What a Man!! Marcus Garvey. Sometimes you are overcome with respect. At other times you realize he was just a man. The truth is there is little we can say than “what a Man’
I was reading this book by his wife Amy Jacques Garvey. You know he had 2 wives; both dedicated to his mission, attractive, well-spoken and highly educated. I will talk about them in another post. But Amy Jacques wrote his autobiography every day of his adult life. She was with him and recorded his every move. Not to mention, recorded all those documents that he had to attend to.
Chapter 19 in Amy Jacques Garvey’s book Garvey & Garveyism rally made me stop and think.
Their minds become so warped with animus that their dictums regarding colored people are silly and lack reasoning. For instance, a Southern white woman will refuse to sit beside a colored woman on a bus or train, she will get a black mammy to wet-nurse her baby, as she does not want to spoil her figure and miss social engagements.
The colored woman is thus forced to neglect her child; yet she feels honored to be chosen to mother a white one. Later in life that white boy may exhibit his latent love for that woman—whose breasts he suckled and whose arms nestled him in his infancy—by forming a liaison with a colored girl and produce a mulatto child. On the other hand he may be weak enough to be so influenced by conventional prejudices as to join in lynching his black mammy’s son. This has happened.
So many paradoxes. This has happened so many times. In many instances neither the black or white person even realizes what is in their past. They call it repressed or maybe unconscious realities. The fact is many people do not even know how they really feel about being black. White people however, do not seem to be confused. They have been taught to think a certain way and they happily agree and comply because everyone else is.
What a Man?
Marcus Garvey taught, however, that “God made us in His own image, and He had some purpose when He thus created us; then why should we seek to destroy that identity? Let us not divide ourselves in castes. To change our race is no credit. The Anglo-Saxon does not want to be a Japanese and the Japanese does not want to be a Negro; then in the name of God, and all that’s holy, why should we want to be somebody else?
I know this quote will confuse many reading it. There will be discussion. I suggest it might be useful to think about it and discuss it.