and the Christian church for their complicity in
the oppression and enslavement of blacks. Garnet
states that “slavery had stretched its dark wings
of death over the land, the Church stood silently
by—the priests prophesied falsely, and the people
loved to have it so” (146). He tells his readers that
“the diabolical injustice by which your liberties are
cloven down, neither God, nor angels, or just men
command you to suffer for a single moment. There-
fore it is your solemn and imperative duty to use
every means, both moral, intellectual, and physical,
that promises success” (148; italics in original). He
militantly challenges the slaves: “You had far bet-
ter all die—die immediately, than live slaves, and
entail your wretchedness upon your posterity....
If you must bleed, let it all come at once—rather
die freemen than live to be the slaves” (150; italics
in original).
According to Richard Barksdale and Keneth
Kinnamon, the editors of Black Writers of America:
A Comprehensive Anthology, “Garnet’s speech was
a blueprint for a massive armed insurrection that
the convention could not endorse” (174). Con-
demned for his incendiary address by abolitionist
Maria W. Chapman in a Liberator article, Garnet
fired back: “I was born in slavery, and have escaped
to tell you, and others, what the monster has done,
and is still doing.... If it has come to this, that I
must think and act as you do, because you are an
abolitionist, or be exterminated by your thunder,
then I do not hesitate to say that your abolitionism
is abject slavery” (Ofari, 153–154).
Although Garnet lived to see the end of slavery
in the United States, and although he was invited
to address the House of Representatives in Wash-
ington, D.C., in 1865, he also lived to see the failure
of the various Reconstruction programs. Growing
tired of the struggle, he returned to the African
homeland of his ancestors and died there in 1882.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Barksdale, Richard, and Keneth Kinnamon, eds.
Black Writers of America: A Comprehensive An-
thology. New York: MacMillan Company, 1972,
173–176.
Bennett, Lerone. Pioneer in Protest. Chicago: Johnson
Publishing Company, 1968.
Garnet, Henry Highland. “An Address to the Slaves of
the United States of America.” In “Let Your Motto
Be Resistance”: The Life and Thought of Henry
Highland Garner, edited by Earl Ofari. 144–153.
Boston: Beacon Press, 1972.
Loggins, Vernon. The Negro Author. His Development
in America to 1900. Port Washington, N.Y. Ken-
nikat Press, 1931.
Ofari, Earl. “Let Your Motto Be Resistance”: The Life
and Thought of Henry Highland Garner. Boston:
Beacon Press, 1972.
Lewis ChidzivaGarvey, Marcus M. (1887–1940)
Born on August 17, 1887, in St. Ann’s Bay, Ja-
maica, Garvey came to the United States in 1916;
he settled in New York City (Harlem) and started
a chapter of the Universal Negro Improvement
Association (UNIA), which he had founded in
Jamaica in 1914. Garvey had come to America
because his message resonated with BOOKER T.
WASHINGTON’s racial uplift through economic
self-reliance program, although Garvey had ad-
opted a more global perspective.
Garvey successfully unified followers around
his nationalist philosophy, Garveyism, whose
fundamental goals were to promote global black
economic, social, and cultural independence; to
celebrate racial (black) pride, and to establish a
free African continent—the homeland of all Afri-
cans and their descendants who wished to return
to help develop a colonially oppressed and ravished
Africa. At the height of the UNIA’s popularity, Gar-
vey boasted, 4 million persons of African ancestry
had pledged allegiance to him and his mission. He
succeeded in attracting and inspiring a noble and
prideful group of followers among black lower-
and middle-class workers, who formed the proud
nucleus of the UNIA.
In 1922 Garvey’s repatriation objective (con-
sidered separatist by many) led him to meet with
the leadership of the Ku Klux Klan; understand-
ably, many UNIA members and African-American
leaders, particularly W. E. B. DUBOIS, had dif-
ficulty accepting this meeting. This added to theGarvey, Marcus M. 197