Garvey, born in St. Ann's Bay, St Ann Parish, Jamaica, is best remembered as an important proponent of the Back-to-Africa movement, which encouraged those of African descent to return to their ancestral homelands. This movement would eventually inspire other movements, ranging from the Nation of Islam, to the Rastafari movement, which proclaims Garvey to be a prophet. Garvey said he wanted those of African ancestry to "redeem" Africa and for the European colonial powers to leave it.

After years of working in the Caribbean, Garvey left for two years in London in 1912. There he worked for the African Times and Orient Review, published by Dusé Mohamed Ali, and sometimes spoke at Hyde Park's Speakers' Corner.

During his travels, he had become convinced that uniting Blacks was the only way to improve their condition, and so he formed the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) and African Communities League (ACL). As the groups' first president-general, his goal was to "unite all people of African ancestry of the world to one great body to establish a country and absolute government of their own."

After corresponding with Booker T. Washington, Garvey arrived in the U.S. on March 23, 1916, for a lecture tour and to raise funds for establishment of a school in Jamaica modeled after Washington's Tuskegee Institute. Unfortunately, Washington had died in 1915 before Garvey reached the U.S., but he did visit Tuskegee and afterward, he visited a number of Black leaders. It was then that Garvey perceived a leadership vacuum among people of African ancestry, and so on May 9, 1916, he held his first public lecture in New York City at St. Mark's Church Hall and undertook a 38-state speaking tour.

Then Garvey set about the business of developing a program to improve the conditions of those of African ancestry "at home and abroad" under UNIA auspices. In New York, he organized the first UNIA chapter outside Jamaica and advanced ideas designed to promote social, political, and economic freedom for Blacks. He launched the now notorious Black Star Line Steamship Corporation and its successor Black Cross Navigation and Trading Company. However, the line failed owing to mismanagement and charges of fraud.

Another venture of his was the Negro Factories Corporation. His plan called for creating the infrastructure to manufacture every marketable commodity in every big U.S. industrial center, as well as those in Central America, West Indies, and Africa. Related endeavors included a grocery chain, restaurant, publishing house, and other businesses.

Convinced that Blacks should have a permanent homeland in Africa, Garvey sought to develop Liberia. "Our success educationally, industrially and politically is based upon the protection of a nation founded by ourselves. And the nation can be nowhere else but in Africa."
The Liberia program, launched in 1920, was intended to build colleges, universities, industrial plants, and railroads as part of an industrial base from which to operate. However, it was abandoned in the mid-1920s after much opposition from European powers with interests in Liberia. Interestingly, in response to suggestions that he wanted to take all Americans of African ancestry back to Africa, he once proclaimed, "I have no desire to take all black people back to Africa; there are blacks who are no good here and will likewise be no good there."
Garvey was not necessarily a believer in Black supremacy.

Marcus Garvey was not short of controversies and one of his most controversial moves came in 1922 when he met with the Ku Klux Klan- a group of white imperialist who hated the black race.
He recognized the influence of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) on some white Americans, and in early 1922, he went to Atlanta, Georgia, for a conference with Edward Young Clarke, KKK imperial giant.

According to Garvey, "I regard the Klan, the Anglo-Saxon clubs and White American societies, as far as the Negro is concerned, as better friends of the race than all other groups of hypocritical whites put together. I like honesty and fair play. You may call me a Klansman if you will, but, potentially, every white man is a Klansman, as far as the Negro in competition with whites socially, economically and politically is concerned, and there is no use lying.".
Garvey has been credited with creating the biggest movement of people of African descent. At its zenith, the UNIA claimed over a million members. This movement that took place in the 1920s is said to have had more participation from people of African descent than the Civil Rights Movement. In essence the UNIA was the largest Pan-African movement ever.
Garvey traveled to Geneva in 1928 to present the Petition of the Negro Race, which outlined the worldwide abuse of Africans, to the League of Nations. In September 1929, he founded the People's Political Party (PPP), Jamaica's first modern political party, which focused on workers' rights, education, and aid to the poor.

In 1929, Garvey was elected Councillor for the Allman Town Division of the Kingston and St. Andrew Corporation (KSAC). He lost his seat, however, because of having to serve a prison sentence for contempt of court, but in 1930, he was re-elected, unopposed, along with two other PPP candidates.

In April 1931, Garvey launched the Edelweiss Amusement Company, which he set up to help artists earn their livelihood from their craft. Several Jamaican entertainers — Kidd Harold, Ernest Cupidon, Bim & Bam, and Ranny Williams — went on to become popular after receiving initial exposure the company gave them.

In 1935, Garvey left Jamaica for London, where he lived and worked until his death in 1940. During these last five years, he remained active and in touch with events in war-torn Ethiopia (then Abyssinia) and the West Indies. In 1938, he gave evidence before the West Indian Royal Commission on conditions there. Also in 1938, he set up the School of African Philosophy to train UNIA leaders. He continued to work on the magazine The Black Man.

Garvey's political views in his later years were increasingly right wing. In 1937, a group of his American supporters, called the Peace Movement of Ethiopia, openly collaborated with Mississippi Sen. Theodore Bilbo in the promotion of a repatriation scheme introduced in the U.S. Congress as the Greater Liberia Act. Garvey also expressed considerable sympathy for fascism and speculated about its positive application in Africa. However, shortly before his death Garvey expressed solidarity with Britain during the Blitz.

On June 10, 1940, Garvey died after a stroke, apparently after reading a mistaken, and negative, obituary of himself;.
Because of travel conditions during World War II, he was interred at Kensal Green Cemetery in London.

Jamaica's first National Hero
In November 1964, the government of Jamaica, having proclaimed him Jamaica's first national hero, brought his remains home and ceremoniously re-interred him at a shrine in National Heroes Park.

Marcus Garvey and the Black Star line
The Black Star Line was a shipping line incorporated by Marcus Garvey, who organized the UNIA (United Negro Improvement Association).
The Black Star Line derived its name from the White Star Line, a line whose success Garvey felt he could duplicate, which would become a standard of his Back-to-Africa movement. It was one among many businesses which the UNIA originated such as the Universal Printing House, Negro Factories Corporation, and the widely distributed and highly successful Negro World newspaper. The Black Star Line and its successor, the Black Cross Navigation and Trading Company, operated between 1919 and 1922. The Black Star Line stands today as a major symbol for Garvey followers and African Americans in search of a way to get back to their homeland. The shipping line was supposed to involve the transportation of goods and eventually African Americans throughout the African global economy.

The Black Star Line started in Delaware on June 23, 1919. Having a maximum capitalization of $500,000, BSL stocks were sold at UNIA conventions at five dollars each. The company's losses were estimated to be between $630,000 and $1.25 million.

The Black Star Line did surprise all its critics when, only three months after being incorporated, the first of four ships, the SS Yarmouth was purchased with the intention of it being rechristened the "Frederick Douglass." The Yarmouth was a coal boat during the First World War, and was in poor condition when purchased by the Black Star Line. Once reconditioned, the Yarmouth proceeded to sail for three years between the U.S. and the West Indies as the first Black Star Line ship with an all-black crew and a black captain. Later Joshua Cockburn, the captain of the Yarmouth, was accused of receiving a "kick back from the purchase price".

The SS Yarmouth wasn't the only ship to be purchased in poor conditions and to be completely oversold. Garvey spent another $200,000 for more ships. One, the SS Shadyside, sailed the "cruise to nowhere" on the Hudson River one summer and sank the next fall because of a leak many thought to be sabotage. Another was a steam yacht once owned by Henry Huttleston Rogers. Booker T. Washington had been an honored guest aboard the ship when it was owned by his friend and confidant, Rogers, and was known as the Kanawha. However, Rogers had died in 1909, and the once well-maintained yacht had also served in the first World War. Renamed by the Black Star Line the S.S. Antonio Maceo), it blew a boiler and killed a man off the Virginia coast on its first voyage from New York to Cuba, and had to be towed back to New York.
Besides oversold, poorly conditioned ships, Black Star Line was beset by corruption of management and infiltration by agents of J. Edgar Hoover's Bureau of Investigation (the forerunner to the FBI). The first commission for the Yarmouth was to haul whiskey from the U.S. to Cuba before Prohibition. Although the ship made it in record time, it did not have docking arrangements, so it lost money sitting in the docks of Cuba while longshoremen had a strike. A cargo-load of coconuts rotted in the hull of a ship on another voyage because Garvey insisted on having the ships make ceremonial stops at politically important ports.
The Black Star Line ceased sailing in February of 1922. It still serves as a considerable accomplishment for African Americans of the time, up to today, despite the thievery by employees, engineers who overcharged, and the Bureau of Investigation's deliberate acts of infiltration and sabotage. It has been commemorated in song by blues singers Hazel Meyers and Rosa Henderson, reggae singer Burning Spear.