MARCUS GARVEY WAS born at St. Ann's Bay, Jamaica, the youngest of 11 children. Garvey left school at age 14 and moved to Kingston to work in a print shop. In Kingston, he learned firsthand about the dismal lot of his country's working class, his peers. He became a nationalist and reformer. When the members of the printers' union went on strike for the first time in 1907, he struck with them. He also edited The Watchman.

Garvey had ambitions; what he lacked was resources. He went to Central and South America, collecting information about discrimination against black people and seeking funding for his ambitions. Garvey traveled in the Panama Canal Zone to Ecuador, Nicaragua, Colombia, Venezuela, and Honduras. Everywhere, Garvey encountered his struggling expatriate West ...