Marcus Garvey, the Jamaican-born Black nationalist political leader who founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association, was both praised as a visionary leader and dismissed as a dangerous subversive during his lifetime. In this lesson, students source biographies and government documents to discuss Garvey's “Back to Africa Movement” and consider why Garvey was such a controversial figure.
Image: Photo of Marcus Garvey taken in 1924. From the Library of Congress.