Marcus Garvey's fight for equality has paved the way for many persons throughout the world. His farewell service was filled with world leaders and thousands of people who felt the need to be a part of a historic moment.

Published Monday, November 16, 1964

MARCUS GARVEY ENSHRINED

– 30,000 at national ceremony in King George VI Park Memorial Park

– Consecration marred by hooliganism

A THRONG of more than 30,000 persons witnessed the enshrinement of Marcus Mosiah Garvey as Jamaica's first national hero, in state and church ceremonies at King George VI Memorial Park yesterday afternoon.

But the occasion was marred at the end of the day when a gang of hooligans rushed his memorial tomb and scattered wreaths laid by leaders of state, members of the Garvey family, and visiting parliamentarians from the Commonwealth.

The final phase of homage to Garvey began at 3 o'clock with a Solemn Requiem High Mass at Holy Trinity Cathedral where his body had laid in state since Wednesday.

A long motorcade followed the casket home on a police vehicle to the park shortly after 4 o'clock when the Mass had ended, and thousands lined the route along North Street and up East Street to the park.

There was an air of subdued chatter along the route in contrast to the noisier crowds which had watched Wednesday’s procession from Victoria Pier to the cathedral.

Disturbance

But among the great throng in the park, a section on the western side created almost continuous disturbance when church ceremonies began to consecrate the tomb.

The Minister of Development and Welfare, the Hon Edward Seaga, told the crowd why Garvey was a national hero: “Garvey’s stage was not Jamaica, it was the continents of coloured peoples. Yet he is a national hero of Jamaica because his thoughts and his words carried a message which definitely helped to shape and structure the whole character of the people of his own country, among millions of other peoples throughout the world.”

Frank Hill, chairman of the Jamaica National Trust Commission, after sketching the social climate in which Garvey lived, defined his greatness:

“And the greatness of Garvey, I think, is the fact that the vision of the prophet has, at last, come true. The star of freedom that Garvey foresaw is shining brightly and proudly over the African continent. The black men and women of America staking their claim to equality with the relentless chant that they’re not afraid to die for their rights have just won a resounding victory as the federal law swings its ponderous strength in their support. Here in Jamaica, we’re building our new nationhood on Garvey’s principles of absolute racial equality."

UNIA Pres-Gen

Thomas Harvey, president general of the UNIA which Garvey founded, widened the scope of his stature:

“He is not only the national hero of Jamaica. He is the hero of the Negro peoples of the world. Garvey was loved by the millions living in America because he gave them the greatest gift they ever had from the only leader they ever had; new hope and pride in themselves.”

Governor General Sir Clifford Campbell and Prime Minister, the Rt Hon Sir Alexander Bustamante, headed the dignitaries at Mass in the cathedral and in the park.

Leaders of Commonwealth parliamentary delegations from the United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia attended the Mass and later the ceremonies in the park, where representatives from other delegations, including the African territories, had gathered.

A large congregation, nearly filling the cathedral, attended the Mass, and thousands on the street outside heard the proceedings.

Celebrants were the Rt Rev Msgr Richard Watson. Deacon was the Rev Fr Stanley Shearer, and subdeacon – the Rev Fr Dermot Verley. The commentator was the Rev Fr Maurice Ferres, SJ.

The sermon was preached by the Rev Fr Roy Campbell, SJ.

Father Campbell said Garvey’s death was necessary so that his ideas could live.

“He died only a physical death, for his spirit lives on. What he sought to impinge on the consciousness of the mortal world has come to pass, not in its completeness but certainly in its birth. His ideas have triumphed, his death has been vindicated, his courage has finally been marked with victory.”

He concluded: "We have brought home a son to rest on the fair soul of his native land. What evil he may have done will be interred with his bones. The good he loved, we will take to our hearts, we will let live in our lives, we will proclaim up and down, from hilltop to verdant dale, all over this blessed isle of ours. This will be our lasting tribute to Marcus Mosiah Garvey.”

At the end of the Mass, the procession of priests, casket, family, and leaders of state moved slowly to the street.

As the pall-bearers, representatives of the UNIA and the two Garvey sons struggled to lift the casket on to the decorated police vehicle, the two wreaths of artificial poppies fell to the street.

The wreaths were replaced as six white-uniformed policemen righted the casket on the police Land Rover and, shortly after 4 o’clock, the procession began towards the park.

Forty-five minutes later, the Very Rev Fr William Connolly, SJ, representing the Roman Catholic Bishop of Kingston, led a religious ceremony at the tomb as the casket was slowly lowered into the vault.

But his prayers were made inaudible by a noisy section of the crowd behind a barrier on the western side of the tomb. There was some heckling during the prayers.

The Jamaican Choral and Orchestral Society sang a selection, Shine on Eternal Light, accompanied by the Jamaica Military Band.

Then the Rev Leo Rhynie, chairman, Jamaica Council of Churches, said prayers for the start of the state function. His prayers were similarly disturbed by noises from the crowd. There was an uproar as a limb of a tree, on which some had perched, broke away.

Three flags that had been flying at half-mast were raised fully by the two Garvey sons, Dr Julius and Mr Marcus Jr, and by Mr Eustace Whyte of the UNIA, at 4:55 p.m.

Final seal

Frank Hill presided at the state function which followed. In his opening remarks, he said that the tremendous gathering “puts the final seal of popular approval on our Government’s decision to confer on Marcus Garvey the highest honour that lies within the power and authority of our nation – the title of National Hero”.

Hill said that most of the population were not born when Garvey died in 1940 and were not mature enough to appreciate the value and significance of his work. It was therefore necessary to sketch the social climate in which Garvey lived so that “this generation can grasp the full relevance of his vision to the Jamaican society of his day and the extent to which that vision has been fulfilled in the Jamaican society of our day”.

Hill proceeded to sketch Garvey’s activities in the 1920s and early '30s when he propagated the gospel “that the black race was equal to the white race in worth and dignity and in their inherent, natural qualities as human beings”.

The gospel was a direct challenge to the concept and practices that had prevailed for nearly 300 years in Jamaica, in America, in Africa – all over the world: the concept that the black race was in heredity inferior to the white race.

Garvey’s challenge has proved unnerving to the established order in Jamaica when black men and women could not be found in advanced social and economic positions, in the higher reaches of the civil service, above the rank of sergeant in the police force, or above the level of messenger in the commercial banks, or among the executive staff of commercial enterprises.

Colour was class

"In Garvey's day, colour was class and the black skin remained at the foot of the social and economic ladder. And what was so appalling was that the majority of black Jamaicans accepted this denigration of themselves as a fact of life that could not be changed," Hill said.

Garvey created a mass movement in America which, at its peak, claimed the loyalty of more than three million Negroes. It was the largest movement of its kind ever created in America and it spilled over into Jamaica and the rest of the West Indies.

"That movement carried the message of hope that black men would cease to despise their black skins and that they would come to find beauty and dignity and pride and self-respect in their blackness, as much as the white race found in their own white skins," Hill said.

"They broke him in America. We rejected him in Jamaica. But Garvey's gospel remained imperishable: it grew and flowered as an inspiration to vast masses of people, both black and white and the coloured mixtures of both, to fight to make his principles of racial equality a living reality in their own homelands."

Beyond Jamaica

"For his gospel had a universal significance that reached beyond the Jamaica that gave him birth, beyond the Caribbean that cradled him, beyond America in which his work came to full flowering: reached into Africa which became the main crucible in which his ideas could be fully tested and his principles applied. Garvey's gospel reached, in fact, into the great wide world and added to the sum total of universal human values that make up the civilisation of the modern world."

Hill then went on to give the measure of Garvey's greatness and said: "Our young people can now realise the great leap forward we have taken from Garvey's day to this day, and, in measuring this span of more than 30 years, they can face the future that lies before them with courage and confidence as they work for the new Jamaica they want to build for themselves."

Hill said that those were the reasons why the majority of the people were rejoicing that, at last, the Jamaican society had come to terms with itself in its official recognition of Garvey's greatness.

He said it was true that a small minority dissented from that recognition, but that was evidence only of the seeds of social sickness that remained germinating in the body of the society.

"But, no matter. In the final analysis, their narrow inward-looking prejudices are irrelevant to an independent Jamaica in the third quarter of the 20th century."

New heights

What was important was that Garvey had come home "to inspire us to new heights of achievement. He has come to apply his final healing touch to the ancient wounds that scar the face of our society."

In his address, Seaga said that a nation was not merely an economic, social, or cultural unit, nor a physical mass of land. It was all those things and more and with a definite character of its own.

"Men shape and build a nation. Some are the economic giants of the land, those that think and those that do. Some are the social ideologists who chart the relationship of man to man; others immortalise themselves in their contributions to art; still others are heroes because they battle nature's boundaries and extend the frontiers of their country. And finally there are the national heroes, those who belong to no category because they belong to all; those who so shape the character of a nation and so build and unleash the spirit of the people that the germ of their works and their thoughts infect all aspects of a whole nation's life.

"Of such was the man Marcus Mosiah Garvey. For Garvey was principally a character builder. He emphasised to the world what the social scientists of this century had implied in their factual studies: that differences between races of mankind were not differences to be derided or condemned, but differences to be understood against the cultural background of each people."

Their own

Seaga said that Garvey gave eloquent voice to the thought that inherent in the Negro peoples of the world was a character of their own which they should evince with pride and which others should value and respect.

"The whole world is gradually coming to understand this and,, when it does in the decades to come, Garvey will finally rest in peace."

Seaga said that the world today was more conscious of race relations than at any other time in history. And out of that struggle for equality which was at the centre of Garveyism "has been fired the independence of Africa, the continent of the future".

"Africa today brings a fresh civilisation to take root among the flourishing civilisations of the world, to cast a new focus on old problems and, by its freshness, help to evaluate them in a new light. But, above all, Africa is a continent of new spirit and new endeavour in which the Negro people of the world can take pride and others can value and respect."

Seaga said it was befitting that Garvey should be the first of the country's great sons to be so commemorated, but he would not be the last as it was proposed to establish mausoleums and other shrines to national heroes in that section of the park.

He said that the present mausoleum of Garvey represented the foundation of the shrine and was as much as could be done in the time available in order to have the ceremony while a number of African delegates were present in Jamaica. Next year the tomb would be covered with a dome supported by columns.

Seaga said that the bust of Garvey facing south was so directed that he should face the site at which the next Parliament building was expected to be erected in years to come.

Thanks

The minister then expressed the Government's indebtedness to Leslie Alexander, Amy Ashwood Garvey, first wife of Garvey who had been invited to be present but was undergoing medical treatment and had not been able to come; and to Amy Jacques, the second wife who had given full cooperation in the preparation for the project.

Seaga also expressed thanks to the committee under the chairmanship of Ashton Wright, his permanent secretary, the Town Planning Department which designed the tomb, and the National Trust which constructed it.

In conclusion, he said that, if Garvey were alive today he perhaps might not as yet accept that we have reached the objective of our national motto, 'Out of Many, One People', but he believed that he would agree that perhaps, more than any other country, Jamaica was working towards that objective.

If he were alive, his motto of One Aim, One God, One Destiny would be extended to include One People.

Thomas Harvey said that Garvey taught the Negroes of America and the world to believe in themselves and in their ability to achieve of their own accord.

"Those of us in America are determined that the ideals and principles for which he fought and died shall not perish."

Garvey, he said, paved the way for Martin Luther King and all the others that followed him, giving inspiration to all Negro peoples of the world.

"He made it possible for the American Negro to stand up and fight for his rights and for equal opportunity....

"Today, nations are being born in Africa. The Black Star Line is back sailing the seven seas and young men are pledging themselves that they will preach his gospel until the Negro peoples are free and Africa is redeemed."

Owe Jamaica

"We in America find those in Africa feel we owe Jamaica a debt because you gave Marcus Garvey to the Negro world."

At the end of the speeches, the choir sang the UNIA anthem, closing remarks were made by Hill, during which he read a poem by Garvey, 'The Black Woman'.

Wreaths were then laid by the governor general, the prime minister, the Leader of the Opposition, Mr Norman Manley, Mr Harvey, the Garvey family (Mrs Garvey and her two sons going up to the tomb).

The Hon William Tennent, CPA vice-chairman, also laid a wreath. The Hon R. Nojku, leader of the Nigerian delegation, laid a wreath on behalf of his own country, and Ghana.

Sierra Leone, Tanzania, Uganda, Kenya Malawi; also the Hon H.J. Stanley of Zambia; the Hon B. Soysa of Ceylon; Dr the Hon George Hyzler of Malta; and the Hon Enche Mohamed Ghzali bin Haji Jawe of Malaysia were also present.

Seated on the platform were the Governor General and Lady Campbell, Claire Campbell, the prime minister and Lady Bustamante, Canon ROC King (representing the Bishop of Jamaica), Rev Leo Rhynie, the Deputy Prime Minister, the Hon Donald Sangster; the Hon Edward Seaga; Mr Thomas Harvey; Mr and Mrs Norman Manley; Mr Justice Small. the Hon W.B. Tennent, CPA vice-chairman: Hon Raymond Njoku, Nigeria; Dr Lim Swee; Lord Taylor of Harlow, UK; T.M.C. Chokwe; Hon Lord Morrison of Lambeth. J. Vickers, U.; Hon G. S. Ranglin, Hon D.C. Tavares; Sen the Hon Wilton Hil,. the Hon Roy McNeill; the Hon J.P. Gyles; H.D. Carberry, the Hon Edwin Allen, and Brig Paul Crook; Dr and Mrs Julius Garvey, Mr and Mrs Marcus Garvey Jr, Amy Jacques Garvey; Ruth Prescott, Mrs Frank Hill.

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