Negro with a Hat: The Rise and Fall of Marcus Garvey

A tragic figure who never made it to Africa. A great orator who thought unwisely he could be his own lawyer in a mail fraud case, was convicted and spent time in prison in Atlanta. When freed he was immediately deported back to Jamaica. He died in London a few weeks after reading his own obituary mistakenly published. Excellent summation of Garvey's life even though black history in America proceeded in a quite different path towards integration. Dr. King before his death paid his respects at Garvey's gravesite in Jamaica .

Lionized by some and pilloried by others within early 20th century black American leadership, Marcus Garvey was NOT ignorable. Between his push for a pan-African movement and a return to Africa by American blacks, on the one hand, and battles with other black leaders like W.E.B. Du Bois on the other -- including tussles over elitism and related events, Garvey brought an outsider's mileau, from Jamaica, to the American black experience and broadened it. The Black Power movement of the 1960s, the stress on titles and trappings within certain black American subcultures today and more all trace to this "Negro with a hat," as Du Bois called him with some condescension. Along the way, you'll get a side glance at 1920s Harlem, a battle for where to take black America beyond Booker T. Washington and more.

Wow! What a wonderful read. I learned so much and Mr. Grant made so many pieces of history fall into place for me. Obviously my education regarding African-American History has been incomplete. Growing up in the sixties with "The Black Power Movement," I now understand where it began and Garvey has not received enough credit or press for his "dream." This book has greatly blessed me. Right on Colin Grant! Thank you.

Independent historian and BBC Radio script editor Colin Grant presents Negro with a Hat: The Rise and Fall of Marcus Garvey, an in-depth biography of Marcus Mosiah Garvey (1887-1940), who is perhaps best-known for his "Back to Africa" movement that sought to create an independent homeland through Pan-African emigration. Known as the "Black Moses" to his many admirers, and crowned Jamaica's first national hero after his death, Marcus Garvey also made plenty of enemies - he was deemed a enough of a threat by Winston Churchill and J. Edgar Hoover to warrant surveillance, and was scornfully derided as a "negro with a hat" by W.E.B. Du Bois. His talent for promoting his ideas and resurrecting memory of lost African civilization was unsurpassed, and he earned his place in history as one of the founders of black nationalism and a crucial figure of the twentieth century. Negro with a Hat spares no detail yet remains accessible to readers of all backgrounds, and is highly recommended for its thoughtful and balanced presentation of a thoroughly complex individual's life.