Emancipation celebration is taken seriously over the world; especially in the Caribbean. From greeting ‘Augus mawning come again’ to eating Ackee and Saltfish with dumplings. Where is the meaning or what really was the process behind the process? On a reflective note I want to share the thought taken from Marcus Garvey’s January 1922 “Statement of Arrest’ written by him. This was just before his 2nd but not final mail order charge in the USA.
“I believe that all races have their peculiar characteristics, the Jew fights the Jew, the Irish fights the Irish, the Italian fights the Italian, and so we have the Negro fighting the Negro. As a Negro schooled in the academy of adversity, with the majority of my race, I have ever had a whole-souled desire to work for the race’s uplift. Recently out of slavery, we have had but a meager chance to rise to the higher heights of human development as a people. At Emancipation we were flung upon the civilized world without a program. Unlike the Irish and the Jew we had no national aspiration of our own. We were left to the tender mercies of philanthropists and humanitarians who helped us to the best of their ability.
In the Negro’s struggle to get somewhere every member of the race took a selfish course all his own. There was no group program or group interest. The only cause that held us together as a people was RELIGION. During the days of slavery, Religion was the only consolation of the Negro, and then it was given to him by his masters.
Immediately after the Emancipation, when the Negro was thrown back upon his own resources, the illiterate race preacher took charge of us, and with the eye of selfishness he exploited the zeal of the religious. Our emotions were worked upon by our illiterate preacher-leaders of the early days.
The masses of` us having found new employment for which we received pay, were able to contribute to the partial upkeep of our own church life, thus making it profitable for the preachers of our race to exploit us in the name of God, without giving us a program by which we could redeem ourselves After the illiterate preacher-leader, came the illiterate race-politician who also had no program for the higher temporal development of the race. He, like the preacher, and had his selfish plans of using and feeding upon the emotions of the people. These two illiterate parasites, who extracted all that was worthwhile from the people traveled hand in hand until we reached the first mile stone of higher intelligence then the illiterate preacher and politician had to give way to a more intelligent class, who, unfortunately with only a few exceptions scattered here and there, followed and are still following in the footsteps of the old preachers and politicians to plunder and exploit the masses, because they had no vision.
And now I come to source of my troubles, in fighting the battles of the masses. I come to the people in the role of the reformer and say to them, “Awake! the day is upon you, go forth in the name of the race and build yourselves a nation, redeem your country Africa, the land from whence you came and prove yourselves men worthy of the recognition of others”.”
These are broad sweeping statements that ring true in retrospect. No wonder he had to be maligned, jailed, defamed and deported as a criminal until today. No wonder so many are still wary of having his philosophy spread so we can analyse this world of 2024.