MARCUS GARVEY The Man Who Taught a Scattered People Chronological Biography, 1887–1940

Marcus Mosiah Garvey rose from colonial Jamaica to build one of the most influential international movements of the twentieth century. Through newspapers, international conventions, businesses, pageantry, and an uncompromising message of self-determination, he taught a scattered people to recognize their collective strength.

This chronological biography follows Garvey’s remarkable journey from Saint Ann’s Bay to Harlem, Atlanta, Jamaica, and London. It examines the founding and worldwide expansion of the Universal Negro Improvement Association, the promise and failure of the Black Star Line, his political disagreements with W. E. B. Du Bois, his controversial 1922 meeting with a Ku Klux Klan leader, federal surveillance, imprisonment, deportation, and his enduring influence throughout the African diaspora.

The book also explores Garvey’s documented contact with Prophet Noble Drew Ali and carefully examines the connections and distinctions between Garvey’s Pan-African movement and the Moorish Divine and National Movement.

Neither an uncritical tribute nor a hostile caricature, this biography presents Marcus Garvey as a courageous, ambitious, and complicated human being whose vision survived the institutions that weakened around him. His life demonstrates the power of historical knowledge, economic cooperation, disciplined organization, national consciousness, and a people’s determination to define themselves.

Nearly eighty-five years after Garvey’s death, President Joseph R. Biden Jr. granted him a full and unconditional posthumous pardon on January 19, 2025. The pardon closed an important chapter in his legal history, but the questions raised by his life and teachings remain relevant today.

Prime Minister NGSKS: Durriyyah Bey