A BLACK NATIONALIST WORLD: THE RHETORIC OF LEADERS OF THE UNIVERSAL NEGRO IMPROVEMENT ASSOCIATION FROM 1914 TO 1925

Black people continue to struggle for freedom. This project examines the way that leaders of the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) fought for the freedom of Black people from 1914 to 1925. UNIA leaders rhetorically fought for Black people’s freedom by building on their belief in Black self-determination to practice world-making and envision a public. Turning back to UNIA leaders’ espousal of evaluations of the present and expectations for the future illustrates how UNIA leaders developed a view of a public capable of including all Black people and left behind a roadmap for how to make a more equitable world now. Chapter One investigates Marcus Garvey’s “Address to the 2nd Universal Negro Improvement Association Convention.” Garvey’s evaluations and expectations, his world-making, and his freedom dream, provided the foundation for UNIA leaders’ view of their public as one that included all Black people. Chapter Two examines the rhetoric of UNIA leaders Henrietta Vinton Davis, William Ferris, and Marcus Garvey during the “Africa for the Africans” campaign. The second chapter reveals how leaders’ world-making rhetoric provided them with the opportunity to envision a parallel public—a public inclusive of all Black people and insulated from the negative views of the “dominant” public. The third chapter examines how leaders articulated evaluations of the past and present and expectations for the future to develop a view of their public as one still capable of supporting Black self-determination despite the imprisoning of Marcus Garvey. UNIA leaders like Henrietta Vinton Davis, William Ferris, Amy Jacques Garvey, William Sherrill, T. Thomas Fortune, and Marcus Garvey exemplified a rhetoric of champions as they predicted the future success of their public. The fourth chapter investigates how the most indispensable women leaders of the UNIA reflected on the UNIA’s successes from 1914 to 1925 after the UNIA had passed its prime. Chapter Four turns to Amy Ashwood Garvey’s and Amy Jacques Garvey’s reminisces of Marcus Garvey in their interviews for “The Ghost of Garvey” conducted by Lerone Bennett Jr. In their interviews, Ashwood Garvey and Jacques Garvey produced a rhetoric of falling forward by evaluating the UNIA’s past and expecting that the efforts of the UNIA leaders would have purchase for Black people fighting for freedom in the future. Ashwood Garvey’s and Jacques Garvey’s rhetoric pushed a view of leaders’ public as strong and supportive of Black self-determination into perpetuity. This project concludes by reflecting on what UNIA leaders’ world-making and envisioning of a public illuminate about Black Nationalism in the 1960s and world-making now. Leaders did not get to see their Black Nationalist world come to fruition, but UNIA leaders did bring millions of Black people together around the idea that if they believed in self-determination, the future was theirs for the making. Turning back to UNIA leaders’ rhetoric from 1914 to 1925 evinces how by believing in Black self-determination and articulating their own evaluations of the present and expectations for the future, UNIA leaders charted a path to a different world.

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