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[[caption]] MARCUS GARVEY, c. 1922/N.Y. DAILY NEWS PHOTO [[/caption]]

Finally, in a last effort to save the Black Star Line from bankruptcy, Garvey went abroad where he somehow managed to raise the funds needed to save the venture. Upon his return, however, he found himself unable to re-enter the United States for more than five months. Taking advantage of this situation, some of Garvey's most trusted aides extorted large sums of money from the firm, accumulating such enormous debts that, by the time Garvey did finally manage to get back into the country, the UNIA was on the verge of complete financial ruin.

A host of ensuing legal entanglements, based on charges that Garvey had used the U.S. mails to defraud prospective investors, eventually led to his imprisonment in the Atlanta federal penitentiary for a term of five years. In 1927, his half-served sentence was commuted, and he was deported to Jamaica by order of President Calvin Coolidge.

Garvey left on a world tour the very next year, still stubbornly convinced that he could enlist the necessary support for his schemes. Upon his return to Jamaica, he organized still another international convention, at which various delegates reported on the deplorable conditions under which Negroes the world over were forced to live. Despite a groundswell of enthusiasm for his ideas, Garvey found himself plagued by an assortment of now-familiar financial woes, including payment of back salaries to members of his former New York staff. As a result of judgments against him, the assets of the Jamaica branch of the UNIA were almost totally depleted.

At this point, Garvey turned his energies to Jamaican politics, agitating in particular for the enforcement of already-existing British laws which were designed to protect the rights of plaintiffs against possible connivance between judges, lawyers and businessmen. For his pains, Garvey was convicted of libel and forced to serve a jail sentence of three months.

Upon his release from prison, Garvey ran unsuccessfully for a seat in the Legislative Council. In his campaign, he called for self-government in Jamaica, a minimum-wage law, land and judicial reform, the promotion of local industry, and the creation of both a national university and an opera house. Most of Garvey's followers, however, did not have the necessary voting qualifications, and he was thus soundly defeated at the polls.

Nevertheless, he continued to struggle for a political foothold in Jamaica and, ultimately, did manage to win a seat in a local council. By the mid 1930's, however, the Negro inhabitants of the island had found their economic and political position so improved that they paid less and less heed to Garvey's proposals.

In 1935, Garvey left for England where, in near obscurity, he died five years later in a cottage in West Kensington.

Critics of Garvey are quick to label him a pretentious crank, whereas his supporters are equally disposed to calling him an unqualified genius. From a more historically impartial viewpoint, however, he must be regarded as a kind of fanatic visionary--a utopian who undertook enormous and grandiose schemes, a man literally driven by the notion that the Negro's sole means for achieving a unique culture in the 20th century was through the foundation of a unified, separatist empire in Africa. Although his ideas, in their ultimate form, may have been rejected by most of the people of his day, it is clear that, since then, these very same ideas--in a different perspective--have had a favorable influence on the policies of many Negro leaders the world over.

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[[image: two men ride in an open automobile, one in a hat with a silk ribbon, the other in a bicorn hat with large feathers; he wears military uniform with lots of gold braid and looks directly at the camera]]