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Marcus Moziah Garvey was born on August 17, 1887, in St. Ann’s Bay, Jamaica, to Marcus Garvey Sr. and Sarah Jane Richards. His father was a stonemason and his mother was a household servant. -
On 1903 he traveled to Kingston, Jamaica, and soon became involved in union activities. -
He took part in a unsuccessful printer strike and the experience kindle him in a passion for political activism -
Marcus Garvey returned to Jamaica in 1912 and founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association(U.N.I.A) with the goal intended of uniting all of Africa to establish a country and nation of their own and rule themselves with an absolute government of their own. -
After corresponding with the American educator who founded Tuskegee institute, Booker T. Washington, Garvey traveled to the U.S. in 1916 to raise funds for similar venture in Jamaica -
In the year 1919, Garvey and the U.N.I.A. launched the Black Star Line, a shipping company that would establish trade and commerce between Africans in America, the Caribbean, South and Central America, Canada and Africa. -
Marcus Garvey died on June 10, 1940, after having multiple strokes. He was buried in St. Mary's Roman Catholic cemetery in Kensal Green, London. -
Marcus Garvey's remains were exhumed and brought to Jamaica, the government proclaimed him Jamaica's 1st national hero and put him in a shrine on the National Hero Park. His message of pride and dignity inspired many in the early days of the Civil Rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s.