Grant's learned passion for his subject shimmers on every page.
A riveting and well-wrought volume that places Garvey solidly in the pantheon of important 20th-century black leaders. Garvey was a dreamer and a doer; Grant captures the fascination of both.
Negro with a Hat
An engaging and readable introduction to a complicated and contentious historical actor who, in his time, possessed a unique capacity to inspire devotion and hatred, adulation and fear. A Premature Death Chapter One: Almost an Englishman Chapter Three: In the Company of Negroes Chapter Four: How to Manufacture a Traitor Chapter Eight: A Star in the Storm Chapter Eleven: Last Stop Liberia Chapter Thirteen: Not to Mention his Colour Chapter Fourteen: Caging the Tiger Chapter Sixteen: Into the Furnace Chapter Seventeen: Gone to Foreign Epilogue.
The son of Jamaican parents, he lives in London. Grant's learned passion for his subject shimmers on every page A riveting and well-wrought volume that places Garvey solidly in the pantheon of important 20th-century black leaders. Negro With a Hat is an engaging and readable introduction to a complicated and contentious historical actor who, in his time, possessed a unique capacity to inspire devotion and hatred, adulation and fear. Grant's book--his first--is a welcome and scholarly corrective.
Hounded by the Federal Government, the right, the left, the usual arm chair intellectuals and academics, Garvey found himself constantly under attack, yet, like the Napoleon, with whom some compared 'The Man With A Hat,' Garvey survived to fight on. He was also a prophet, predicting the day when KKK thinking would become mainstream. Colin Grant has not only written the best biography of one of the most fascinating persons of the 20th Century, but, for a historical work, an exciting read, part romance, part big screen political thriller. Describing Garvey's rise and fall in great detail, the author writes a compelling narrative and places Garvey clearly within his time and place Grant's discussion of Garvey is rich and nuanced.
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford.
Negro with a Hat: Marcus Garvey by Colin Grant
He began an intensive phase of self-improvement, including elocution lessons. Using his savings to travel, the young Garvey found his way to London in , where soapbox oratory at Speakers' Corner was part of his informal further education. On his return to Jamaica the next year, he founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association UNIA , then in headed for the United States, just as the radical "New Negro" movement was coming into its own, with the flowering of cultural and intellectual activity that characterised the Harlem renaissance.
Many supporters were attracted to its ranks when in the UNIA-backed Black Star Line was incorporated to trade between Africa, America and the Caribbean, as well as to transport diasporan Africans back to the continent. At its peak, UNIA had 1, chapters in some 40 countries. But then, as Colin Grant recounts, everything began to unravel, on both personal and political fronts.
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Garvey's marriage to his first wife, Amy Ashwood, was doomed within months, although it would be two years before he was free to marry his second wife, Amy Jacques. He was making powerful enemies; he was under surveillance by the FBI, was the object of an assassination attempt, and provoked vilification and ridicule in print.
Additional Information
The Black Star Line had failed and in the government charged Garvey with misusing the US mail to defraud investors. He was taken to prison in shackles, and subsequently deported to Jamaica in The dream of setting foot in Africa having eluded him, Garvey eventually relocated to London in , where he remained even after his wife and children had returned to Jamaica for health reasons.
His final days were bleak, spent in a draughty rented house in West Kensington, increasingly isolated and lonely. Recovering from a stroke that had left him partly incapacitated, one day in late May he scanned the newspapers and found his own death foretold there in premature obituaries. Wakes and memorials followed before a correction could be issued; yet the bad news was early by only a fortnight. Garvey died on June 10, aged