Message to the People by Marcus Garvey
In September 1937, three years before his death, Marcus Garvey assembled a small group of his most trusted organizers. For almost a quarter of a century he had led the Universal Negro Improvement Association at its peak, the largest international mass movement in the history of African peoples. Now he wanted to pass on the lessons he had learned to the group best suited to carry the struggle forward. For one month, he instructed this elite student body, twelve hours a day, seven days a week. The sessions were secret and much of the instruction was not written down. The students did, however receive written copies of twenty two lessons which Garvey called the Course of African Philosophy. This fascinating distillation of a great leader's experience is published here for the first time.
Here are some excerpts,
"One must never stop reading...
In reading, it is not necessary that you agree with everything that you read. You must use or apply your own reasoning to what you have read based upon what you already know as touching the facts of what you have read....
There is always a limited process in the education of other races by the race that originates the system of education...
It is necessary, therefore, that the Negro be additionally educated or re-educated after he has imbibed the system of the present education...
As you shouldn't expect another man to give you the clothing that you need to cover your own body so you should not expect another race to give you the education to challenge their rights to monopoly and mastery to take for yourself that which they also want for themselves...."
