Marcus “Mosiah” Garvey
Report written by: Austin Scribner
Have you heard about the Harlem Renaissance? It’s a time when African Americans sprung in this era of time. There are many people that arose out of the crowed. Some such as Billy Holiday and Langston Hughes, Also Ma Rainey, Duke Ellington, Lewis Armstrong and many more. But only one person in particular caught my eye. That was Marcus Garvey Jr. An activist on African right’s during the Harlem Renaissance.
Marcus Garvey was born at 32 Market Street in St. Ann’s Bay, in the capital district – Saint Ann Parish, Jamaica. His father was a mason and his mother a domestic worker and farmer. Out of eleven siblings only his sister Indiana and he reached adulthood. Marcus’s father was known to have a large library, and Marcus learned his love of reading from it. In 1901 Garvey entered an apprenticeship under his uncle, Alfred Burrowes. His uncle was also known to have a library he put to rather good use. Garvey had gone through several private tutors, two public schools and two grammar or high schools. At age nineteen Garvey moves to Kingston, Jamaica and finds a job as a compositor in the printery of P.A Benjamin Limited. Soon he advanced and became a master printer and foreman at Benjamin. November 1907 Garvey was elected vice – president of the Kingston Union. He was fired from it after joining a strike by printers in late 1908, but yet shortly after he found a job in a government printing office. His newspaper The Watchmen started but only lasted three issues. In 1910 he left Jamaica for Central America and the West Indies, to fight for blacks working rights.
After
Two years of living in Costa Rica and working as a time – keeper on a banana plantation he goes back to Jamaica to recuperate from falling ill to malaria, and then moves to London, England. He immediately gets a job loading cargo on the docks. Soon his thirst for knowledge hits him and he attends Birkbeck College, a place for working –...