Journey—To Different Lands and To the Beginnings of Who He would Become ~~~
First, at the age of twenty-three, Garvey went to Costa Rica, where another maternal uncle had gotten him a job as a timekeeper on a banana plantation. He soon left this job for the docks and heard tales of other people’s past life and what he was beginning to witness as their present. While he was still there, he started a newspaper, La Nación, in order to organize all the black immigrants. Soon he was as well known as he was in Kingston, resulting in unfavorable attention from the government and the corporations the immigrants worked for. He eventually began traveling to other popular destinations for West Indian immigrants. According to his widow, he went to Costa Rica, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Panama, Ecuador, Chile, and Peru. While in Panama, he published another newspaper called La Prensa (The Press). Throughout his travels in Latin America, he began to notice a trend. Curious, after briefly stopping in Jamaica, he embarked to London, where his sister was the Governess for a wealthy Jamaican family. In London, he made himself quite busy. He found employment near the docks among other Black immigrants. African seamen told him about their native land. He also attended night school at Birkbeck College, where he studied law. He enjoyed attending Speakers Corner in Hyde Park, and soon he began speaking there as well. He also frequented The House of Commons, where the British Parliament made decisions about their far-reaching empire, where he listened to the spirited debates. He did not publish any newspapers in London, but he did write articles that were published in various periodicals. He then got a huge break: he received a job at The Africa Times and Orient Review. This paper described itself as both Pan African and Pan Oriental. This made it concerned not with just black people but with colonialism and poverty in general. The African Times and Orient Review had many distinguished authors including Booker T. Washington. However, Marcus ran out of funds and returned to Jamaica in 1914.
“The African Times and Orient Review was a pan-Asian and pan-African journal launched in 1912 by Dusé Mohamed Ali, an Egyptian-British actor, and journalist, with the help of John Eldred Taylor ” – From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
“Marcus Garvey appears to have learned many sciences, history, and spiritual science from Duse Mohamed Ali; which would go well with The Independent United Order of Mechanic lessons he knew. The Independent United Order of Mechanics started in 1757 in England and spread to the United States, Central America, the Caribbean, the Netherlands, and Canada. The Mechanics are associated with Freemasonry because of the similarities with the degrees”
Marcus Garvey then went on to establish many successful businesses. Between 1919 and 1927, Marcus Garvey was charged and jailed in between that time pertaining to alleged mail fraud. In 1927, Prophet Noble Drew Ali went to visit Marcus Garvey in Federal prison. A picture of the postcard Prophet Noble Drew Ali sent to his wife at the time speaks about that visit below.
“Upon his release in November 1927, Garvey was deported via New Orleans to Jamaica, where a large crowd met him at Orrett’s Wharf in Kingston. Though the popularity of the UNIA diminished greatly following Garvey’s expulsion, he nevertheless remained committed to his political ideals.” We give honor to Marcus Garvey and his works that he produced dealing with rallying and gathering our people up to clean up themselves, do for self and expand economics. We can only imagine the mighty talks and conversation Prophet Noble Drew Ali had with Marcus Garvey.”
