Grassroots Garveyism: The Universal Negro Improvement Association in the Rural South, 1920-1927 » (New Edition)

Mary G. Rolinson is visiting lecturer of history at Georgia State University.

The black separatist movement led by Marcus Garvey has long been viewed as a phenomenon of African American organization in the urban North. But as Mary Rolinson demonstrates, the largest number of Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) divisions and Garvey's most devoted and loyal followers were found in the southern Black Belt. Rolinson remaps the movement to include this vital but overlooked region, and offers a view of what southern Garveyites were like. Even after the UNIA had all but disappeared in the South in the 1930s, she says, the movement's tenets of race organization, unity, and pride continued to flourish in other forms of black protest for generations.

Acknowledgments     ix
Introduction: Rediscovering Southern Garveyism     1
Antecedents     24
Lessons     48
Growth     72
Members     103
Appeal     131
Transition     161
Epilogue: Legacy     192
UNIA Divisions in the Eleven States of the Former Confederacy     197
Numbers of Southern Members of UNIA Divisions by State     200
Numbers of Sympathizers Involved in Mass Meetings and Petitions for Garvey's Release from Jail and Prison, 1923-1927     201
Phases of Organization of UNIA Divisions in the South by State     202
Ministers as Southern UNIA Officers, 1926-1928     203
Profiles of UNIA Members in Georgia, Arkansas, and Mississippi, 1922-1928, and NAACP Branch Leaders in Georgia, 1917-1920     204
Women Organizers in the UNIA in the South, 1922-1928     214
Notes     217
Bibliography     251
Index     269