Statecraft & Independence
Peerless
Marcus Garvey
1887 – 1940
Founder of the Universal Negro Improvement Association and Jamaica's first National Hero
Peerless is level 1 of 4 in the Jamaica Hall of Fame: changed the field itself. Tell the country's story without them and the story breaks. See how the levels work.
Why they are here
A printer and journalist from St Ann's Bay who built the largest mass movement of people of African descent the world had seen.
Garvey founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association in Jamaica in 1914 and took it to Harlem, where it grew to hundreds of branches across the Americas, Africa and Europe. His Black Star Line, his newspaper The Negro World and his call for pride, self-reliance and African unity inspired Pan-Africanists and independence leaders for generations. Deported from the United States in 1927, he died in London; his remains were returned to Jamaica and he was named the country's first National Hero in 1964.
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