needed in order to reach independence. As he said in his 1924 Whirlwind speech, “Be Black, Buy Black, Think Black, and all else will take care of itself!”
So Garvey encouraged entrepreneurship to his members and built Black-owned businesses. These businesses included a steam laundry, a tailoring shop, a printing/publishing house, a chain of restaurants, a chain of grocery stores, a doll factory and more. Garvey’s U.N.I.A. owned several buildings and even had a fleet of trucks. His line of steam ships called the “Black Star Line” has gone down in history as one of our race's most amazing achievements in the early 1900s.
Marcus Garvey’s legacy shows that Buying Black is not just a dream or a hashtag, but an attainable reality. It proves that Black people are more than capable of supporting each other and flourishing by their own determination. Get involved in the Movement that’s continuing Marcus Garvey’s economic mission at www.BuyBlackMovement.com
|