Marcus Garvey

Children's Literature

Marcus Garvey was born in Jamaica and was considered an important black leader during the early part of the twentieth century. Garvey believed that black people should have their own nation because they could never find fair treatment in mostly white countries. He is best known for beginning a "Back-to-Africa" movement where he urged people to consider Africa their homeland and to return there to live. Garvey wanted black people to be proud of their race, and his dream was to have Africa become an all-black nation. Garvey grew up in Jamaica, the youngest of eleven children. His parents were full-blooded Africans. When Garvey's father died, his family became poor and Marcus Garvey had to leave school at the age of fourteen to become a printer. Eventually, he went to Kingston, Jamaica and found work as a printer, but he lost this job when he helped strikers ask for more money. Dismayed by the discrimination he faced, he traveled to South America to find better paying work, on a banana plantation. But he was troubled by the poor working conditions for migrant workers who had little to eat, no running water, and usually had to sleep outdoors. Once again, Garvey wanted to help others, so he started a newspaper called The National. As Garvey traveled around Central and South America he saw the same bad working conditions and decided to fight for the rights of these workers. His life's work from this point on was to help people fight discrimination and unjust treatment, no matter the color of their skin. Garvey traveled to the United States and made an appeal for his organization called Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), seeking support for his effort to help African Americansimprove their lives. As hard as Garvey tried, his dream of a complete black country never came true, but his ideas demonstrated that he wanted to make the world a better place for all races of people. Black-and-white photographs accompany the text along with a glossary, timeline and further reading section. 2003, Raintree, Yannuzzi

School Library Journal

Gr 3-5-In the introduction to each book, the author captures readers' attention by highlighting the subjects' accomplishments, talents, and abilities. Their lives are then presented as straightforward chronological narratives. Good-quality, archival photos and colorful sidebars appear throughout. However, in Garvey, the information is repetitious and conflicting. Readers are told that, "Garvey was strongly affected by one book he read in London. The book was called Up From Slavery, by Booker T. Washington." Several pages later, Donovan writes, "Not long after Garvey returned to Jamaica in 1914, he read a book called Up From Slavery." She goes on to repeat who Washington was and the views he espoused in his autobiography. In Bethune, most of the boldface words are defined in context, making the glossary unnecessary. Robeson is more problematic as the dates given for the Civil War are inaccurate. In referring to the time that Robeson's father escaped from slavery, Healy writes, "The year was 1860, and the Civil War (1860-1864) between the North and the South was about to begin." Also, the time line indicates that Robeson's wife died in 1964. She actually died in 1965, accurately noted in the text. These attractively formatted but flawed titles are not first purchases.-Tracy Bell, Durham Public Schools, NC Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.