“A people without the knowledge of their past history, origin and culture is like a tree without roots.” Marcus Garvey
Before Malcolm, before MLK, before the Black Panthers, there was Marcus Garvey. On this day, August 17, 1887, Black giant Marcus Mosiah Garvey was born in Saint Ann’s Bay, Jamaica. While Marcus Garvey was born in the Caribbean, it was in Harlem that his organization, the Universal Negro Improvement Association, became a global force that is still regarded as the largest organized mass movement in Black history. The Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. aptly describes his impact: “He was the first man of color in the history of the United States to lead and develop a mass movement. He was the first man on a mass scale and level to give Negroes a sense of dignity and destiny, and make the Negro feel that he was somebody.” In these dark days of the American experiment his legacy is more important than ever.
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