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Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - IX. Leadership and Concerted Action - 35. The Negro Protest - 7. The Garvey Movement - 8. Post-War Radicalism among Negro Intellectuals
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Chapter 35. The Negro Protest 749
Du Bois, Garvey^s arch-enemy whom he had solemnly ^^excluded” from
the race, has this to say in retrospect:
It was a grandiose and bombastic scheme, utterly impracticable as a whole, but it
was sincere and had some practical features; and Garvey proved not only an astonish-
ing popular leader, but a master of propaganda. Within a few years, news of his move-
ment, of his promises and plans, reached Europe and Asia, and penetrated every
corner of Africa.^-
James Weldon Johnson comments:
Garvey failed; yet he might have succeeded with more than moderate success.
He had energy and daring and the Napoleonic personality, the personality that draws
masses of followers. He stirred the imagination of the Negro masses as no Negro
ever had. He raised more money in a few years than any other Negro organization
had ever dreamed of. He had great power and great possibilities within his grasp.
But his deficiencies as a leader outweighed his abilities.**^®
Fascinating as Marcus Garvey was as a political prophet and as a mass
leader, the response from the Negro masses is even more interesting* Negro
intellectuals, for understandable reasons, show certain inhibitions in dealing
with the topic as do the white students of the Negro problem. But it is
worthy of intensive historical investigation and careful reflection. For one
thing, it proves that it is possible to reach the Negro masses if they are
appealed to in an effective way. It testifies to the basic unrest in the Negro
community. It tells of a dissatisfaction so deep that it mounts to hopeless*
ness of ever gaining a full life in America. It suggests that the effective
method of lining up the American Negroes into a mass movement is a
strongly emotional race-chauvinistic protest appeal. Considering the caste
conditions under which Negroes live, this is not surprising.
On the other hand, the Garvey movement illustrates—as the slave insur-
rections did a century earlier—that a Negro movement in America is
doomed to ultimate dissolution and collapse if it cannot gain white support.
This is a real dilemma. For white support will be denied to emotional
Negro chauvinism when it takes organizational and political form. This
problem will be taken up for further discussion at the end of Chapter 39.
8. Post-War Radicalism among Negro Intellectuals
While the Garvey movement had its spectacular rise and fall, many
ether things happened on the intellectual Negro front which did not have
much inunediate effect upon the Negro masses but did set the patterns for
Negro intellectuals until the present time.
After 1917 an attempt was made to organize and release the Negro
protest into a political movement allied to radical white labor. Such young
Negro socialists as Chandler Owen and A. Philip Randolph started left-
wing organs, the principal of which were the Messenger^ the Emancipator^
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