Marcus Garvey's Harlem Footprint

Liberty Hall, Gathering Place of Marcus Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association, in the early 1900s.

In 1919, Marcus Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association (U.N.I.A.) purchased a building at 120 West 138th Street. The organization named it “Liberty Hall” and soon established numerous other Liberty Halls around the country. Harlem’s original became a gathering and rallying spot for the organization, Harlemites, and even the worldwide Black community.

From there, and from their headquarters at 56 West 135th Street, the U.N.I.A. launched numerous businesses under the auspices of the Negro Factories Corporation and located them around Harlem. The enterprises included a laundromat, a publishing house, grocery stores and a doll factory.

But perhaps the most ambitious of the U.N.I.A.’s enterprises was the Black Star Line, a shipping line to “trade in the interests of the Negro people.” Its first ship, known as the SS Frederick Douglass, set sail from 135th Street in November of 1919, watched by a jubilant crowd. Joshua Cockburn, a black immigrant from the Bahamas, was at the helm as captain. According to the publication, Steamboat Bill, the ship carried 23 passengers with stops planned for Jamaica, Cuba and Panama.

Sadly, the Black Star Line did not last. By the mid-1920s, the ships were seized by creditors. Garvey was jailed, and in 1927, he was deported and returned to his native country, Jamaica, before living out the last years of his life in England.

Although some Liberty Halls still carry the name in other parts of the country and world, Harlem’s is no more and the topography of those streets has changed. But Garvey is commemorated in Harlem by the park that bears his name and in keeping with his desire to unite black people, it unites East and West Harlem between 124th and 120th streets.

(ER/KD)