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Mennonites didn’t want to leave behind one place of oppression to build another in America.So they circulated an antislavery petition , denouncing oppression due to skin color by equating it with oppression due to religion. This  petition Germantown Petition  Against  Slavery was  the  first  piece  of  writing  that  was antiracist.

https://sports.yahoo.com/amphtml/mennonite-church-usa-calls-white-135700228.html

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Undoing racism and advancing intercultural transformation is a priority of Mennonite Church USA.

Racism, antipathy and alienation stand in the way of Christ's kingdom of love, justice and peace. As missional communities we will seek to dismantle individual and systemic racism in our church. We will also seek to develop intercultural competence, which means that we work to heal racial divisions, learn to live and work in a multicultural context, and value all the gifts of God's diverse people.

We envision people of many nations, tribes and languages as participants in the kingdom of God. We believe it is Jesus, pictured as the Lamb, who calls people together from all nations. (Acts 10, Galatians 3:25-29, Ephesians 2:15; Revelation 7:9, Article 9, 211 Confession of Faith in a Mennonite Perspective). (adapted from The Purposeful Plan)

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Racism, antipathy and alienation stand in the way of Christ's kingdom of love, justice and peace. As missional communities we will seek to dismantle individual and systemic racism in our church. We will also seek to develop intercultural competence, which means that we work to heal racial divisions, learn to live and work in a multicultural context, and value all the gifts of God's diverse people.

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A journalist who published The Liberator newspaper from 1831 until the Civil War ended. The Liberator denounced all people and acts that would prolong slavery including the United States Constitution. He also helped lead the successful abolitionist campaign ( American Anti-Slavery Society)  against slavery in the United States.
https://ohiohistorycentral.org/w/American_Anti-Slavery_Society

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The Liberator (1831-1865) was the most widely circulated anti-slavery newspaper during the antebellum period and throughout the Civil War. It was published and edited in Boston by William Lloyd Garrison, a leading white abolitionist and founder of the influential American Anti-Slavery Society. Over the three decades of its publication, The Liberator denounced all people and acts that would prolong slavery including the United States Constitution. Garrison's condemnation of the Constitution was an incredibly controversial and eventually led to a split with Frederick Douglass. Once referred to as the most aggressive and outspoken abolitionist the world-over, Garrison was decades ahead of most other northern white abolitionists in demanding the immediate emancipation of all people held in bondage and the restoration of the natural rights of enslaved persons. Garrison's nature attracted him followers, lovingly called "Garrisonians," but also many more detractors. Throughout his tenure as editor of The Liberator, his vitriolic criticisms of all people and institutions he saw as responsible for slavery gained him many threats and attempts against his life, including a $5000 (now valued at over $150,000) bounty on his head in Georgia. Garrison's abolitionism, as well as his support of women's rights for equality, were driven by the moral imperative to ensure that all people would truly be equal.

The Liberator, whose readership was predominantly free blacks in the northern states, officially ended its run in 1865 when the Civil War ended. At the close of the paper's run, Garrison declared, "my vocation as an abolitionist is ended." He then turned his attention to women's suffrage, pacifism, and condemning the post-Reconstruction actions of southern states against blacks. Help us to transcribe these issues of The Liberator and commemorate one of the major forces in the cause for abolition.

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The Liberator (1831-1865) was the most widely circulated anti-slavery newspaper during the antebellum period and throughout the Civil War. It was published and edited in Boston by William Lloyd Garrison, a leading white abolitionist and founder of the influential American Anti-Slavery Society.

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Douglass became a leader in the abolitionist movement (American Anti-Slavery Society) , which sought to end the practice of slavery, before and during the Civil War. Douglass played a crucial role in persuading  President Lincoln to arm enslaved people and prioritize abolition. During Reconstruction Douglass became the highest-ranking Black official of his time and advocated for full civil rights for Black people as well as for women.
http://www.americaslibrary.gov/aa/douglass/aa_douglass_war_1.html

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Frederick Douglass was introduced to the abolitionist movement in 1841 when William Coffin invited him to share his story in a convention organized by the Massachusetts Antislavery Society (MAS). William Garrison, impressed by his oratory, hired him as an agent of the MAS. This was a turning point in Douglass' life and the beginning of his abolitionist activities.

The Quakers

The first call for the abolition of slavery in America came in 1688 from the Quakers in Pennsylvania. The Quakers formed the first American Abolition Society in 1775. In 1787 Benjamin Franklin became president of the Society. In 1790, two months before his death, Franklin petitioned Congress, for the first time, to eliminate slavery in his famous "Petition from the Pennsylvania Society for the Abolition of Slavery". The petition was immediately rejected by pro-slavery congressmen, mostly from the south. A committee assigned to its study claimed that the 1787 Constitution refrained Congress from abolishing slavery or its trade.

In 1807 President Jefferson prohibited the international trade of slaves, however internal trade was allowed. The abolitionist movement was largely unorganized and scattered achieving some success.

During the 1820s and 1830s the American Colonization Society established the colony of Liberia in Africa and by 1865 over 10,000 African American slaves had migrated to Liberia. Supporters included Henry Clay, James Monroe and Abraham Lincoln.

Second Great Awakening and the Church

In the 1830s a drastic change took place in the abolitionist movement. The Second Great Awakening, a religious revival, stressed the morals of upholding God's will in society. Slavery was considered a sin. Churches, specially the Evangelical Protestant church, were the starting point to the emergence and spread of abolitionist ideas in northern society. Nathaniel Taylor, Charles Finney and Lyman Beecher were some of the leaders of the Second Great Awakening.

William Lloyd Garrison

In 1831 William Lloyd Garrison, with the support of whites and African Americans, started publishing The Liberator, a weekly anti slavery newspaper published in Massachusetts. He had attracted enough supporters and the following year he created the New England Anti-Slavery Society. In 1833 he joined Arthur and Lewis Tappan in New York creating the American Anti-Slavery Society. By 1838 they had 250,000 members. In 1835 Garrison change the name of New England Anti-Slavery Society to Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society with the purpose of allowing other New England states to organize their own affiliates. Women actively responded to Garrison's call and formed the largest affiliate, The Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society. This led to other female associations and eventually to the "Women's Rights Movement".

Frederick Douglass and the anti slavery movement

Douglass joined the American Anti Slavery Society in 1841 as an agent. His role was to travel and deliver speeches, distribute pamphlets and get subscribers to the Liberator. He traveled the country for four years until 1845 when he found himself in a dangerous situation as a fugitive slave.

During the years Douglass toured the country many had started to doubt if he was truly who he said he was, a fugitive slave. Because he was so eloquent and knew to how to read and write many doubted his story was true. With the support of friends he was motivated to write his autobiography "Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass" which was published in 1845.

Afraid for his safety he had to flee to the United Kingdom. He toured England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales giving speeches and networking. Here he met many supporters. Ellen Richardson and Henry Richardson raised funds to buy Douglass' freedom which protected him from the fugitive slave laws of 1793 and 1850. He was a free man.

He was one of many supporters of the Underground Railroad, harboring fugitive slaves many times in his own house. At one time he had 10 runaways hiding in his home.

The North Star

Douglass returned to America a free man and with the financial support of friends he started the publication of his own newspaper, the North Star, which was later renamed Frederick Douglass' Paper and Douglass Monthly. He published it in Rochester, New York, where he now resided, in order to avoid confrontation with the Liberator.

With the power to reach a wider audience Douglass' objective was to influence public opinion through his publication. He became one of the leaders of the abolitionist movement on his own right. He was vocal about the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, the annexation of Texas with the purpose of increasing the number of slaveholders, the Dred Scott Case and the repeal of the Missouri Compromise as well as the consequences of the War with Mexico to the antislavery movement.

A split in the anti slavery movement

In 1840 a split in the antislavery movement was starting to take place. Garrison supported women's participation and leadership in the American Anti-Slavery Society but the Tappan brothers disagreed with Garrison refusing to admit women to the society. Lewis and Arthur Tappan moved on and formed the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society which did not admit women.

Garrison also disagreed with the Constitution arguing that it was a pro slavery document and considered that abolitionists should not be involved in politics or in government. He strongly believed that he country needed a new Constitution even if that meant breaking up the Union. At this point Frederick Douglass parted ways with Garrison. Although he had started his career as an abolitionist agreeing with Garrison, along the way Douglass changed his mind. He came to agree with members of the Free Soil Party that slavery was unconstitutional and that Congress had the power to end it without breaking the Union.

Another braking point with Garrison was that he condemned violence and force. However Douglass had aided John Brown by offering him a place to stay and raising funds to equip his men with uniforms and ammunition. Douglass had to flee, first to Canada and then to Britain.

The Republican Party

In 1848 members of the two old political parties, the Democrats and the Whigs, who were opposed to slavery joined forces to create the Free Soil Party. In 1854 the Free Soil Party formed an alliance with the Whigs who opposed to the extension of slavery in Kansas and the Republican Party was born under the leadership of Abraham Lincoln.

Politics and slavery

Earlier in his career as an abolitionist Douglass had realized that slavery was a matter of politics instead of, as he had thought, public opinion. He found himself in a position to influence politics at the highest level of government now that Lincoln was president. He met Lincoln several times to discuss the role of African Americans in the Civil War. He felt that military service was important to secure the rights to citizenship and suffrage. During the duration of the Civil War he recruited African Americans to fight for the Union, his two sons were the first ones to enroll. He advocated for equal treatment, pay, protection and rewards and promotions.

Emancipation Proclamation

The Emancipation Proclamation was issued on Jan 1, 1863. On April 8, 1864 the Constitution was amended , the Thirteenth Amendment, abolishing slavery.

Section 1: Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the US, nor any place subject to their jurisdiction.

Section 2: Congress shall have the power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

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Frederick Douglass and the abolitionist movement

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Frederick Douglass was introduced to the abolitionist movement in 1841 when William Coffin invited him to share his story in a convention organized by the Massachusetts Antislavery Society (MAS). William Garrison, impressed by his oratory, hired him as an agent of the MAS.

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Beecher Stowe was a abolitionist author that popularized the anti-slavery movement with her novel “ Uncle Tom's Cabin“. Stowe's novel became a turning point for the abolitionist movement she brought clarity to the reality of slavery in an artistic way that inspired many to join anti-slavery movements.
https://www.history.com/.amp/topics/american-civil-war/harriet-beecher-stowe

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Uncle Tom’s Cabin | Summary, Date, & Significance

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Uncle Tom’s Cabin is an abolitionist novel by Harriet Beecher Stowe that was published in serialized form in the United States in 1851–52 and in book form in 1852. It achieved wide-reaching popularity, particularly among white Northern readers, through its vivid dramatization of the experience of slavery.

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Wells-Barnett was an investigative journalist who did the necessary research to expose the inconsistencies in the data. In a pamphlet she published called “Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases” she found that from a sampling of 728 lynching reports, only a third of Black men lynched had actually “ever been charged with rape, to say nothing of those who were innocent of the charge.” White men were lying about Black-on-White rape and hiding their own assaults of Black women.
https://billofrightsinstitute.org/essays/ida-b-wells-and-the-campaign-against-lynching

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African American journalist Ida B. Wells went to heroic lengths in the late 1890s to document the horrifying practice of lynching Black people. Her groundbreaking work, which included collecting statistics in a practice that today is called "data journalism," established that the lawless killing of Black people was a systematic practice, especially in the South in the era following Reconstruction.

Wells became deeply interested in the lynching problem after three Black businessmen she knew were killed by a white mob outside Memphis, Tennessee, in 1892. For the next four decades she would devote her life, often at great personal risk, to campaigning against lynching.

At one point a newspaper she owned was burned by a white mob. And she was certainly no stranger to death threats. Yet she doggedly reported on lynchings and made the subject of lynching a topic which American society could not ignore.

Ida B. Wells was enslaved from her birth on July 16, 1862, in Holly Springs, Mississippi. She was the eldest of eight children. Following the end of the Civil War, her father, who as an enslaved person had been the carpenter on a plantation, was active in Reconstruction period politics in Mississippi.

When Ida was young she was educated in a local school, though her education was interrupted when both her parents died in a yellow fever epidemic when she was 16. She had to take care of her siblings, and she moved with them to Memphis, Tennessee, to live with an aunt.

In Memphis, Wells found work as a teacher. And she resolved to become an activist when, on May 4, 1884, she was ordered to leave her seat on a streetcar and move to a segregated car. She refused and was ejected from the train.

She began to write about her experiences, and became affiliated with The Living Way, a newspaper published by African Americans. In 1892 she became the co-owner of a small newspaper for African Americans in Memphis, the Free Speech.

The Anti-Lynching Campaign

The horrendous practice of lynching had become widespread in the South in the decades following the Civil War. And it hit home for Ida B. Wells in March 1892 when three young African American businessmen she knew in Memphis were abducted by a mob and murdered.

Wells resolved to document the lynchings in the South, and to speak out in hopes of ending the practice. She began advocating for the Black citizens of Memphis to move to the West, and she urged boycotts of segregated streetcars.

By challenging the white power structure, she became a target. And in May 1892 the office of her newspaper, the Free Speech, was attacked by a white mob and burned.

She continued her work documenting lynchings. She traveled to England in 1893 and 1894, and spoke at many public meetings about the conditions in the American South. She was, of course, attacked for that at home. A Texas newspaper called her an "adventuress," and the governor of Georgia even claimed that she was a stooge for international businessmen trying to get people to boycott the South and do business in the American West.

In 1894 she returned to America and embarked on a speaking tour. An address she gave in Brooklyn, New York, on December 10, 1894, was covered in the New York Times. The report noted that Wells had been welcomed by a local chapter of the Anti-Lynching Society, and a letter from Frederick Douglass, regretting that he couldn't attend, had been read.

The New York Times reported on her speech:

"During the present year, she said, no less than 206 lynchings had taken place. They were not only on the increase, she declared, but were becoming intensified in their barbarism and boldness.

"She said that lynchings that formerly took place at night were now in some cases actually perpetrated in the broad daylight, and more than that, photographs were taken of the atrocious crime, and were sold as souvenirs of the occasion.

"In some instances, Miss Wells said, the victims were burned as a sort of diversion. She said that the Christian and moral forces of the country were now required to revolutionize public sentiment."

In 1895 Wells published a landmark book, A Red Record: Tabulated Statistics and Alleged Causes of Lynchings In the United States. In a sense, Wells practiced what today is often lauded as data journalism, as she scrupulously kept records and was able to document the large numbers of lynchings which were taking place in America.

Personal Life

In 1895 Wells married Ferdinand Barnett, an editor and lawyer in Chicago. They lived in Chicago and had four children. Wells continued her journalism, and often published articles on the subject of lynching and civil rights for African Americans. She became involved in local politics in Chicago and also with the nationwide drive for women's suffrage.

Ida B. Wells died on March 25, 1931. Though her campaign against lynching did not stop the practice, her groundbreaking reporting and writing on the subject was a milestone in American journalism.

Belated Honors

At the time Ida B. Wells died she had faded from public view somewhat, and major newspapers did not note her passing. In March 2018, as part of a project to highlight women who had been overlooked, the New York Times published a belated obituary of Ida B. Wells.

There has also been a movement to honor Wells with a statue in the Chicago neighborhood where she lived. And in June 2018 the Chicago city government voted to honor Wells by naming a street for her.

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The Heroic Black Woman Who Documented Lynching in American

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African American journalist Ida B. Wells went to heroic lengths in the late 1890s to document the horrifying practice of lynching Black people. Her groundbreaking work, which included collecting statistics in a practice that today is called "data journalism," established that the lawless killing of Black people was a systematic practice, especially in the South in the era following Reconstruction.

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Garvey founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association. He promoted blacks taking power into their own hands, becoming their own business owners rather than dealing with unfairness at the hands of white employers. Garvey advocated for economic independence for blacks, and ultimately he argued for black nationalism.
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/garvey-impact/

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Marcus Garvey presiding at the 1922 UNIA convention,
Liberty Hall, New York City
Courtesy The Marcus Garvey and UNIA Papers Project, UCLA

Marcus Garvey and his organization, the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), represent the largest mass movement in African-American history. Proclaiming a black nationalist "Back to Africa" message, Garvey and the UNIA established 700 branches in thirty-eight states by the early 1920s. While chapters existed in the larger urban areas such as New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles, Garvey's message reached into small towns across the country as well. Later groups such as Father Divine's Universal Peace Mission Movement and the Nation of Islam drew members and philosophy from Garvey's organization, and the UNIA's appeal and influence were felt not only in America but in Canada, the Caribbean, and throughout Africa.

Garvey's philosophy and organization had a rich religious component that he blended with the political and economic aspects.

Considering the strong political and economic black nationalism of Garvey's movement, it may seem odd to include an essay on him in a Web site on religion in America. However, his philosophy and organization had a rich religious component that he blended with the political and economic aspects. Garvey himself claimed that his "Declaration of Rights of the Negro Peoples of the World," along with the Bible, served as "the Holy Writ for our Negro Race." He stated very clearly that "as we pray to Almighty God to save us through his Holy Words so shall we with confidence in ourselves follow the sentiment of the Declaration of Rights and carve our way to liberty." For Garvey, it was no less than the will of God for black people to be free to determine their own destiny. His organization took as its motto "One God! One Aim! One Destiny!" and looked to the literal fulfillment of Psalm 68:31: "Princes shall come out of Egypt: Ethiopia shall soon stretch forth her hands unto God."
Garvey was born in 1887 in St. Anne's Bay, Jamaica. Due to the economic hardship of his family, he left school at age fourteen and learned the printing and newspaper business. He became interested in politics and soon got involved in projects aimed at helping those on the bottom of society. Unsatisfied with his work, he travelled to London in 1912 and stayed in England for two years. During this time he paid close attention to the controversy between Ireland and England concerning Ireland's independence. He was also exposed to the ideas and writings of a group of black colonial writers that came together in London around the African Times and Orient Review. Nationalism in both Ireland and Africa along with ideas such as race conservation undoubtedly had an impact on Garvey.

However, he later remembered that the most influential experience of his stay in London was reading Booker T. Washington's autobiography Up From Slavery. Washington believed African Americans needed to improve themselves first, showing whites in America that they deserved equal rights. Although politically involved behind the scenes, Washington repeatedly claimed that African Americans would not benefit from political activism and started an industrial training school in Alabama that embodied his own philosophy of self-help. Garvey embraced Washington's ideas and returned to Jamaica in 1914 to found the UNIA with the motto "One God! One Aim! One Destiny!"

Initially he kept very much in line with Washington by encouraging his fellow Jamaicans of African descent to work hard, demonstrate good morals and a strong character, and not worry about politics as a tool to advance their cause. Garvey did not make much headway in Jamaica and decided to visit America in order to meet Booker T. Washington and learn more about the situation of African Americans. By the time Garvey arrived in America in 1916, Washington had died, but Garvey decided to travel around the country and observe African Americans and their struggle for equal rights.

What Garvey saw was a shifting population and a diminishing hope in Jim Crow's demise. African Americans were moving in large numbers out of the rural South and into the urban areas of both North and South. As World War One came to an end, disillusionment was beginning to take hold. Not only was the optimism in the continuing improvement of humanity and society broken apart, but so was any hope on the part of African Americans that they would gain the rights enjoyed by every white American citizen. African Americans had served in large numbers in the war, and many expected some kind of respect and acknowledgment that they too were equal citizens. Indeed, World War One was the perfect opportunity for African Americans to fulfill Booker T. Washington's requirement for equality and freedom. Through dedicated service in the armed forces, they could prove their worth and show they deserved the same rights as whites. However, as black soldiers returned from the war, and more and more African Americans moved into the urban areas, racial tensions grew. Between 1917 and 1919 race riots erupted in East St. Louis, Chicago, Tulsa, and other cities, demonstrating that whites did not intend to treat African Americans any differently than they had before the war.

After surveying the racial situation in America, Garvey was convinced that integration would never happen and that only economic, political, and cultural success on the part of African Americans would bring about equality and respect. With this goal he established the headquarters of the UNIA in New York in 1917 and began to spread a message of black nationalism and the eventual return to Africa of all people of African descent. His brand of black nationalism had three components—unity, pride in the African cultural heritage, and complete autonomy. Garvey believed people of African descent could establish a great independent nation in their ancient homeland of Africa. He took the self-help message of Washington and adapted it to the situation he saw in America, taking a somewhat individualistic, integrationist philosophy and turning it into a more corporate, politically-minded, nation-building message.

In 1919 Garvey purchased an auditorium in Harlem and named it Liberty Hall. There he held nightly meetings to get his message out, sometimes to an audience of six thousand. In 1918 he began a newspaper, Negro World, which by 1920 had a circulation somewhere between 50,000 and 200,000. Membership in the UNIA is difficult to assess. At one point, Garvey claimed to have six million members. That figure is most likely inflated. However, it is beyond dispute that millions were involved and directly affected by Garvey and his message.

To promote unity, Garvey encouraged African Americans to be concerned with themselves first. He stated after World War One that "[t]he first dying that is to be done by the black man in the future will be done to make himself free. And then when we are finished, if we have any charity to bestow, we may die for the white man. But as for me, I think I have stopped dying for him." Black people had to do the work that success and independence demanded, and, most important, they had to do that work for themselves. "If you want liberty," claimed Garvey to a meeting held in 1921, "you yourselves must strike the blow. If you must be free, you must become so through your own effort."

But Garvey knew African Americans would not take action if they did not change their perceptions of themselves. He hammered home the idea of racial pride by celebrating the African past and encouraging African Americans to be proud of their heritage and proud of the way they looked. Garvey proclaimed "black is beautiful" long before it became popular in the 1960s. He wanted African Americans to see themselves as members of a mighty race. "We must canonize our own saints, create our own martyrs, and elevate to positions of fame and honor black men and women who have made their distinct contributions to our racial history." He encouraged parents to give their children "dolls that look like them to play with and cuddle," and he did not want black people thinking of themselves in a defeatist way. "I am the equal of any white man; I want you to feel the same way."

Garvey organized his group in a way that made those sentiments visible. He created an African Legion that dressed in military garb, uniformed marching bands, and other auxiliary groups such as the Black Cross Nurses.
He was elected in 1920 as provisional President of Africa by the members of the UNIA and dressed in a military uniform with a plumed hat. At the UNIA's First International Convention in 1920, people lined the streets of Harlem to watch Garvey and his followers, dressed in their military outfits, march to their meeting under banners that read "We Want a Black Civilization" and "Africa Must Be Free." All the pomp brought Garvey ridicule from mainstream African-American leaders, but it also served to inspire many African Americans who had never seen black people so bold and daring.
While racial pride and unity played important roles in Garvey's black nationalism, he touted capitalism as the tool that would establish African Americans as an independent group. His message has been called the evangel of black success, for he believed economic success was the quickest and most effective way to independence. Interestingly enough, it was white America that served as a prime example of what blacks could accomplish. "Until you produce what the white man has produced," he claimed, "you will not be his equal." In 1919 he established the Negro Factories Corporation and offered stock for African Americans to buy. He wanted to produce everything that a nation needed so that African Americans could completely rely on their own efforts. At one point the corporation operated three grocery stores, two restaurants, a printing plant, a steam laundry, and owned several buildings and trucks in New York City alone. His most famous economic venture was a shipping company known as the Black Star Line, a counterpart to a white-owned company called the White Star Line. Garvey started the shipping company in 1919 as a way to promote trade but also to transport passengers to Africa. He believed it could also serve as an important and tangible sign of black success. However the shipping company eventually failed due to expensive repairs, mismanagement, and corruption.

With all his talk of a mighty race that would one day rule Africa, it would have been foolish for Garvey to underestimate the power of religion, particularly Christianity, within the African-American community. The churches served as the only arena in which African Americans exercised full control. Not only did they serve as houses of worship but also as meeting places that dealt with social, economic, and political issues. Pastors were the most powerful people in the community for they influenced and controlled the community's most important institution. Garvey knew the important place religion held, and he worked hard to recruit pastors into his organization. He enjoyed tremendous success at winning over leaders from almost every denomination. One of those clergymen, George Alexander McGuire, an Episcopalian, was elected chaplain-general of the UNIA in 1920. McGuire wrote the UNIA's official liturgy, the "Universal Negro Ritual" and the "Universal Negro Catechism" that set forth the teachings of the UNIA. He attempted to shape the UNIA into a Christian black-nationalist organization. Garvey, however, did not want the organization to take on the trappings of one particular denomination, for he did not want to offend any of its members. McGuire left UNIA in 1921 to begin his own church, the African Orthodox Church, a black-nationalist neo-Anglican denomination that kept close ties with the UNIA.

The UNIA meetings at Liberty Hall in Harlem were rich with religious ritual and language, as Randall Burkett points out in his book Black Redemption: Churchmen Speak for the Garvey Movement. For even though Garvey rejected McGuire's effort to transform the UNIA into a black-nationalist Christian denomination, he blended these two traditions in his message and in the form of his UNIA meetings. A typical meeting followed this order:

The hymn "Shine On, Eternal Light," written specifically for the UNIA by its music director

A reading of Psalm 68:31: "Princes shall come out of Egypt: Ethiopia shall soon stretch forth her hands unto God."

The official opening hymn "From Greenland's Icy Mountains," stating a commitment to the Christianization of Africa

Recitation of the official motto, "One God! One Aim! One Destiny!"

"The Lord's Prayer" and other prayers spoken by the chaplain

A sermon or some brief remarks

The business meeting

The closing hymn, either "Onward Christian Soldiers" or the UNIA's national anthem, the "Universal Negro Anthem."

Garvey's black nationalism blended with his Christian outlook rather dramatically when he claimed that African Americans should view God "through our own spectacles." If whites could view God as white, then blacks could view God as black. In 1924 the convention canonized Jesus Christ as a "Black Man of Sorrows" and the Virgin Mary as a "Black Madonna." Garvey used that image as an inspiration to succeed in this life, for African Americans needed to worship a God that understood their plight, understood their suffering, and would help them overcome their present state. Garvey was not interested in promoting hope in the afterlife. Success in this life was the key. Achieving economic, cultural, social, and political success would free African Americans in this life. The afterlife would take care of itself. Perhaps Garvey's greatest genius was taking that message of material, social, and political success and transforming it into a religious message, one that could lead to "conversion," one that did not challenge the basic doctrines of his followers but incorporated them into the whole of his vision. One of Garvey's top ministers gave witness to the powerful effect of that message when he claimed in 1920, "I feel that I am a full-fledged minister of the African gospel."

Garvey's message of black nationalism and a free black Africa met considerable resistance from other African-American leaders. W.E.B. DuBois and James Weldon Johnson of the NAACP, and Chandler Owen and A. Philip Randolph of the publication Messenger, had their doubts about Garvey. By 1922 his rhetoric shifted away from a confrontational stance against white America to a position of separatism mixed with just enough cooperation. He applauded whites who promoted the idea of sending African Americans back to Africa. He even met with a prominent leader of the Ku Klux Klan in Atlanta in 1922 to discuss their views on miscegenation and social equality. That meeting only gave more fuel to his critics. In 1924 DuBois claimed that "Marcus Garvey is the most dangerous enemy of the Negro race in America and in the world." Owen and Randolph, whose paper saw the race issue as one of class more than skin color, called Garvey the "messenger boy of the Klan" and a "Supreme Negro Jamaican jackass" while labeling his organization the "Uninformed Negroes Infamous Association." The federal government also took an interest in Garvey and in 1922 indicted him for mail fraud. He was eventually sentenced to prison and began serving his sentence in 1925. When his sentence was commuted two years later, Garvey was deported to Jamaica. With his imprisonment and deportation, his organization in the United States lost much of its momentum. Garvey spent the last years of his life in London and died in 1940.

Guiding Student Discussion

In my experience with undergraduates, I find that students know little if anything about Marcus Garvey. The simplest way to get their attention is to tell them that Garvey's UNIA was bigger than the Civil Rights Movement, which most of them do know something about. Telling them that Garvey's influence extended well beyond the borders of the United States to the Caribbean, Canada, and Africa may also pique their interest. Pointing out that Garvey's message had a tremendous influence on later groups such as the Rastafarians and the Nation of Islam is also important. Much of what he said concerning racial pride and the potential for great racial success can be heard in later figures such as Malcolm X and even Stokely Carmichael, leader of SNCC (Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee). Garvey, Malcolm, and Carmichael are all considered more radical than the mainstream civil rights protesters, yet it was Booker T. Washington, someone considered quite conservative by most scholars, who had a profound influence on Garvey. Exploring that connection between the accommodationist philosophy of Washington and the black nationalism of Garvey and the other leaders might generate the most interest and help the students see the important place that Garvey holds in American history.

You might also bring up Garvey's insistence that African Americans should see God, Jesus, and Mary as black. What is Garvey trying to do here? Why not throw out the religion of Christianity, which was used as a rationale for keeping slaves and viewing blacks as inferior people, and form a new religion that could communicate the hopes and desires of people of African descent? Why not do as the later group, the Nation of Islam, and remove all white influence? You might talk about Christianity itself, how blacks identified with so many of the stories of the Bible, the people of Israel, the suffering of Jesus, and how African American's understanding of Christianity in many ways may already have been "black." You might also talk about the role religion plays in a group such as Garvey's. Why is religion so important here; why does it play any role at all? Why couldn't Garvey simply preach black nationalism in economic, political, and social terms? What does religious expression do for people in an organization like the UNIA?

Historians Debate

Scholars have debated the influence and relevance of Garvey, with assessments ranging from Garvey as little more than a demagogue whose uniqueness points to his irrelevance, to Garvey and his organization as earlier embodiments of the political battles of the 1960s. This debate is partly due to the fact that, until quite recently, sources for any study of the Garvey movement were difficult to obtain. Many were destroyed when the government deported Garvey, and some were lost in the air raids in London where Garvey spent the last years of his life.

E. David Cronon's Black Moses: The Story of Marcus Garvey and the Universal Negro Improvement Association (1969) is an example of a more negative assessment of Garvey. Tony Martin's Marcus Garvey, Hero: A First Biography (1983) and Race First: The Ideological and Organizational Struggle of Marcus Garvey and the Universal Negro Improvement Association (1976), along with Theodore Vincent's Black Power and the Garvey Movement (1971) are much more positive about Garvey and his influence. Vincent provides some valuable information about later groups that were influenced by Garvey. For example, Elijah Poole, later known as Elijah Muhammed, was a Garveyite in Chicago and later became leader of the Nation of Islam. Judith Stein in The World of Marcus Garvey: Race and Class in Modern Society (1986) attempts to occupy some middle ground in the debate, not seeing Garvey and the UNIA as a precursor to the politics of the 1960s but also not dismissing Garvey as irrelevant.

An article that present a good summary of Garvey and his movement is Lawrence Levin's "Marcus Garvey and the Politics of Revitalization" in Black Leaders of the Twentieth Century, edited by John Hope Franklin and August Meier (1982). For the religious aspects of the Garvey movement in the United States, look to Randall K. Burkett's Black Redemption: Churchmen Speak for the Garvey Movement (1978) and Garveyism as a Religious Movement: The Institutionalization of a Black Civil Religion (1978).

The most important contribution to studies on Garvey is Robert A. Hill's The Marcus Garvey and Universal Negro Improvement Association Papers (1983). Hill essentially brought the Garvey archive together by traveling the world and collecting every piece of paper he could find that had something to do with Garvey. He covers the UNIA's activity in the United States, the Caribbean, and Africa. He explores the influence of Ireland and its struggle for independence on Garvey's thinking and suggests that New Thought may have had some influence on Garvey as well. His general introduction and his more specific introduction, which are available online (see links) are outstanding and provide a concise summary of Garvey and the UNIA.

David Van Leeuwen earned his Ph.D. in religious studies from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Address comments or questions to Professor Van Leeuwen through TeacherServe "Comments and Questions."

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Marcus Garvey and the Universal Negro Improvement Association, The Twentieth Century, Divining America: Religion in American History, TeacherServe, National Humanities Center

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Marcus Garvey presiding at the 1922 UNIA convention, Liberty Hall, New York CityCourtesy The Marcus Garvey and UNIA Papers Project, UCLA Marcus Garvey and his organization, the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), represent the largest mass movement in African-American history.

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King was a civil rights activist in the 1950s and 1960s. King helped plan the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. This was the largest protest for human rights in United States history. That same year, the United States government passed the Civil Rights Act. This law made many kinds of discrimination against black people illegal. The March on Washington made it clear to the United States government that they needed to take action on civil rights, and it helped get the Civil Rights Act passed.
https://www.npr.org/2010/01/18/122701268/i-have-a-dream-speech-in-its-entirety

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On August 28, 1963, more than 250,000 people gathered in the nation's capital for the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. The march was the brainchild of longtime civil rights activist and labor leader A. Philip Randolph. With the support of the gifted organizer Bayard Rustin, the march was a collaboration of all factions of the civil rights movement. Originally conceived as a mass demonstration to spotlight economic inequalities and press for a new federal jobs program and a higher minimum wage, the goals of the march expanded to include calls for congressional passage of the Civil Rights Act, full integration of public schools, and enactment of a bill prohibiting job discrimination. The program at the Lincoln Memorial featured an impressive roster of speakers-including John Lewis-and closed with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Midway through his address, King abandoned his prepared text and launched into the soaring expression of his vision for the future, declaring, "I have a dream today."

On 60th anniversary of the March on Washington, the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture reflects on its historical legacy. King's "I Have a Dream Speech" will be on view in the museum for a limited time, Aug. 7-Sept. 18, 2023, in the Defending Freedom, Defining Freedom gallery.

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1963 March on Washington | Smithsonian Institution

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On August 28, 1963, more than 250,000 people gathered in the nation's capital for the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.... Learn more

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Malcolm X was very instrumental in the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. Malcolm X delivered a speech called “The Ballot or the Bullet”. His speech called on blacks to use their voting rights intelligently while warning the U.S government that, African-Americans might resort to arms if it fails to promise full equality. Malcolm X created a new foundation called the Organization of Afro-American Unity. He used the O.A.A.U as the gateway to unify Africans and gather momentum to fight for human rights.
https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/organization-afro-american-unity-oaau-1965/

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American RadioWorks - Say it Plain, Say it Loud

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Public speech making has played a powerful role in the long struggle by African Americans for equal rights. This collection, for the ear and the eye, highlights speeches by an eclectic mix of black leaders. Their impassioned, eloquent words continue to affect the ideas of a nation and the direction of history.

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Davis was a prominent member of the Communist Party of the United States and was involved in Black Power movements in the 1960s.  In 1997, Sha gave a speech called "The Prison Industrial Complex". She said that fear of young people of color was being exploited to create a fast-growing industry so she created a prison abolitionist group called Critical Resistance.
https://www.radcliffe.harvard.edu/news-and-ideas/angela-davis-speaks-at-critical-resistance-meeting-about-the-prison-industrial-complex

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Imprisonment has become the response of first resort to far too many of the social problems that burden people who are ensconced in poverty. These problems often are veiled by being conveniently grouped together under the category "crime" and by the automatic attribution of criminal behavior to people of color. Homelessness, unemployment, drug addiction, mental illness, and illiteracy are only a few of the problems that disappear from public view when the human beings contending with them are relegated to cages.

Prisons thus perform a feat of magic. Or rather the people who continually vote in new prison bonds and tacitly assent to a proliferating network of prisons and jails have been tricked into believing in the magic of imprisonment. But prisons do not disappear problems, they disappear human beings. And the practice of disappearing vast numbers of people from poor, immigrant, and racially marginalized communities has literally become big business.

The seeming effortlessness of magic always conceals an enormous amount of behind-the-scenes work. When prisons disappear human beings in order to convey the illusion of solving social problems, penal infrastructures must be created to accommodate a rapidly swelling population of caged people. Goods and services must be provided to keep imprisoned populations alive. Sometimes these populations must be kept busy and at other times - particularly in repressive super-maximum prisons and in INS detention centers - they must be deprived of virtually all meaningful activity. Vast numbers of handcuffed and shackled people are moved across state borders as they are transferred from one state or federal prison to another.

All this work, which used to be the primary province of government, is now also performed by private corporations, whose links to government in the field of what is euphemistically called "corrections" resonate dangerously with the military industrial complex. The dividends that accrue from investment in the punishment industry, like those that accrue from investment in weapons production, only amount to social destruction. Taking into account the structural similarities and profitability of business-government linkages in the realms of military production and public punishment, the expanding penal system can now be characterized as a "prison industrial complex."

The Color of Imprisonment

Almost two million people are currently locked up in the immense network of U.S. prisons and jails. More than 70 percent of the imprisoned population are people of color. It is rarely acknowledged that the fastest growing group of prisoners are black women and that Native American prisoners are the largest group per capita. Approximately five million people - including those on probation and parole - are directly under the surveillance of the criminal justice system.

Three decades ago, the imprisoned population was approximately one-eighth its current size. While women still constitute a relatively small percentage of people behind bars, today the number of incarcerated women in California alone is almost twice what the nationwide women's prison population was in 1970. According to Elliott Currie, "[t]he prison has become a looming presence in our society to an extent unparalleled in our history - or that of any other industrial democracy. Short of major wars, mass incarceration has been the most thoroughly implemented government social program of our time."

To deliver up bodies destined for profitable punishment, the political economy of prisons relies on racialized assumptions of criminality - such as images of black welfare mothers reproducing criminal children - and on racist practices in arrest, conviction, and sentencing patterns. Colored bodies constitute the main human raw material in this vast experiment to disappear the major social problems of our time. Once the aura of magic is stripped away from the imprisonment solution, what is revealed is racism, class bias, and the parasitic seduction of capitalist profit. The prison industrial system materially and morally impoverishes its inhabitants and devours the social wealth needed to address the very problems that have led to spiraling numbers of prisoners.

As prisons take up more and more space on the social landscape, other government programs that have previously sought to respond to social needs - such as Temporary Assistance to Needy Families - are being squeezed out of existence. The deterioration of public education, including prioritizing discipline and security over learning in public schools located in poor communities, is directly related to the prison "solution."

Profiting from Prisoners
As prisons proliferate in U.S. society, private capital has become enmeshed in the punishment industry. And precisely because of their profit potential, prisons are becoming increasingly important to the U.S. economy. If the notion of punishment as a source of potentially stupendous profits is disturbing by itself, then the strategic dependence on racist structures and ideologies to render mass punishment palatable and profitable is even more troubling.

Prison privatization is the most obvious instance of capital's current movement toward the prison industry. While government-run prisons are often in gross violation of international human rights standards, private prisons are even less accountable. In March of this year, the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), the largest U.S. private prison company, claimed 54,944 beds in 68 facilities under contract or development in the U.S., Puerto Rico, the United Kingdom, and Australia. Following the global trend of subjecting more women to public punishment, CCA recently opened a women's prison outside Melbourne. The company recently identified California as its "new frontier."

Wackenhut Corrections Corporation (WCC), the second largest U.S. prison company, claimed contracts and awards to manage 46 facilities in North America, U.K., and Australia. It boasts a total of 30,424 beds as well as contracts for prisoner health care services, transportation, and security.

Currently, the stocks of both CCA and WCC are doing extremely well. Between 1996 and 1997, CCA's revenues increased by 58 percent, from $293 million to $462 million. Its net profit grew from $30.9 million to $53.9 million. WCC raised its revenues from $138 million in 1996 to $210 million in 1997. Unlike public correctional facilities, the vast profits of these private facilities rely on the employment of non-union labor.

The Prison Industrial Complex
But private prison companies are only the most visible component of the increasing corporatization of punishment. Government contracts to build prisons have bolstered the construction industry. The architectural community has identified prison design as a major new niche. Technology developed for the military by companies like Westinghouse is being marketed for use in law enforcement and punishment.

Moreover, corporations that appear to be far removed from the business of punishment are intimately involved in the expansion of the prison industrial complex. Prison construction bonds are one of the many sources of profitable investment for leading financiers such as Merrill Lynch. MCI charges prisoners and their families outrageous prices for the precious telephone calls which are often the only contact prisoners have with the free world.

Many corporations whose products we consume on a daily basis have learned that prison labor power can be as profitable as third world labor power exploited by U.S.-based global corporations. Both relegate formerly unionized workers to joblessness and many even wind up in prison. Some of the companies that use prison labor are IBM, Motorola, Compaq, Texas Instruments, Honeywell, Microsoft, and Boeing. But it is not only the hi-tech industries that reap the profits of prison labor. Nordstrom department stores sell jeans that are marketed as "Prison Blues," as well as t-shirts and jackets made in Oregon prisons. The advertising slogan for these clothes is "made on the inside to be worn on the outside." Maryland prisoners inspect glass bottles and jars used by Revlon and Pierre Cardin, and schools throughout the world buy graduation caps and gowns made by South Carolina prisoners.

"For private business," write Eve Goldberg and Linda Evans (a political prisoner inside the Federal Correctional Institution at Dublin, California) "prison labor is like a pot of gold. No strikes. No union organizing. No health benefits, unemployment insurance, or workers' compensation to pay. No language barriers, as in foreign countries. New leviathan prisons are being built on thousands of eerie acres of factories inside the walls. Prisoners do data entry for Chevron, make telephone reservations for TWA, raise hogs, shovel manure, make circuit boards, limousines, waterbeds, and lingerie for Victoria's Secret - all at a fraction of the cost of 'free labor.'"

Devouring the Social Wealth
Although prison labor - which ultimately is compensated at a rate far below the minimum wage - is hugely profitable for the private companies that use it, the penal system as a whole does not produce wealth. It devours the social wealth that could be used to subsidize housing for the homeless, to ameliorate public education for poor and racially marginalized communities, to open free drug rehabilitation programs for people who wish to kick their habits, to create a national health care system, to expand programs to combat HIV, to eradicate domestic abuse - and, in the process, to create well-paying jobs for the unemployed.

Since 1984 more than twenty new prisons have opened in California, while only one new campus was added to the California State University system and none to the University of California system. In 1996-97, higher education received only 8.7 percent of the State's General Fund while corrections received 9.6 percent. Now that affirmative action has been declared illegal in California, it is obvious that education is increasingly reserved for certain people, while prisons are reserved for others. Five times as many black men are presently in prison as in four-year colleges and universities. This new segregation has dangerous implications for the entire country.

By segregating people labeled as criminals, prison simultaneously fortifies and conceals the structural racism of the U.S. economy. Claims of low unemployment rates - even in black communities - make sense only if one assumes that the vast numbers of people in prison have really disappeared and thus have no legitimate claims to jobs. The numbers of black and Latino men currently incarcerated amount to two percent of the male labor force. According to criminologist David Downes, "[t]reating incarceration as a type of hidden unemployment may raise the jobless rate for men by about one-third, to 8 percent. The effect on the black labor force is greater still, raising the [black] male unemployment rate from 11 percent to 19 percent."

Hidden Agenda
Mass incarceration is not a solution to unemployment, nor is it a solution to the vast array of social problems that are hidden away in a rapidly growing network of prisons and jails. However, the great majority of people have been tricked into believing in the efficacy of imprisonment, even though the historical record clearly demonstrates that prisons do not work. Racism has undermined our ability to create a popular critical discourse to contest the ideological trickery that posits imprisonment as key to public safety. The focus of state policy is rapidly shifting from social welfare to social control.

Black, Latino, Native American, and many Asian youth are portrayed as the purveyors of violence, traffickers of drugs, and as envious of commodities that they have no right to possess. Young black and Latina women are represented as sexually promiscuous and as indiscriminately propagating babies and poverty. Criminality and deviance are racialized. Surveillance is thus focused on communities of color, immigrants, the unemployed, the undereducated, the homeless, and in general on those who have a diminishing claim to social resources. Their claim to social resources continues to diminish in large part because law enforcement and penal measures increasingly devour these resources. The prison industrial complex has thus created a vicious cycle of punishment which only further impoverishes those whose impoverishment is supposedly "solved" by imprisonment.

Therefore, as the emphasis of government policy shifts from social welfare to crime control, racism sinks more deeply into the economic and ideological structures of U.S. society. Meanwhile, conservative crusaders against affirmative action and bilingual education proclaim the end of racism, while their opponents suggest that racism's remnants can be dispelled through dialogue and conversation. But conversations about "race relations" will hardly dismantle a prison industrial complex that thrives on and nourishes the racism hidden within the deep structures of our society.

The emergence of a U.S. prison industrial complex within a context of cascading conservatism marks a new historical moment, whose dangers are unprecedented. But so are its opportunities. Considering the impressive number of grassroots projects that continue to resist the expansion of the punishment industry, it ought to be possible to bring these efforts together to create radical and nationally visible movements that can legitimize anti-capitalist critiques of the prison industrial complex. It ought to be possible to build movements in defense of prisoners' human rights and movements that persuasively argue that what we need is not new prisons, but new health care, housing, education, drug programs, jobs, and education. To safeguard a democratic future, it is possible and necessary to weave together the many and increasing strands of resistance to the prison industrial complex into a powerful movement for social transformation.

Angela Davis is a former political prisoner, long-time activist, educator, and author who has devoted her life to struggles for social justice.

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Masked Racism: Reflections on the Prison Industrial Complex

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Imprisonment has become the response of first resort to far too many of the social problems that burden people who are ensconced in poverty. These problems often are veiled by being conveniently grouped together under the category "crime" and by the automatic attribution of criminal behavior to people of color.

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Garza is one of the founders of the international Black Lives Matter movement dedicated to fighting racism, anti-Black violence and police brutality. Black Lives Matter movement have held large and influential protests in cities across the United States which brought a lot of attention to the many ways in which Black people are treated unfairly in society and the ways in which institutions, laws, and policies help to perpetuate that unfairness.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/killings-by-police-declined-after-black-lives-matter-protests1/

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By Larry Buchanan, Quoctrung Bui and Jugal K. Patel

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Black Lives Matter May Be the Largest Movement in U.S. History (Published 2020)

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Recent polls suggest that about 15 million to 26 million people in the U.S. have participated in recent protests.

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I can’t consider myself an antiracist because I haven’t done anything that promotes racial tolerance.