By Marcus Garvey
Photos: Wikimedia Commons
Today, August 17, 2025, would have been the 138th birthday of Pan-African champion the Honorable Marcus Mosiah Garvey, who was born in St. Ann’s Bay, Jamaica. Garvey, at 52, died in exile, in England. Garvey was without a doubt the greatest mass mobilizer and organizer of African people. And Garveyism influenced many later social movements—particularly, the Rastafarian movement, whose main foundation was laid by the teachings of Garvey. Today, in paying tribute to this great African, the Black Star News is posting below excerpts from Garvey’s 1923 book: The Philosophy and Opinions of Marcus Garvey, Or, Africa for the Africans.
Wake up Ethiopia! Wake up Africa! Let us work towards the one glorious end of a free,
redeemed and mighty nation. Let Africa be a bright star among the constellation of nations.
A man’s bread and butter is only insured when he works for it.
The world has now reached the stage when humanity is really at the parting of the ways. It is a
question of “Man Mind Thyself.”
The political readjustment of the world means that those who are not sufficiently able, not
sufficiently prepared, will be at the mercy of the organized classes for another one or two
hundred years.
The only protection against injustice in man is power: physical, financial and scientific.
The masses make the nation and the race. If the masses are illiterate, that is the judgment passed
on the race by those who are critical of its existence.
….Let Africa be our guiding star: our star of destiny.
So many of us find excuses to get out of the Negro race, because we are led to believe that the
race is unworthy, and that it has not accomplished anything. Cowards that we are! It is we who
are unworthy, because we are not contributing to the uplift and up-building of this noble race.
How dare anyone tell us that Africa cannot be redeemed, when we have 400,000,000 men and
women with warm blood coursing through their veins? The power that holds Africa is not divine.
The power that holds Africa is human, and it is recognized that whatsoever man has done, man
can do.
We of the Negro race are moving from one state of organization to another, and we shall so
continue until we have thoroughly lifted ourselves into the organization of government.
Be as proud of your race today as our fathers were in the days of yore. We have a beautiful
history, and we shall create another in the future that will astonish the world.
…. The world ought to know that it could not keep 400,000,000 Negroes down forever.
There is always a turning point in the destiny of every race, every nation, of all peoples, and we
have come now to the turning point of the Negro, where we have changed from the old cringing
weakling, and transformed into full-grown men, demanding our portion as men.
I am not one of those Christians who believe that the Bible can solve all the problems of
humanity. The Bible is good in its place, but we are men. We are the creatures of God. We have
sinned against Him; therefore it takes more than the Bible to keep us in our places.
Man is becoming so vile that to-day we cannot afford to convert him with moral, ethical,
physical truths alone, but with that which is more effective — implements of destruction.
Leadership means everything: pain, blood, death.
To be prosperous in whatever we do is the sign of true wealth. We may be wealthy in not only
having money, but in spirit and health. It is the most helpful agency toward a self-satisfying life.
One lives, in an age like this, nearer perfection by being wealthy than by being poor. To the
contended soul, wealth is the stepping stone to perfection; to the miser it is the nearest avenue to
hell. I would prefer to be honestly wealthy, than miserably poor.
To be free from temptation of other people’s properly is to reflect the honesty of our own souls.
There are but few really honest people, in that between the thought and the deed we make
ourselves dishonest. The fellow who steals, acts dishonestly. We can steal in thought as well as
in deed, therefore to be honest is a virtue that but few indulge. To be honest is to be satisfied,
having all, wanting nothing. If you find yourself in such a state then you are honest, if not the
temptation of your soul is bound to make you dishonest. This applies to the king and the peasant
alike.
All peoples are struggling to blast a way through the industrial monopoly of races and nations,
but the Negro as a whole has failed to grasp its true significance and seems to delight in filling
only that place created for him by the white man.
The Negro who lives on the patronage of philanthropists is the most dangerous member of our
society, because he is willing to turn back the clock of progress when his benefactors ask him so
to do.
….No race in the world is so just as to give others, for the asking, a square deal in things economic,
political and social.
Men who are in earnest are not afraid of consequences.
No one knows when the hour of Africa’s redemption cometh. It is in the wind. It is coming. One
day, like a storm, it will be here. When that day comes all Africa will stand together.
Any sane man, race or nation that desires freedom must first of all think in terms of blood. Why,
even the Heavenly Father tells us that “without the shedding of blood there can be no remission
of sins?” Then how in the name of God, with history before us, do we expect to redeem Africa
without preparing ourselves, some of us to die.
I pray God that we shall never use our physical prowess to oppress the human race, but we will
use our strength, physically, morally and otherwise to preserve humanity and civilization.
For over three hundred years the white man has been our oppressor, and he naturally is not going
to liberate us to the higher freedom, the truer liberty, and the truer democracy. We have to
liberate ourselves.
Every man has a right to his own opinion. Every race has a right to its own action; therefore let
no man persuade you against your will, let no other race influence you against your own.
The greatest weapon used against the Negro is disorganization.
If you have no confidence in self you are twice defeated in the race of life. With confidence you
have won even before you have started.
….Europe is bankrupt today, and every nation within her bounds is endeavoring to find new
openings, new fields for exploitation — that exploitation that will bring to them the resources, the
revenue and the power necessary for their rehabilitation and well-being. We are living in a
strenuous, active age, when men see, not through the spectacles of sympathy, but demand that
each and every one measures up in proportion to the world’s demand for service.
The attitude of the white race is to subjugate, to exploit, and if necessary exterminate the weaker
peoples with whom they come in contact. They subjugate first, if the weaker peoples will stand
for it; then exploit, and if they will not stand for subjugation nor exploitation, the other recourse
is extermination.
If the Negro is not careful he will drink in all the poison of modem civilization and die from the
effects of it. There can be no peace among men and nations, so long as the strong continues to oppress the weak, so long as injustice is done to other peoples, just so long will we have cause for war, and make a lasting peace an impossibility.
Hungry men have no respect for law, authority or human life.
I am not opposed to the white race as charged by my enemies. I have no time to hate anyone. All
my time is devoted to the up-building and development of the Negro race.
….Day by day we hear the cry of “Africa for the Africans.” This cry has become a positive,
determined one. It is a cry that is raised simultaneously the world over, because of the universal
oppression that affects the Negro.
All of us may not live to see the higher accomplishment of an African Empire: so strong and
powerful, as to compel the respect of mankind, but we in our lifetime can so work and act as to
make the dream a possibility within another generation.
To Support our independent investigative journalism contributions are welcome via Cashapp to: $BlackStarNews
Also support Black Star News by buying merch from our brand new Black Star Store!
