TEN SEMI-RANDOM FUN FACTS ABOUT MARCUS GARVEY
- Garvey was born in 1887 in St. Ann’s Bay on the north coast of Jamaica.
- His full name is Marcus Mosiah Garvey, Jr.
- Over the course of his life, he lived in Jamaica, Panama, Costa Rica, the United States, and the United Kingdom.
- His father was a mason.
- He founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association. Malcolm X’s parents, Earl and Louise Little, met at a UNIA convention in Montreal.
- In 1922, Garvey met with the Acting Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, causing backlash from other black leaders.
- He is buried the Marcus Garvey Memorial at National Heroes’ Park in Kingston, Jamaica.
- He has his own “ism”. According to Wikipedia, “The fundamental focus of Garveyism is the complete, total and never ending redemption of the continent of Africa by people of African ancestry, at home and abroad. It is rooted in one basic idea: ‘whatsoever things common to man that man has done, man can do’. Therefore, Africa can become as glorious and profoundly advanced in the scientific and technological realm as any, when Africans will it to be.”
- He was married twice.
- Rastafarians consider Garvey a religious prophet.
(Facts from UCLA African Studies Center, WNYC, and Wikipedia)
He built a hotel.
His organization had their own trucking company.
He built schools.
He built restaurants.
His organization had their own printing press.
He started 3 newspapers which highlighted art and music in the black community( which later leads to the by product of the Harlem Renascence)
His main newspaper was called the Negro World, and this newspaper was published in Spanish and French.
His black organization bought 3 ships and they started practicing international trade and commerce.
Marcus Garvey’s organization owned office buildings.
They also bought an auditorium in New York, and that’s where he mainly spoke and this place was called Liberty Hall.
By 1920 Marcus Garvey organization had 6 million members.
They had branches in 22 countries.
Marcus Garvey did all of this without help from white people or the Government, and he did it with and 8th grade education.
A busy man, to say the least.
During the Detroit Race Riot of 1943 rioters began stopping trolley cars and abducting black patrons who were then beaten. (Source)
It’s a little weird to add the “Black and White” tag on this one.
Harlem, New York, 1964. A policeman confronts a group at Seventh Ave. and 126th St. during a riot. Photo by Dick De Marsico.
Today is the birthday of American inventor Samuel Morse (April 27, 1791-April 2, 1872). He contributed to the invention of a single-wire telegraph system and was the co-inventor of the Morse code.
Morse was also a man of the 19th century, meaning he held opinions that don’t really jibe with modern attitudes. Well, his opinions were lame by 19th-century standards as well. First, Morse hated Catholics and did everything he could to keep the United States an anti-papist country. According to legend, Morse encountered the Pope while on a visit to Rome. When Morse refused to remove his hat in the presence of the pontiff, an alarmed Swiss Guardsman knocked the hat off his head.
And Morse’s views on slavery? He wrote these words in 1863: “My creed on the subject of slavery is short. Slavery per se is not sin. It is a social condition ordained from the beginning of the world for the wisest purposes, benevolent and disciplinary, by Divine Wisdom. The mere holding of slaves, therefore, is a condition having per se nothing of moral character in it, any more than the being a parent, or employer, or ruler.”
Illustrations of different actors playing the title role in Shakespeare’s Othello. And yes, they are presumably white actors in blackface, or blue face in one case. From the collection of William Worthen Appleton at the New York Public Library.
Boston police swarm around fallen runner Bill Iffrig right after the bomb detonation during the Boston Marathon. Photo by John Tlumacki.
“HALF-BREED EMOTIONS STRIPPED TO RAW FURY!” — Behold the poster for the 1955 western Apache Woman, produced and directed by Roger Corman.
MLK ASSASSIN NABBED IN LONDON — Martin Luther King was gunned down on April 4, 1968. His assassin James Earl Ray became a fugitive from the law, traveling to Europe under a false Canadian passport (Argo-style!). After a stay in Portugal, Ray was in London figuring out his next move. Hearing he might find work as a mercenary in Belgium, he went to Heathrow Airport for a flight to the Continent:
At 11 o’clock in the morning on Saturday, June 8th 1968 an immigration officer at Heathrow Airport took a look at a passenger’s Canadian passport and said;
“Would you please step into our office for some routine questions, Mr Sneyd”.
The man he called Mr Sneyd entered the office but when he saw a policeman standing there, all he could say was “Oh God, I feel so trapped” and allowed himself to be arrested.
The bespectacled Mr Sneyd was found to have a .38 caliber revolver in his back pocket and he also, rather suspiciously, had another passport on him under another name.
Scotland Yard’s Detective Chief Superintendent Tommy Butler, a man not particularly shy of publicity, soon arrived at Heathrow to make the arrest. Butler had become well known to the British public after the arrest of the Great Train Robbers four years earlier. The observant immigration official’s initial suspicions were confirmed by the senior policeman and fingerprints proved that Sneyd was, in reality, Illinois-born 40 year old James Earl Ray – the escaped convict accused of assassinating Martin Luther King on April 4 in Memphis Tennessee.
Read the rest of the story at Another Nickel in the Time Machine.
Happy birthday to the many faces of acting jedi Sir Alec Guinness (2 April 1914 – 5 August 2000). Click the photos to see the movie titles.
Not just a man of many faces, he seems to be a man of many races.
Indeed! Alec Guinness has played an Arab prince and a Japanese businessman, and in Oliver Twist he played the controversial part of Fagin, the Jewish criminal in Charles Dickens’ tale of life and death in the streets of London — like The Wire, except it’s literally Dickensian, yo!
Anyway, clearly we no longer live in a world where a pasty-faced Englishman can gobble up all the good roles for people of color. No one wants to see Michael Fassbender play Wong Fei-hung or Hideki Tōjō in an action-filled biopic. (Same goes for Jack Black essaying the title role in Zuo Zongtang: The Real Story of General Tso’s Chicken.) It’s not just political correctness, it’s simply unrealistic and outmoded. Audiences don’t want it, and they don’t buy it, especially in a global marketplace… unless you’re Fred Armisen, I suppose.
To quote Ed Wood:
ED WOOD: And they always want to cast their buddies. It doesn’t even matter if they’re right for the part.
ORSON WELLES: Tell me about it. I’m supposed to do a thriller for Universal. They want Charlton Heston as a Mexican.
Vintage cigarette cards, circa 1934-1939, part of a series featuring “African Types” according to the standards of 1930s tobacco advertisers, who put out such promotional cards. (The fourth image is labeled as “Kaffir drummer” using the word kaffir before it was more widely considered a pejorative term.)
A scene from the Rhodesian Bush War, aka the Second Chimurenga, aka the Zimbabwe War of Liberation.
(via)
THE OCEAN YACHT RACE BETWEEN THE “FLEETWING” AND THE “HENRIETTA.”
From Harper’s Weekly, September 30, 1865:
The race between the rival yachts Fleetwing and Henrietta began on the 11th instant. At a little after 8 o’clock in the morning the yachts started from the lightship off Sandy Hook and were soon out of sight. The Henrietta led the race under a slight southeast wind, while the Fleetwing was rather to the windward. At first the breeze freshened, but it subsequently died completely away. The weather throughout the voyage was very fickle, and the contest proved to be what is called a ” drifting” race, and was thus deprived of much of the interest which would have belonged to it under other circumstances. Wednesday at noon the fleet-wing passed the lightship on its return an hour be-fore the Henrietta. The former vessel was there-fore declared the winner, though the voyage is by no means regarded as a decisive proof of the sailing qualities of either vessel.
The Fleetwing was docked off Hunter’s Point. She has just been built, and is owned by Mr. G. A. OSGOOD, son-in-law of Commodore VANDERBILT. Her length is 106 feet, beam 21 feet, and depth of hold 10 feet, with a tonnage of about 200 tons. The Henrietta, owned by Mr. JAMES GORDON BENNETT, JUN., has less length of bottom, and her entrance is not so sharp. Her appearance is strongly suggestive of strength and endurance. She was built three years since, but has recently been improved.
i read the entire thing.
Gold star. It’s good to know people are reading this stuff.
(via icebluegameboy)
Eat your heart out, Katniss Everdeen. Behold actress Toni Gerry in a 1958 publicity still for the TV western Broken Arrow. About this period of her career, Gerry said, ”my credits read like a TV Guide for the 1950s.”
Black Panther poster by Emory Douglas — “THE HEIRS OF MALCOLM HAVE PICKED UP THE GUN AND NOW STAND MILLIONS STRONG FACING THE RACIST PIG OPPRESSOR”
