Colin Grant

Negro With a Hat, Intro, continued...

Today ‘Negro’ is a charged word that provokes unease and is a reminder of past humiliations. The exhibition “Make Life Beautiful,” was no exercise in revisionism; there was no nod towards modern sensibility, and I was disturbed by the caption ‘Negro with Hat’ which was included without explanation. But later, when I began to compose my biography of Marcus Garvey, I reached for that title. No publisher would print a book called ‘Negro with a Hat’ unless it was clearly ironical. There was, of course, a danger that the title would be misunderstood or be considered ‘unfortunate’ as it still held the possibility of both respect and abuse. But, ultimately, it captured the conundrum of Marcus Garvey: a proud Negro who was revered and reviled in equal measure.

Marcus Garvey, the great ‘ebony sage’ of 1920s, embraced the word ‘Negro’; to him it was a badge of honour. In August 1920, Garvey master-minded the first international convention of the Negro People of the World. With a mixture of old-world pageantry and new-world carnival, twenty-five thousand of his supporters marched from the headquarters in Harlem to Madison Square Garden to hear the leader of the Universal Negro Improvement Association announce that their day had come. They had gathered to participate in a ‘racial sacrament’ to witness the elevation of the small stocky Jamaican immigrant, dressed in imperial military regalia, as the ‘provisional president of Africa.’ At the end of that convention, Garvey published a declaration of rights for the Negro People of the World. Declaration No 12 proclaimed that henceforth the black man would no longer answer to ‘nigger’ but only to ‘Negro.’ In 1930 the New York Times followed Garvey’s lead, producing a style guidebook in which ‘Negro’ would be forever capitalised.

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