American Series Jacket Text

Volume VII: November 1927--August 1940

The publication of Volume VII marks the completion of the American series of The Marcus Garvey and Universal Negro Improvement Association Papers. This final book in the seven-volume set charts the magnetic and controversial Pan-African leader's career from his deportation from the United States in 1927 to his death in England in 1940. Garvey's entry into Jamaican party politics and his reshaping of the organizational structure of the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) are documented, while surveillance reports filed by Jamaican police and British colonial officials provide detailed accounts of his speeches and activities. Editorials drawn from the three periodicals Garvey published during this period display the UNIA leader's skill as a journalist and political writer. Legal documents, colonial memorandums, and newspaper coverage tell the story of his enterprises, his travels to Europe and Canada, and his organizational tours of the Caribbean. In the mid-1930s, after holding two UNIA conventions in Jamaica, he moved to London and re-established the headquarters of the movement there. He continued to travel, chairing UNIA conferences in Toronto and inaugurating the School of African Philosophy, a training course for UNIA leaders. The tragedy of Garvey's personal demise was framed by the cataclysmic drama of Europe entering a world war and the decline of the movement he had worked so diligently to build. After suffering a paralytic stroke that left him an invalid, he died, isolated and bankrupt, in London in June 1940. Volume VII concludes with the immediate impact of his death on the remnants of the movement in the United States and the establishment of a new UNIA headquarters in Cleveland.