Marcus Mosiah Garvey – Emancipate Ourselves from Mental Slavery

Quite often when the issue of emancipation is being discussed we hear the words “emancipate yourself from mental slavery”. Most people associate them with Bob Marley’s “Redemption Song” where we find “Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery. None but ourselves can free our minds.” It is really an adoption of a speech delivered by Marcus Garvey in Nova Scotia, Canada on October 1, 1937. Garvey said then, “We’re going to emancipate ourselves from mental slavery because while others might free the body, none but ourselves can free the mind. [The] mind is your only ruler, sovereign; the man who is not able to develop and use his mind is bound to be slave of the other man that uses his mind.”

Garvey was then on a tour of Canada, following which he visited the Windward and Leeward Islands and what was then British Guyana. He sailed from Nova Scotia on October 15, 1937, to continue his speaking tour. The branches of his Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA)were no longer in existence in St Vincent. Its main branch had been in Stubbs, with other branches in Clare Valley and Lowmans (Leeward). The overall leader was G.E.M Jack, who appeared to have been a schoolteacher while the leader of the Stubbs branch was Horatio Huggins, a shoemaker.

Garvey had delivered two lectures, the first on October 19 when the ship, Lady Nelson, on which he was travelling was on its way to British Guyana. On its return on October 27 another lecture was given. Quite a lot had changed in St Vincent by then. The riots of October 21 and 22, 1935 had taken place. The riots had catapulted George McIntosh as the hero of the crowd. Following the dismissal of charges against him as the alleged leader of the Riots, he was embraced by the crowd and taken from the Court House on the shoulders of a couple of them. In 1936 realising a political vacuum where leadership of the masses was concerned, he formed his Working Men’s Association. There was also a strong racial consciousness in existence as seen in 1935 when there was tremendous support for Haile Selassie and antagonism against the Italians for their invasion of Abyssinia. This played into the riots of 1935.

While the Garvey movement, particularly between 1916 and 1920 was patronised by working class people, by 1937 the Vincentian middle class had accepted Garvey. His two lectures in St Vincent were coordinated by McIntosh. Before Garvey’s first lecture George McIntosh had held a meeting of interested individuals to plan for the lecture. One of the newspapers referred to McIntosh’s role as that of a private citizen but many of the persons involved were members of his organisation. Interestingly there was a charge to attend the lectures to meet costs associated with Garvey’s visit. The people were prepared to pay to attend, so anxious were they to hear Garvey.

The purpose of Garvey’s lectures as he indicated on October 19 was “to try and help them (his people, the black people) to find and know themselves. The best service, he thought, that any man can render humanity is to help humanity to understand itself. . . to help him to know who he is and to understand that success does not lie without him but within. . . “Garvey’s emphasis was on discipline and education and the role of black people in their own liberation. After his first address, a writer to the TIMES newspaper suggested that his address be read from all pulpits of the churches and broadcast as much as possible.

His second lecture had the library filled to capacity, with insufficient room to accommodate all who wanted to hear him. He continued to emphasize his philosophy of self-help and racial pride. His Nova Scotia speech had set his theme. “While others might free the body, none but ourselves can free our minds.” Emancipation had been 99 years before. The people were no longer enslaved. King and parliament had through the Emancipation Act freed their bodies, but certainly “none but ourselves can free the mind.” That was Garvey’s message. Really emancipation ain done yet. It was up to the people to emancipate themselves from mental slavery. In 1920 when enthusiasm about the Garvey movement was in serious decline Horatio Huggins of Stubbs had confessed to Ralph Casimir, general secretary of the Dominica UNIA that “we in St. Vincent are going to be water carriers…” A lot had happened since, and Garvey’s message seemed to have been falling on ears more ready to accept it. It is now 86 years since then, we have had adult suffrage and Independence. Is the second Emancipation still to come?

•  Dr Adrian Fraser is a social commentator and historian