“Progress is the attraction that moves humanity.”
Marcus Garvey
White and Black
by Marcus Garvey
The white man held the blacks as slaves,
And bled their souls in living death;
Bishops and priests, and kings themselves,
Preached that the law was right and just;
And so the people worked and died,
And crumbled into material dust.
Good God! The scheme is just the same
Today, between the black and white
Races of men, who gallop after fame.
Can’st Thou not change this bloody thing,
And make white people see the truth
That over blacks must be their king,
Not white, but of their somber hue,
To rule a nation of themselves
Marcus Garvey is a complex figure, a poet, a visionary, an entrepreneur, a successful businessman, an orator and a key figure in the idea of a homeland for African Americans in Africa as part of reparations in the United States and elsewhere for slavery. He didn’t mince words. I have known several people named Marcus and it was by no coincidence, it was in honor of the best of this man.
Garvey was proud of his African heritage and spoke of empowering Africans everywhere for a better future. He advocated that change had to be both economic and political, that African Americans had to prosper for all of America to prosper. Though he remains a national hero in his birth place Jamaica, he was decidedly controversial. Garvey’s writing was both admired and disliked among the African diaspora, with some viewing him as self serving in promoting his own business interests, but also some within his own community criticized him as a demagogue, his ideas sometimes blurred by prejudice against Jews and mix-ed race individuals. His writing and ideas have had a lasting influence on Rastafarianism, the Nation of Islam, and the Black Power Movement.
Village Blues
by Michael S. Harper
The birds flit
in the blue palms,
the can workers wait,
the man hangs
twenty feet above;
he must come down;
they wait for the priest.
The flies ride on the carcass,
which sways like cork in a circle.
The easter light pulls him west.
The priest comes, a man
sunken with rum,
his face sandpapered
into a rouge of split
and broken capillaries.
His duty is the cutting
down of the fruit
of this quiet village
and he staggers slowly, coming.
Fourteen Lines 