Marcus Mosiah Garvey National Hero of Jamaica(August 17, 1887– June 10, 1940) was a publisher, journalist, entrepreneur, Black nationalist, and founder of the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League (UNIA-ACL). Garvey, born in St. Ann's Bay, Saint Ann, Jamaica, is best remembered as an important proponent of the Back to Africa movement, which encouraged those of African descent to return to their ancestral homelands. This movement would eventually inspire other movements ranging from the Nation of Islam to the Rastafari movement, which proclaimed him a prophet. Garvey said he wanted those of African ancestry to "redeem" Africa and for the European colonial powers to leave it.---------------------Convinced that Blacks should have a permanent homeland in Africa, Garvey sought to develop Liberia. "Our success educationally, industrially and politically is based upon the protection of a nation founded by ourselves. And the nation can be nowhere else but in Africa." --------------------------------------------- The Liberia program, launched in 1920, was intended to build colleges, universities, industrial plants, and railroads as part of an industrial base from which to operate. However, it was abandoned in the mid-1920s after much opposition from European powers with interests in Liberia. Interestingly, in response to suggestions that he wanted to take all Americans of African ancestry back to Africa, he once proclaimed, "I have no desire to take all black people back to Africa; there are blacks who are no good here and will likewise be no good there."-------------------------------Garvey's memory has been kept alive worldwide. Schools, colleges, highways, and buildings in Africa, Europe, the Caribbean, and the United States have been named in his honor.------------Burning Spear, a well-known Jamaican reggae artist, has done much to keep his memory alive through song, including his albums, Garvey's Ghost and Marcus Garvey.-----------------Rastafarians consider Garvey a religious prophet, and sometimes even the reincarnation of John the Baptist. This is partly because of his frequent statements uttered in speeches throughout the 1920s, usually along the lines of "Look to Africa, for there a king will be crowned." ---------------------------------------------------- His beliefs deeply influenced the Rastafari, who took his statements as a prophecy of the crowning of Haile Selassie I of Ethiopia. Early Rastas were associated with his Back-to-Africa movement in Jamaica, and the Rastafari movement can be seen as an offshoot of Garveyite philosophy. As his beliefs have greatly influenced Rastafari, he is often mentioned in reggae music, including that of . ------------------------------------------------------ Harshly critical of Haile Selassie I in the wake of the invasion of Ethiopia before World War II, Garvey himself never identified with the Rastafari movement, and was, in fact, raised as a Methodist who went on to become a Roman Catholic.------------ In 1935, Garvey left Jamaica for London, where he lived and worked until his death in 1940. During these last five years, he remained active and in touch with events in war-torn Ethiopia (then Abyssinia) and the West Indies. In 1938, he gave evidence before the West Indian Royal Commission on conditions there. Also in 1938, he set up the School of African Philosophy to train UNIA leaders. He continued to work on the magazine The Black Man. ---------------------------------------------------- Garvey's political views in his later years were increasingly right wing. In 1937, a group of his American supporters, called the Peace Movement of Ethiopia, openly collaborated with Mississippi Sen. Theodore Bilbo in the promotion of a repatriation scheme introduced in the U.S. Congress as the Greater Liberia Act. Garvey also expressed considerable sympathy for fascism and speculated about its positive application in Africa. However, shortly before his death Garvey expressed solidarity with Britain during the Blitz. ----------------------------------------------- On June 10, 1940, Garvey died after a stroke, apparently after reading a mistaken, and negative, obituary of himself. Because of travel conditions during World War II, he was interred at Kensal Green Cemetery in London. In November 1964, the government of Jamaica, having proclaimed him Jamaica's first national hero, brought his remains home and ceremoniously reinterred him at a shrine in National Heroes Park.