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THE EARLIEST MASS MEETING & SPEECH BY GARVEY
313
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(GARVEY, MARCUS.)
Big Mass Meeting.A Call to the Colored Citizens
of Atlanta, Georgia to Hear the Great West Indian Negro Leader, HON.
MARCUS GARVEY, President of the Universal Negro Improvement
Association. . . Big Bethel A.M.E. Church. . .
Small broadside, 6x4-1/2 inches.
[Atlanta], 1917
[5,000/7,500]
RARE
.
THE EARLIEST POSTER FOR A SPEECH DELIVERED BY GARVEY AT A MASS MEETING
,
just short of a year after his arrival in the United States. Marcus Garvey (1887-1940), a
Jamaican, chose America to launch his Universal Negro Improvement Association because he
felt the American Negro had “progressed the farthest” of all the “scattered millions of the
Negro race,” in terms of breaking away from the mental state of slavery. His fellow Jamaicans,
on the other hand, were unreceptive and still divided by class, color and colonialism. He arrived
in America at a particularly opportune moment. By 1916 and 1917, though nearly 350,000
African-Americans had enlisted and fought in WWI, things at home had not changed.
Garvey’s message of race pride and the genuine prospect of black enterprise on a national and
international level, found an eager audience.
The broadside reads: “He brings a message of inspiration to the 12,000,000 of our people
in this country. Subject: ‘The Negroes of theWest Indies, after 78 years of Emancipation,’ with
a general talk on the world position of the race.”This broadside appears in its entirety on page
202 of Robert Hill’s bio-bibliography of Garvey and the U.N.I.A. and is reproduced on a
full page in volume I of Amy Jacques Garvey’s Black Power in America (Kingston, 1968).
NO OTHER COPY OF THIS BROADSIDE HAS BEEN LOCATED
.
318
MARCUS GARVEY
LOTS 313-331