GARVEY'S VOICE

The Official Publication of the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League
NEWYORK
NEW YORK SEPTEMBER - OCTOBER 2019 $3.00

FROM THE OFFICE OF THE PRESIDENT GENERAL, HON. MICHAEL R. DUNCAN

One God

One Aim

One
THE CONVENTION HAS DONE ITS WORK
Destiny FUTURE SUCCESSES NOW REST WITH MEMBERSHIP
Fellow African Men and Women:
I greet you in the name of our founder, Hon. Marcus Mosiah Garvey. Your delegates to the Great
Liberia Convention have now returned to you bringing with them the information and inspiration
received at one of the greatest conventions ever held by any race. They are bringing back to you the
spirit of the new African revived and intensified by the helpful contact with kindred spirits, entrusted to
the great task of putting over the African Redemption Program.
The Program that seeks to emancipate Africans worldwide must go through. The Program that seeks
to redeem Africa must succeed, and we, as members of the Universal Negro Improvement Association
[UNIA] have pledged ourselves to see the Program through. We have pledged ourselves to convey the
measures of hope of the UNIA to the millions who have not yet heard the cry of the bleeding of Africa. We are determined
that this work must go on, that there must be a free and redeemed Africa, that there must be an emancipated race, whether it
be in Africa, or the United States, or the Caribbean. And it all starts with the homeland - Africa - for those at home and those
abroad. We shall continue to shape the plans by which we shall convert the world to the righteousness of our cause.
AFRICANS AND MONEY NEEDED
We need now men & women and money. Out of this convention we are sending earnest men and women; men and women
who truly believe in the aims and objectives of our Association. But we want the financial backing, the financial support, of
every African to put this Program through. This is the year for us to make sacrifices to carry forward this great cause. We
want every African man, woman and child to do his and her bit for the realization of this ideal for the race.
Each and every member of the race must realize that, even though we have laid out a platform which will mean protection
for Africans everywhere, we can only do it when we receive the whole-hearted financial support of Africans everywhere.
You can support the organization morally and financially. Speak on this to each and every African you come in contact with.
Send your funds to our headquarters @ FACA ROC 132-05 Merrick Blvd, Jamaica, NY 11434 whatever money you can
afford, and get your friends and acquaintances to do likewise, so that, with the money at our disposal, we can finance the
Program which will bring about the accomplishment of our ideals. It is no use holding back. Watching and waiting will not
help. But falling in line now to do your bit will help us to put over the Program. We have waited for more than 400 years in
this North America, and we have remained dormant in Africa for over 600 years, but the time has really come for all of us
Africans at home, and Africans abroad, to throw in our energy, our wealth and our resources and make this organization with
the flag of the Red, the Black and the Green carry us to Victory.
Michael R. Duncan

www.UNIA-ACLGovernment.com
 SEP-OCT 2019 GARVEY'S VOICE

Page 3 AFRICAN REDEMPTION FUND

Page 4-5 2020 BACK TO AFRICA
Page 6-7 MARCUS GARVEY'S PLACE
IN TORONTO HISTORY
by Cheryl Thompson, PhD
Page 10 BON FET PAPA DESALIN
Page 11 EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
Page 12 THE CASE FOR LIBERIA
Page 13-16 LIBERIA CONVENTION
Page 19 JAMAICA FAMILY MEDICINE
President General, Page 20 BLACK IS BEAUTIFUL
Hon. Michael R. Duncan
Page 21 OCTOBER 1ST
Page 24 UNIA♦ACL MEETINGS
Page 28 SPEAK YOUR MIND MARCUS GARVEY

NEWS BRIEFS Pg 26-27

Pg 26 The End is near For the US Puppet
Pg 27 Black on Black Violence in Service of white domination

IN MEMORIAM

Pg 17 African Queen

True To The UNIA

Pg 18 African King
"We have said, we will never collapse, never ever.
We may have our droughts, our poverty, but as a people we
shall never collapse, never ever."

sep - oct 2019 new york garvey's voice price $3.00

official publication of the universal negro improvement association • african communities league
www.unia-aclgovernment.com
132-05 merrick blvd (inside belknap street) • jamaica, ny 11434 • (718) 906-8920
president general hon. Michael r. duncan
editor-in-chief raymond dugué • (718) 570-7350
printer all time printing • (718) 464-1400
Contributor cheryl thompson, PhD
medicine jamaica family medicine • (718) 526-9491
E-mail hch@unia-aclgovernment.com
classified ad (917) 716-2506
 SEP-OCT 2019 GARVEY'S VOICE

reflections of an editor
Our founder, Marcus Mosiah THE PEOPLE'S FORUM
Garvey, placed a great
subscription to garvey's voice
emphasis on productivity as he
Dear Editor: Concerning the above referenced matter, I have
recognized the intimate enclosed a facility check in the amount of $15.00 so that I may
relationship between the means receive the next five (5) issues of the Garvey's Voice. If there
of production and the character are are any other publications this office carries please inform
of a people. He recognized that social character is me of such. Further, if there is any way that I can donate to
determined by the nature of social and labor relations. the cause please inform me of such as well. Thank you and I
Furthermore, Mr. Garvey recognized that consuming look forward to hearing from you soon. 08A5070
their products would not rescue us from subordination.
He recognized intuitively that the eating at lunch
counters with our enemies, the sharing of hotels and
beds with those enemies, the marrying and sleeping
with their daughters, would not advance our interests
ultimately as a people. Ultimate freedom and
independence is founded on production, upon the
creation of employment, upon the creation of labor
mother lamb moving
and the creation of products for our own
Dear Editor: Peace. Sister Margaret Lamb will be moving to
consumption. When we look in the world today, we Atlanta, Georgia this year. She has been a member of the
will see that the powerful nations and people are UNIA/ACL for over 40 years. We will be having a gathering for her
producing people, not consuming people. You on the Saturday, September 14th 1 PM to 6 PM at 424 Vanderbilt
cannot consume yourself into equality. Equally, you Avenue between Gates & Green in Brooklyn, NY. Please let UNIA
cannot consume yourself into power. Those nations members know how much we appreciate the many years of
who depend upon consumption will see as they service she has given to the UNIA/ACL. Sis Maxine Flowers
consume the product of others and do not produce
themselves, that they will be consumed by others. A
race that is solely dependent upon another for
economic existence sooner or later dies. If we do
not NOW make an effort to adjust our own affairs,
we will continue to suffer and remain the stooges and
fools that we are at the hands of our enemies. This is
why we created the FACA♦ROC. This is why we
travel to Africa. This is why we meet at the UNIA.
This is why we created the COMMUNITY
FOCUS Radio Show. This is why the Garvey's
Voice exists, i.e., all of these serve as an instrument
in the uplift and liberation of our people based on a
race first self reliant independent economic platform.

We welcome letters to The People's Forum, but they must

include (for verification purposes) the writer's name, address
and cellular number. This includes letters sent via email. The
name may be withheld upon request. Letters signed simply
'Name Withheld' are not considered for print. Letters should be
as brief as possible, and, of course, all letters are subject to
editing. Letters containing the proviso 'Do Not Edit' are not
considered for print.
Email letters to hch@unia-aclgovernment.com.
 SEP-OCT 2019 GARVEY'S VOICE
Marcus Garvey’s Place in Toronto’s History AUGUST 17, 2018 | BY CHERYL THOMPSON
For the past several years, 355 College Street has been home to Thymeless Bar, a reggae nightspot situated just
steps from Kensington Market. What many people forget or don’t know is that for 57 years — from 1925 to 1982
— this building was home to the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) Hall. The organization was built
by West Indian immigrants and African Canadians, and based on the principles of Black activist and visionary,
Marcus Garvey. While the UNIA Hall is long gone, the location serves as a reminder of a time when a different
generation of Black Torontonians gathered in that space to build community and foster Black self-love.
As a child of Jamaican parents, I have always known about Marcus Garvey. But growing up in the 1980s, I didn’t
know much about his UNIA — it certainly was not taught in public school — or the fact that there was a Toronto
division, and divisions just like it across the country.
Garvey was born in Jamaica on August 17, 1887. On August 1, 1914, Emancipation Day, he founded the UNIA in
Kingston, Jamaica with two primary goals. First, the unification of people of African descent, irrespective of
nationality. Second, the repatriation of Black people back to Africa, which for Garvey and his followers —
“Garveyites” — represented the true ancestral land for all Black people. Specifically, he viewed Liberia, in West
Africa, as the place where the burdens of racial prejudice could be lifted, and Black self-government made possible.
But the UNIA was also part of a Pan Africanist movement rooted in fostering and strengthening solidarity among
people of African descent. Figures like Garvey and the African American intellectual W.E.B. Du Bois, who
co-founded the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1909, are often credited
as the “fathers of Pan Africanism” because their aim was to centralize Africa and African history as fundamental to
Black history, irrespective of national borders.
In 1916, Garvey moved the UNIA’s headquarters to Harlem. Between 1918 and 1923, the organization expanded
across Canada. According to University of Waterloo historian Carla Marano, tiny divisions sprang up in Manitoba,
Saskatchewan, Alberta, and British Columbia beginning in the 1920s. UNIA divisions also opened across Nova
Scotia, in Halifax, Sydney, and Glace Bay, home to Canada’s first UNIA division. It was established in 1918 to help
West Indian mine workers settle in Cape Breton.
Montreal’s UNIA division, located in the “Little Burgundy” district, operated out of 243 Saint Antoine Street and
opened in 1919. In a PhD study, the late Vanier College Black studies scholar Leo Bertley noted that this was the
same building that housed the CPR sleeping car porters who did not live in Montreal, but were awaiting trains to take
them back to their home base. As many porters became UNIA members, and as they travelled on the rails between
Montreal, Toronto and beyond, they spread Black culture, news, and Garveyism, all of which contributed to a sense
of diasporic connection across North America.
While there were UNIA divisions throughout Ontario, in cities
such as at Windsor, St. Catharines, Niagara Falls, and
Hamilton, the largest and most active branch was Toronto’s
UNIA Hall, which also opened in 1919. The early Toronto
UNIA meetings actually took place at the Occidental Hall, at
Bathurst and Queen Streets (now CB2). For a brief time, the
division rented space at 339 Queen Street West but in 1925,
the division had pooled enough money from members to
purchase the UNIA Hall at 355 College Street. Like in
Montreal, the majority of Toronto’s UNIA members were
West Indian immigrants, and many were also sleeping car porters.
Toronto’s Black community in the early twentieth century was, in many ways, just as diverse as it is today. It
comprised native-born Black Canadians, West Indian immigrants, African Americans, and African Nova Scotians.
Some West Indian immigrants had arrived in Toronto from Nova Scotia, where many had been recruited to work
the coal mines. Others came after short stays in New York. Most settled in the neighborhood between College and
 SEP 2019 GARVEY'S VOICE
Marcus Garvey’s Place in Toronto’s History AUGUST 17, 2018 | BY CHERYL THOMPSON
Dundas Streets, and University and Spadina Avenues. In my forthcoming book, Beauty in a Box: Detangling the
Roots of Canada’s Black Beauty Culture (Wilfrid University Press), I describe how Black-owned barbershops and
hair salons also operated near Queen and University as early as the 1910s.
The UNIA Hall, in addition to holding formal associational meetings and events, housed the United Negro Credit
Union, the Toronto United Negro Association and the Black Cross Nurses, an organization which promoted good
health and hygiene practices within the black community. There were weekly Sunday Mass Meetings that included a
choir. Additionally, Garvey himself visited Toronto several times during the 1920s, and again in the 1930s. He even
gave a speech at Windsor in 1937 where he passionately spoke to an audience about not giving up on the goals of
the UNIA. “Stand up for yourselves and for your race,” Garvey demanded, adding, “Don’t let anybody tell you that
you are made to stay down.” The Hall ultimately provided space for Toronto’s Black community to be “free” amidst
a climate of discrimination and anti-Black racism. In their 1996 book, Towards Freedom: The African-Canadian
Experience, Ken Alexander and Avis Glaze observe that when the Palais Royale or other white-owned night clubs
barred Black people, they headed to the third floor of the Hall for evening jam sessions. Many Toronto jazz
musicians, like Archie Alleyne, performed there.
“Toronto’s UNIA headquarters was much more than a musical meeting place,” Alexander and Glaze note. “It was
there, and at similar locations across Canada, that Black culture and politics fused. Young and old met to discuss the
issues of the day and to celebrate Black talent.”
Away from 355 College, the UNIA organized well-attended picnics. In her book Emancipation Day: Celebrating
Freedom in Canada, Natasha Henry, president of the Ontario Black History Society, notes that the UNIA played an
instrumental role in annual “Big Picnic” celebrations in Port Dalhousie, a small town on Lake Ontario near St.Catherine.

From the 1920s to 1950s, in fact, a picnic took place at Lakeside Park on the first Thursday in August. This event,
Henry explains, was spearheaded by Toronto’s UNIA division president, B.J. Spencer Pitt, Toronto’s first Black
lawyer. In its heyday, the Big Picnic is said to have drawn upwards of 8,000 people from Toronto, the Niagara
Region and New York State, becoming one of the most important social events for Black community in August, that
is before 1967, when Caribana, now called “Peeks Toronto Caribbean Carnival,” became the defining Black
celebratory event of the summer.
In 1922, Marcus Garvey’s life drastically changed. That year, he was indicted for mail fraud by the U.S. government.
Even though UNIA members raised money to fight his case, in February 1925, he was convicted and sentenced to
prison.
A 1926 article in London, Ontario’s The Dawn of Tomorrow entitled, “Garvey Loses Clemency Plea,” explained
that U.S. President Calvin Coolidge had denied a petition from Garvey for executive clemency. At the time, he was
held in a federal prison in Atlanta, and had served one year of a five-year sentence.
Upon his release in 1927, American authorities deported Garvey to Jamaica. While he still traveled throughout the
Caribbean, Canada, and later Britain, his “back-to-Africa” movement never fully recovered.
Despite Garvey’s troubles, Toronto’s UNIA Hall remained an active hub for the Black community through the
Depression, selected to host regional and international gatherings in the late 1930s.
After Garvey died of a stroke in 1940, however, UNIA divisions across North America steadily declined. But
despite the organization’s problems, The UNIA Hall remained a meeting place for a new generation of West Indians
until the 1970s. Many went on to became members of the Black Action Defense Committee, created in the 1980s in
response to several police killings of unarmed Black men and women. But by 1982, the Hall officially closed its doors.

Every year when we celebrate Garvey Day (August 17), we commemorate not only his life, but also the universal
themes of Black emancipation and self-knowledge that were once alive and well in Toronto, and across the country.
Those messages are just as urgent today as they were a century ago. by CHERYL THOMPSON, PhD
 SEP-OCT 2019 GARVEY'S VOICE
The African woman was a general in the
Dahomey army and spoke Yoruba. Her
name is Agbayah Toya and will be
forever known as Tante Toya. She was
captured into slavery and sold to the
colony of Saint Domingue. She escaped
to the mountains and wanted to create an
army to fight for the end of slavery.
Instead Tante Toya found a pregnant
African woman about to give birth. Tante
Toya decides to aid the young pregnant
woman and assist in raising the child. So,
Tante Toya accepts to return to
enslavement in order to train and mold
this child. Tante Toya will teach the child
to walk in equilibrium with the earth, to
have respect for nature, to read the stars,
the understand the weather, to use a knife
and sword, to have compassion for his
fellow man, to live free, to love all things
African. As the child becomes a young
man, Tante Toya instructs the young man
that as a military man, you must have a
soft side to communicate with people, you
must know geography and topography.
Tante Toya will provide the finest lessons
in military science to this young man.
Eventually at the age of 30, the African
warrior will change his name as respect to
the Black man that had paid for the ending of his chattle slavery at the hands of the French caucasian that owned the
plantation that he was a slave. His name is Jan Jak Desalin. His date of birth is September 20, 1758. In 1791, after
Boukman Duttys and Sesile Fatiman initiated the Bois Cayiman movement to unleash the liberation of Africans in
Saint Domingue Desalin joined. Eventually, Desalin would become the General of the Army. Tante Toya had trained
him and as such, was expected that Desalin would bring liberation to the island. Tante Toya raised her child to be the
liberator. Desalin would become the most trusted and fearless commander of the Africans in their war for their
Liberation against not only the French, but the Spanish and the British. In other words, Desalin defeated the most
powerful caucasian armies of the world at the time. Desalin brought discipline, structure, clairvoyance, and the belief
that Africans could defeat the whites. He led Africans to victory at the battle of Jacmel, Petit-Goave, Miragoane, and
Anse A Veau. However, it was on March 22, 1802 at the Battle of Crete-a-Pierrot that he made the formal promise.
"Do not be discouraged I say to you, do not be discouraged. The French will not be able to remain a longtime in St.
Domingue. Pay close attention. If Dessalines surrenders to them a hundred times, he will betray them a hundred times
hundred. I repeat to you, do not be discouraged and you will defeat them. We will beat them, we will burn the crops,
then we will await in the hills. They will not be able to keep the country and will be forced to leave it. Then I will
render you independent." BON FET PAPA DESALIN