Our History Did Dot Start With Slavery

A people without a history of themselves is like a tree without roots, as the saying goes

This point was made very clear in the speech made by Dr. Garvey to an appreciative audience in Montreal recently. Garvey spoke very eloquently on the life and work of his illustrious father and what it was that had motivated him into action and launched him on a mission to redeem the black man and to reconstructing the African civilization. 

Picture of Dr Garvey and some patrons at a Montreal heroes day banquet
Dr Garvey with patrons at a heroes day banquet in Montreal

"So we know he (Marcus Garvey) had a significant vision, it wasn't just an ego trip or something." Said the younger Garvey, "I think it really had to be his meeting with his master and his master telling him: this is your job: To rebuild the African Civilization- to redeem African people after 400 years of degradation, and he spent the rest of his life doing that."

 

 

 

What does freedom mean?

 

 

He was a Nation builder and out of that we have the Jamaican Nation. Out of that he influenced people like: Kwame Nkrumah and Kenyatta. And we have all free Nation in Africa, from about 1952... All of Africa is theoretically free, and the Caribbean is theoretically free. But I think if you understand current affairs, and if you understand that after the plantations system was over, that we have neo-colonialism: Kwame Nkrumah told us about that, and neo colonialism is with us today in the presence of the IMF, World Bank, The world trade organization and even in the presence of the United Nations. Where you have a large number of countries that represents most of the people in the world, in terms of the general Assembly, but the Security Council has the veto power within the eyes of very few peoples. So we have the continuing inequality, Mal distribution of wealth and globalization. And this is maintained by systems of government and systems of international treaties which maintained that inequality. So we continue to have wars, rumors of war and fake news, where people invade other people's countries and kill other people's country with fake news when they are really after their oil and their resources. And so much of our leaders have been marginalized. Marcus Garvey have been killed, Martin Luther King have been killed, Malcolm X, Namumba etc, etc. Others have been killed, whenever they would stand up for the rights of their people. So that, we still have Injustice, inequality. I think those of us who are from Jamaica can honor our history, can honor our freedom fighters by creating a country that is both just and moral, this is what is needed. These so-called great countries that are in existence today, they are not societies that place Justice and morality first. The whole period of the last five hundred years,(rep) of the domination of Europe over the rest of the world has been an Injustice.

 

Here is the speech by Dr. J Garvey

 

Our history did not start with slavery. Said Garvey

 

...He worked for a magazine: Africa time and orient review, and he learned a lot about Africa and his own history...

He learned where he really came from, he learned the actual history of Africa. And he learned that people who had been enslaved, their history did not start with slavery, and this is the thing which we have to teach our kids: (that our history does not start with slavery).

He saw the brutalization, he saw the results of the brutalization. And on the ship coming back to Jamaica in 1914, he contemplated all that had happened up to that point in terms of his life, his experience, and what he'd read and it came to him: his epiphany...

Where is the black man's representation? Where is his country? Where is his economic power? He hasn't seen it anywhere and he committed himself to reconstructing the African Civilization. Right there in 1948.