New book details J. Edgar Hoover’s war against Marcus Garvey from once secret Bureau of Investigation files

Book cover of GARVEY: The Case Against the Provisional President of Africa by Michael Richardson

J. Edgar Hoover’s efforts to imprison Marcus Garvey is a story unknown to many. While Hoover’s dirty tricks against more recent black leaders like Martin Luther King or Malcolm X are well documented, few people realize that the roots of Hoover’s clandestine misdeeds go back one hundred years to the prosecution of Garvey for mail fraud.

Before Hoover viewed Garvey as a fraudster, and worse, he considered Garvey a radical black nationalist and danger to the public order. Hoover’s inability to imprison Garvey for anything but fraud led to the crimes of COINTELPRO and other illegal counterintelligence operations by the Federal Bureau of Investigation decades later.

Marcus Garvey’s back-to-Africa campaign, which never really caught on, established Garvey as a recognized founder of black nationalism. Over the years since Garvey’s death in 1940, he has grown in status to become a widely recognized black power icon. Garvey’s color scheme of red, black and green became a cultural marker as his fame spread. Garvey’s image adorns money, postage stamps, and statues in several countries.

The book, which took five years to research and write, is an outgrowth of an earlier book project, FRAMED: J. Edgar Hoover, COINTELPRO & the Omaha Two story. FRAMED explored the Nebraska prosecution of two Black Panther leaders, Edward Poindexter and David Rice [Wopashitwe Eyen Mondo we Langa] for the murder of an Omaha patrolman in 1970. In the course of working on FRAMED, the once-secret FBI files on Marcus Garvey came to light. Over a thousand pages of confidential reports by a half-dozen especially recruited black undercover agents detail Hoover’s efforts to lock Garvey up.

In the course of investigating Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association the undercover agents came to believe that Garvey also ordered the murder of a rival, Rev. James Eason. The story is largely set in Harlem but follows Garvey’s travels around the United States pursued by federal sleuths.

Garvey’s weekly Negro World newspaper provides a counterpoint to the secret Bureau reports and gives a richly textured view of Harlem, one hundred years ago. A powerful orator, Garvey had a devoted following and numerous critics, including W. E. B. Du Bois. Garvey also clashed with the African Blood Brotherhood over the back-to-Africa campaign and struck up a tenuous relationship with the Ku Klux Klan. Garvey’s black separatism lead to an alliance with segregationists in a tangled web of confusion.

Marcus Garvey’s current fame, which continues to grow, overlooks many personal inconsistencies and contradictions that cost him followers during his lifetime. Although Garvey’s black nationalism gained him lasting fame, few now know that the Negro World became a leading purveyor of hair straighteners and skin bleaches.

GARVEY: The Case Against the Provisional President of Africa is not a biography, nor a complete history. Instead, the book is a compelling account of a criminal investigation and trial, steeped in racism, hypocrisy and intrigue. GARVEY is an inside and upclose look at an America long gone, extracted from primary sources and told as it happened and fills important gaps in the story of the Provisional President of Africa.

GARVEY: The Case Against the Provisional President of Africa is available in print from Amazon and also available in Kindle.