3. UNIA – Universal Negro Improvement Association (Jamaica)
When: August 1914 – Present
Who: Key players, Marcus Garvey, Amy Jacques, Gabriel Johnson, G. O. Marke, J. W. H. Eason, and Henrietta Vinton Davis
Why: To unite all of Africa and its diaspora into “one grand racial hierarchy.” To uplift the Black race and encourage self-reliance and nationhood.
Accomplishments:
*Amassed over 900 divisions and chapters that operated in the United States, Canada, the British Isles, Africa, the Caribbean, and Central and South America.
*Founded The Negro World in Aug. 17, 1918, as a weekly newspaper to express the ideas of the organization with upwards of 500,000 copies weekly at its peak.
* Established the Negro Factories Corporation, three grocery stores, two restaurants, a laundry, a tailor shop, a dress-making shop, a millinery store, a printing company and doll factory.
* Established the model and philosophical framework that inspired every Black freedom fighter of the 20th century, both in Africa and the Americas. Notable followers of Garvey’s ideology include: Minister Louis Farrakhan of the Nation of Islam, former Nigerian President Nnamdi Azikiwe, founder of the Nation of Islam Elijah Muhammad, former President of Ghana Kwame Nkrumah, Black activist Kwame Toure, former President of Kenya Jomo Kenyatta, former President of South Africa Nelson Mandela, former President of the Republic of Congo Patrice Lumumba, former President of Tanzania Julius Nyerere, activist Malcolm X and civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.
* Inspired the birth of many nations with its Black nationalists and Pan-Africanists philosophy and that of its leader Marcus Garvey. Over 30 African countries have declared their freedom, and many sport the UNIA’s red, black and green colors in their flag including Ghana, the first sub-Saharan nation to gain independence.
