have its
own country. The white man had Europe, and the black man should have
Africa. Race redemption did not mean that all blacks must return to
Africa. However, when there was a prosperous, independent African nation,
blacks throughout the world would be treated with respect. He noted that
Englishmen and Frenchmen were not lynched, but that blacks, in contrast,
were treated like lepers. Garvey did plan to encourage those blacks who
had particularly useful skills or who desired to return to Africa to do
so, in order to become the back-bone of this new prosperous black nation.

Garvey was harshly critical of the leadership in the Afro-American
community. With the exception of Booker T. Washington, they had all
advocated social equality, intermarriage, and fraternization. Garvey said
that these only led to increased racial friction, He argued that racial
purity for both whites and blacks was superior to racial integration,
Blacks should also be proud of their race and their ancestry. Africa was
not a dark and degenerate continent; instead it was a place of which to
be proud.

To demonstrate this, Garvey adopted African clothes and hair style long
before they became popular. The black bourgeoisie was shocked and ashamed
by his blatant display. Whites were totally incapable of understanding
why anyone would try to glorify blackness and the African heritage. To
them, he seemed merely a clown. However, to the black masses who had no
hope of achieving middle-class respectability, his pride in blackness
came as a release. Instead of a life buried in shame, he offered them
pride and dignity. Instead of being considered "nobodies," he gave them a
sense of identity. In place of weakness, he offered solidarity and
strength. These ideas spread through the ghettoes of large American urban
centers like a fever. In 1920 the Universal Negro Improvement Association
held its annual convention at Madison Square Garden in New York City.
There were 25,000 delegates in attendance. Garvey told them that he
planned to organize the four hundred million blacks of the world into one
powerful unit and to plant the banner of freedom in Africa. In response,
the convention elected him as the Provisional President of Africa.

Garvey's black separatism led, naturally enough, to black capitalism.
Businesses connected with the U.N.I.A. sprang up all across the country.
They were usually small enterprises: grocery stores, laundries, and
restaurants. La