Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA)
In 1914 Marcus Garvey founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), the largest movement across territorial borders among the African peoples during the 20th century. By the early 1920s the UNIA could count branches in almost every Caribbean, Latin America, and sub-Saharan African country with membership swelling to 8 million. Under Garvey’s leadership, the UNIA encouraged entrepreneurship, attracted millions of Black people to buying from Black-owned business.
Established in 1919, the Negro Factories Corporation, one of the UNIA’s ventures, with a capitalization of $1 million, sought to build and operate factories in the big industrial centers of the United States, Central America, the West Indies and Africa. It generated income and provided about 700 jobs by its numerous enterprises: three grocery stores, two restaurants, a laundry, a tailor shop, a dress-making shop, a millinery store, a printing company and doll factory.
Incorporated in Delaware as a domestic corporation on June 27, 1919, the Black Star Line Inc. was capitalized at $10 million. It sold shares individually valued at $5 to both UNIA members and non-members alike. Proceeds from stock sales were used to purchase ships to facilitate the transportation of goods and eventually African Americans throughout the African global economy.
