Second-Period Garveyism in the Greater Caribbean, 1921–35: A Reassessment

In 1921, facing growing political pressure and determined to resuscitate the alarming financial decline of the Black Star Line, Marcus Garvey embarked on what Robert A. Hill as described as a “retreat from radicalism,” a strategy of noninterference with constituted authority in the United States and the greater Caribbean region.  Yet far from embodying the “political evaporation of Garveyism,” as Hill has suggested, the history of the movement in the Caribbean suggests precisely the opposite.  As in the United States, this paper will argue, Garveyism was sustained because of the willingness of both Garvey and his followers to embark on what Garvey described as a “second period,” to adapt to changing opportunities, effectively gauge local needs, and act with political sensitivity rather than ideological dogmatism.  As in the United States, the Garveyist “retreat” offered a space for followers to continue their diasporic project of mobilization, preparation, and African redemption, a cautious platform upon which to pursue their ambitious global aspirations.  Eager to sustain their long-term, unambiguously anti-colonial vision, Garveyites prevented their political evaporation by conceding the short-term advantages of white supremacy.  As a result, Garveyism emerged from what increasingly seemed a brief and anomalous period of radicalism as the framing material for what emerged as the dominant strain of black politics during the interwar era.  By the mid-1930s a new politics had emerged, one that both surpassed Garveyite organizing in its stridency and relied on tropes of racial solidarity; one that distanced itself from old guard Garveyite organizers while boasting a young leadership that had been nurtured within the Garvey movement.