WAKANDA WAS ALMOST A REALITY PART 1

  

Black Panther opened a portal to a possible conversation between Black Americans and continental Africans.  For the purpose of this post Black Americans are any of us that were born and raised in North, South and Central America including the Caribbean islands.  In recent years we have allowed a chasm to divide us even more than we should.  This has not always been the case.  In the spirit of Black History Month (I refuse to say African American history month) I found an article on the Honorable Marcus Mosiah Garvey, the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), and Liberia.  Mr. Garvey founded the UNIA in 1914 and by 1920 the organization was worldwide having members around the globe including Liberia.  Liberia is a country on the African continent bordered by Sierra Leone, Guinea and Cote d’Ivoire with the Atlantic Ocean to the south. 

Mr. Garvey, seeking a home land on the continent for a move to Africa, gained the favor of the Liberian government.  Liberia set aside five thousand square miles as a beachhead in the country.   Everyday Liberian people were members of the UNIA or followed Mr. Garvey.  Even high ranking officials of the Liberian government were also members of the UNIA including Gabriel M. Johnson who was the incumbent Mayor of Monrovia, capital city of Liberia, Frederick E.R. Johnson brother of Gabriel.  Former presidents of Liberia Arthur Barclay and Daniel E. Howard, former Mayor of Monrovia Thomas J.R. Faulkner, Montserrado County Representative Didhwo Twe and Associate Justice Frederick E.R. Johnson.  In fact Gabriel M. Johnson was elected Supreme Potentate of the UNIA second only to Provisional President-General Marcus Mosiah Garvey. 

Liberia was a settlement founded by 13,000 freemen and freedmen from the U.S., Jamaica, Barbados and Africans from the U.K. and Africans from other countries beginning in 1822 culminating in Liberia becoming Africa’s first independent republic on July 26, 1847.  The American’s treatment of the native Kru and Bassa people, who were the largest groups living in the area, was as awful as the white colonists were to the aboriginal Americans when they arrived on these shores. Some evidence about the ill treatment of the continental African natives by the Americans was that the native people in the area were still participating in the slave trade bringing captive Africans from other countries down the Congo River to the sea coast to sell.  The Americans were astounded at this fact and used this to continue to war against the native people.  Over time the terms Congo people was a pejorative aimed at the new comers whether from the Americas or people that were going to be sold on the slave market that were set free by the Americans.  In turn the Americans/Congo people referred to the natives as Country people.  This schism continues today as the Americo-Liberians remain the country’s elite.