THE IMPORTANCE OF SYMBOLIC AND CULTURAL POLITICS IN THE MARCUS GARVEY MOVEMENT

Abstract

This research incorporates interdisciplinary data in order to discuss the Marcus Garvey Movement which emerged in the urban North during the World War I era. The importance of symbolic and cultural politics for Garvey's appeal to newly arriving, often uneducated and unskilled northern urban Blacks, is elaborated. Such forms of symbolic communication and politics, along with Garvey's inability to anticipate repression and other macro-structural issues and conditions, created intense conflicts with potential allies, as well as his own followers. Garvey's form of ideological or symbolic politics provided short run successes in the recruitment of poor, relatively uneducated segments of the Harlem community to his racial struggle. However, in the long run, Garvey failed to provide leadership and tactical direction for a sustained broad based movement for racial equality.