Experience in labour organisation

• His first experience in labour organisation came with a strike in 1908-09, when printers, represented by the Typographical Union, went on strike for better wages.

• Garvey joined the strike in spite of his being offered increased wages.

The strike was unsuccessful and Garvey lost his job. As he was ‘blacklisted’ he was unable to find a job in a private printery but found employment at the Government Printing Office.

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 Beginning of World travel

• Garvey left Jamaica to work in Costa Rica as a time-keeper on a banana plantation, in about 1910.

• As he observed the conditions under which his fellow Africans worked, Garvey became determined to change the lives of his people.

 He left Costa Rica and travelled throughout Central America, working and observing the working conditions of Black people throughout the region.

‘Black man:
where are your Nobilities ?’

After reading Booker Taliafeno Washington's book, ‘Up From Slavery’, and remembering the ways that his fellow African workers were being treated in Central America, the Caribbean and elsewhere, Garvey asked himself the questions:

“Where is the black man’s Government, where is the black man’s King; where is his President, his Country, his Ambassador, his Army, his Navy, his men of big Affairs ?”  Garvey was unable to find them.

There were only three independent African countries in the world in 1914. These were Ethiopia and Liberia on the African Continent and Haiti in the Caribbean.

 

London, England.

• Garvey travelled to England In 1912, where he joined his sister, a private teacher.

• He studied briefly at the Birbeck College, London University.

• Garvey met African students and other people who were involved in the struggle to obtain independence from the British Empire.

• He worked on two newspapers - the ‘African Times’ and the ‘Orient Review’. He visited the British Parliament to listen to debates. He also went to  Speaker's Corner, at Hyde Park, and listen to and take part in debates. 

 

Garvey travelled and observed social conditions

 Garvey visited Mainland Europe and observed social conditions.

Active Citizens

• Inspired by what he learnt in Europe, Garvey returned to Jamaica  in 1914 and established the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) and the Association and African Communities League (ACL) with himself as president and his first wife, Amy Ashwood, as secretary.

• He published the pamphlet, ‘The Negro Race and Its Problems’.

 

Strong opposition in Jamaica