"Universal Negro
Improvement and Conservation Association and African Communities League".
In 1916, Garvey came to the United States to solicit the support of
Afro-Americans. He had hoped to get the backing of Booker T. Washington
with whom he had already corresponded, but, unfortunately, Washington
died the previous year.

In the United States Garvey found the Afro-American community ready to
support his program of encouraging aggressive racial pride. The hopes
which had accompanied the end of slavery, half a century earlier, had
turned to ashes. Then, thousands moved from the rural South to the urban
North to escape the growth of segregation and to find economic
advancement. In the "promised land," they were continually confronted by
socially sanctioned segregation, constant racial insults, and relentless
job discrimination.

In 1919 white race hatred exploded in race riots all across the country.
In that year, there were also some seventy lynchings, mostly black, and
some of them were soldiers who had Just returned from defending their
country. Urban whites resented the influx of rural blacks from the South
who were pouring into their cities, and they tried to confine the
newcomers to dilapidated, older neighborhoods. To do this, they were
quite willing to resort to violence, and, between 1917 and 1921 Chicago
was struck with a rash of house bombings as whites tried to hold the
line. During these years, there was one racially motivated bombing every
twenty days.

In the midst of such conditions, white America did not seem very
beautiful, and black pride, black identity, and black solidarity had an
appeal which was novel. Chapters of the Universal Negro Improvement
Association sprang up all across the country. Although there has been
considerable debate about the number of members in the U.N.I.A., it was
clearly the largest mass organization in Afro-American history. Its
membership has been estimated between two and four million. In any case,
its sympathizers and well-wishers were ubiquitous. The "respectable"
N.A.A.C.P. never reached such grass-roots support, and even with its
white liberal financing, its capital was much smaller than that which
Garvey was able to tap from the lower-class blacks alone.

Garvey advocated a philosophy of race redemption. He said that blacks
needed a nation of their own where they could demonstrate their abilities
and develop their talents. He believed that every people should