Black Moses Seh: More Quotes from Marcus Mosiah Garvey

Today is Marcus Mosiah Garvey's 125th Earthday.  Blessed Earthstrong Black Marcus, my Prophet. As relevant now as he was then. Don't say that you understand, until yuh hear the man.

"This propaganda of dis-associating Western Negroes from Africa is not a new one. For many years white propagandists have been printing tons of literature to impress scattered Ethiopia, especially that portion within their civilization, with the idea that Africa is a despised place, inhabited by savages, and cannibals, where no civilized human being should go, especially black civilized human beings. This propaganda is promulgated for the cause that is being realized today. That cause is COLONIAL EXPANSION for the white nations of the world."
~ Philosophy & Opinions of Marcus Garvey,

 

"I stand before you this afternoon as a proud black man, honored to be a black man, who would be nothing else in God's creation but a black man."~ 1928

"If I die in Atlanta my work shall then only begin, but I shall live, in the physical or spiritual to see the day of Africa's glory. When I am dead wrap the mantle of the Red, Black and Green around me, for in the new life I shall rise with God's grace and blessing to lead the  millions up the heights of triumph with the colors that you well know. Look for me in the whirlwind or the storm, look for me all around you, for, with God's grace, I shall come and bring with me countless millions of black slaves who have died in America and the West Indies and the millions in Africa to aid you in the fight for Liberty, Freedom and Life."

~ in a letter from prison, 1925

"Before we can properly help the people, we have to destroy the old education... that teaches them that somebody is keeping them back and that God has forgotten them and that they can't rise because of their color.. we can only build... with faith in ourselves and with self-reliance, believing in our own possibilities, that we can rise to the highest in God's creation."

"Intelligence rules the world, ignorance carries the burden."

"Let it be your constant method to look into the design of people's actions, and see what they would be at, as often as it is practicable; and to make this custom the more significant, practice it first upon yourself."

"Among some of the organized methods used to control the world is the thing known and called PROPAGANDA. Propaganda has done more to defeat the good intentions of races and nations than even open warfare. Propaganda is a method or medium used by organized peoples to convert others against their will. We of the Negro race are suffering more than any other race in the world from propaganda... propaganda to destroy our hopes, our ambitions and our confidence in self." 

"Rise up Black Men, and take your stand. Reach up black men and women and pull all nature’s knowledge to you. Turn ye around and make a conquest of everything North and South, East and West. And then we you have wrought well, you will have merited God's blessing, you will become God's chosen people and naturally you'll become leaders of the world."

Please help spread the word to Exonerate Marcus Garvey: http://bit.ly/KqUrGh
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Great Quotes by Black Leaders About The Right and Honorable Marcus Mosiah Garvey

 Marcus Garvey statue, San Fernando, Trinidad and Tobago. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

“Of all literature I studied, the book that did more than any other to fire my enthusiasm was Philosophy and Opinions of Marcus Garvey.”

~Kwame Nkrumah

"It has warmed us that so many of our brothers from across the seas are with us. We take their presence here as a manifestation of the keen interest in our struggle for a free Africa. We must never forget that they are a part of us. These sons and daughters of Africa were taken away from our shores and, despite the centuries which have separated us, they have not forgotten their ancestral links. Many of them made no small contribution to the cause of freedom, A name that springs immediately to mind in this connection is Marcus Garvey. Long before many of us were even conscious of our own degradation, Marcus Garvey fought for African national and racial equality."

~Kwame Nkrumah

Malcolm X

"Everytime you see another nation on the African continent become independent, you know that Marcus Garvey is alive. It was Marcus Garvey's philosophy of Pan-Africanism that initiated the entire Freedom Movement which brought about the independence of African (and Caribbean) nations."
~Malcolm X

"When my mother was pregnant with me, she told me later, a party of hooded Ku Klux Klan riders galloped up to our home...brandishing their shotguns and rifles the shouted for my father to come out...The Klansmen shouted threats and warnings at her that we had better get out of town because 'the good Christian White people' were not going to stand for my father's spreading among the 'good' Negroes of Omaha with the 'Back-to-Africa' preachings of Marcus Garvey."

~Malcolm X

"Marcus Garvey was one of the first advocates of Black Power, and is still today the greatest spokesman ever to have been produced by the movement of Black Consciousness...He spoke to all Africans on the earth, whether they lived in Africa, South America, the West Indies or North America, and he made Blacks aware of their strength when united."

~Dr. Walter Rodney

"They didn’t want Garvey to speak in New Orleans. We had a delegation to go to the mayor, and the next night, they allowed him to come. And we all was armed. Everybody had bags of ammunition, too. So when Garvey came in, we applauded, and the police were lined man to man along the line of each bench. So Mr. Garvey said, 'My friends, I want to apologize for not speaking to you last night. But the reason I didn’t was because the mayor of the city of New Orleans committed himself to act as a stooge for the police department to prevent me from speaking.' And the police jumped up and said, 'I’ll run you in.' When he did this, everybody jumped up on the benches and pulled out their guns and just held the guns up in the air and said, 'Speak, Garvey, speak!' And Garvey said, 'As I was saying,' and he went on and repeated what he had said before, and the police filed out the hall like little puppy dogs with their tails behind them. So that was radical enough."

Martin Luther King, Jr.

~Queen Mother Audley Moore

"...the first man, on a mass scale to give millions of Negroes a sense of dignity and destiny.”

~Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Jomo Kenyatta

"In 1921, Kenyan Nationalists, unable to read, would gather round a reader of Garvey's newspaper, The Negro World, and to listen to an article two or three times. Then they would run through the forest carefully to repeat the whole, which they had memorized, to Africans hungry for some doctrine which lifted them from the servile consciousness in which Africans lived."

~Jomo Kenyatta

"Marcus Garvey is a prophet..."

~Bob Marley

"I & I will never forget no way/ they sold Marcus Gavey for rice..." -in the song So Much Things to Say

~Bob Marley
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Please feel free to add any other quotes by leaders bigging up Marcus Mosiah Garvey in the Comments/Chat Yuh Mind section

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Top Seventeen Sayings and Quotes by Marcus Mosiah Garvey

Marcus Garvey was born on August the seventeenth, and so this is a blessed day in my Journey. On this day a man was born in 1887 who would affect the way I perceive my SELF in relation to my community and my place in the world in general. Black Marcus screamed Self-identity, Self-worth, Self-reliance, Self-improvement, not just in the context of the singular person, but in the greater context of Black Community. In honor of the most Right and Honorable Marcus Mosiah Garvey's earthstrong/earthlight/earthday (birthday), I have composed this list of seventeen immensely memorable phrases, sayings and quotes from the Prophet that have influenced I, Kaya. SALUTE, Black Marcus!

17. Having had the wrong kind of education, the Negro has become his own greatest enemy.

16. The ends you serve that are selfish will take you no further than yourself but the ends you serve that are for all, in common, will take you into eternity.

15. Chance has never yet satisfied the hope of a suffering people.

14. We must canonize our own saints, create our own martyrs, and elevate to positions of fame and honor black men and women who have made their distinct contributions to our racial history. Sojourner Truth is worthy of the place of sainthood alongside of Joan of Arc; Crispus Attucks and George William Gordon are entitled to the halo of martyrdom with no less glory than that of the martyrs of any other race. Toussaint L'Ouverture's brilliancy as a soldier and statesman outshone that of a Cromwell, Napoleon and Washington; hence, he is entitled to the highest place as a hero among men. Africa has produced countless numbers of men and women, in war and in peace, whose lustre and bravery outshine that of any other people. Then why not see good and perfection in ourselves?

13. If you haven't confidence in self, you are twice defeated in the race of life. With confidence, you have won even before you have started.

12. I do not speak carelessly or recklessly but with a definite object of helping the people, especially those of my race, to know, to understand, and to realize themselves.

11. Lift up yourselves, men, take yourselves out of the mire and hitch your hopes to the very stars themselves. Let no man pull you down, let no man destroy your ambition, because man is but your companion, your equal; man is your brother; he is not your Lord, he is not your sovereign master.

10. The Mystic Touch Many years ago we fell asleep by the sedative of the superman, but the mystic magic of nature wand says awake and rise again. Too long has thou slumbered, too long has time passed you by, your work on earth is delinquent and you cannot reign on high. If it's true that you've awaken, good for you,

9. We must give up the silly idea of folding our hands and waiting on God to do everything for us.If God had intended for that, then he would not have given us a mind. Whatever you want in life, you must make up your mind to do it for yourself

  

8. Liberate the minds of men and ultimately you will liberate the bodies of men.

  

7. We Are Arbiters of Our Own Destiny. God and Nature first made us what we are, and then out of our own creative genius we make ourselves what we want to be. Follow always that great law.

  

6. Our UNION MUST KNOW NO CLIME, BOUNDARY, or NATIONALITY… PRACTICE ONE FAITH, that of Confidence in themselves, with One God! One Aim! One Destiny! Let no religious scruples, no political machination divide us.

  

5. If the white man has the idea of a white God, let him worship his God as he desires. If the yellow man's God is of his race let him worship his God as he sees fit. We, as Negroes, have found a new ideal. Whilst our God has no color, yet it is human to see everything through one's own spectacles, and since the white people have seen their God through white spectacles, we have only now started out (late though it be) to see our God through our own spectacles.The God of Isaac and the God of Jacob let Him exist for the race that believes in the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob. We Negroes believe in the God of Ethiopia…

4. I know no national boundary where the Negro is concerned. The whole world is my province until Africa is free.

  

3. Look to Africa for the crowning of a Black king; for the day of deliverance is near.

  

2. A people without the knowledge of their past history, origin and culture is like a tree without roots.

  

1. A reading man and woman is a ready man and woman, but a writing man and woman is exact.

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Exonerate The Right and Honorable Marcus Mosiah Garvey

“Emancipate yourself from mental slavery, none but ourselves can free our mind.” - Marcus Garvey

The statement above reverberates the mantra of self liberation with such absolute instruction that Bob Marley quoted it in Redemption Song. It is a command to seek knowledge of self; to learn collective self dignity; to find purpose and design destiny at a time when the African-diaspora was still referred to as Negro, which is the Spanish word for black. It is the instruction of a prophet, no doubt, a trumpet sound, the sound of an abeng. It is a message that is as relevant today as it was in the 1920's.

It is a poignant decree whether read in university or penitentiary. Whether Rasta or Muslim or Hebrew- Israelite or Christian or even if your call goes out to Shango. Whatever the culture, region or class, Marcus' statement knew "no national boundary where the Negro is concerned."

Now just in case you ain't nevah hear, Marcus Garvey was convicted of trumped up charges in an attempt to derail the strides he was making in the world-wide liberation of  Black masses. (Yes I said trumped up because that's what the hell they were. And if you want learn more bout the trial, if yuh nevah read it before, go check di bredren Geoffrey Philp who has summarized the whole travesty) The point is that in this day and time, we cannot allow this injustice to carry on longer.

“Until lions have their historians, tales of the hunt shall always glorify the hunter”-African Proverb
We need to rewrite history when we know it has intentionally muddled ourstory, wrongfully belittled our leaders. So join in petitioning Barack Obama to clear the name of Marcus Mosiah Garvey.

Just a few of Marcus' contributions in the struggle for liberation:

                                  Image via Wikipedia
• UNIA- founder of the Universal Negro Improvement Association which at one time boasted up to 5 million members in hundreds of chapters world wide (Cuba had couple dozen)
• The Flag- the Red, Black, Green
• The Black Star Line- fleet of ships
• Media like Negro World which at the time was the largest circulated Black weekly newspaper
• set blue print/model for vertical integration and cooperative economics for Black businesses
• championed the Pan-Africanism cry

Some of Marcus Garvey's utterances that have influenced us:

• "One Aim; One God; One Destiny."
• "A people without the knowledge of their past history, origin and culture is like a tree without roots." 
• "Up, you mighty race, accomplish what you will." 
• "Africa for the Africans... at home and abroad!" 
• "Liberate the minds of men and ultimately you will liberate the bodies of men." 
• "Chance has never yet satisfied the hope of a suffering people."

Some of our leaders who were influenced by Garvey:

• Kwame Nkrumah
• Sekou Ture
• Malcolm X
• Kwame Ture/Stokely Carmichael
• Nyerere
• Patrice Lumumba
• Walter Rodney
• Noble Drew Ali
• Jomo Kenyatta

Now one thing The Abeng and My  Conscious Pen wants to make perfectly clear is that while I support the cause of Garvey's name being cleared of any criminal wrongdoing, I do not feel we as The People need to be grovelling or making apologies for him. Garvey was a freedom fighter like Sam Sharpe, Cuffy, Zumbi dos Palmares and held as a political prisoner in the same manner as Mandela, Toussaint L'Ouverture, Geronimo. I don't care how others see Marcus, I and I hold him in greatest regards.

Here is the Petition http://signon.org/sign/clear-marcus-garveys?source=c.fb&r_by=217693

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• Geoffrey Philp's Blog: Marcus Garvey's Crime (Part One)

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