Negro With a Hat: the Rise and Fall of Marcus Garvey and His Dream of Mother Africa (08 Edition)

New in paperback, this groundbreaking biography captures the full sweep and epic dimensions of Marcus Garvey's life, the dazzling triumphs and the dreary exile. As Grant shows, Garvey was a man of contradictions: a self-educated, poetry-writing aesthete and unabashed propagandist, an admirer of Lenin, and a dandy given to elaborate public displays. Above all, he was a shrewd promoter whose use of pageantry evoked a lost African civilization and fired the imagination of his followers. Negro With a Hat restores Garvey to his place as one of the founders of black nationalism and a key figure of the 20th century.

"A searching, vivid, and (as the title suggests) complex account of Garvey's short but consequential life."

--Steve Hahn, The New Republic

"The story of Marcus Garvey, the charismatic and tireless black leader who had a meteoric rise and fall in the late 1910s and early '20s, makes for enthralling reading, and Garvey has found an engaging and objective biographer in Colin Grant.... Grant's book is not all politics, ideology, money and lawsuits. It is also an engrossing social history.... Negro With a Hat is an achievement on a scale Garvey might have appreciated."

--New York Times Book Review

"Dazzling, definitive biography of the controversial activist who led the 1920s 'Back to Africa' movement.... Grant's learned passion for his subject shimmers on every page. A riveting and well-wrought volume that places Garvey solidly in the pantheon of important 20th-century black leaders."

--Kirkus Reviews (Starred Review)

"This splendid book is certain to become the definitive biography. Garvey was a dreamer and a doer; Grant captures the fascination of both."

--Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)

"Grant's strength lies in his ability to re-create political moods and offer compelling sketches of colorful individuals and their organizations.... An engaging and readable introduction to a complicated and contentious historical actor who, in his time, possessed a unique capacity to inspire devotion and hatred, adulation and fear."

--Chicago Tribune

"A monumental, nuanced and broadly sympathetic portrait."

--Financial Times

"Marcus Garvey, the charismatic organizer of the Back-to-Africa Movement and founder of the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), remains a revered and disparaged figure whose influence on African American history and thought is profound. In this comprehensive biography, BBC radio producer Grant follows Garvey from his childhood and early peregrinations through Central America and England to his ventures in the United States-the phenomenal growth of the UNIA, the tortuous history of the Black Star Line, the collapse of both. Convicted of mail fraud, later deported, Garvey died in London. Garvey biographers have tended to focus on the UNIA, but Grant's book is richly evocative of the times and places in which he lived (pre-World War I Jamaica and England, the Harlem Renaissance) and the people who mentored, admired, and quarreled with him-Grant's attention to the exceptional women in Garvey's life, particularly his wives Amy Ashwood and later Amy Jacques is especially noteworthy. Garvey, the radical journalist and editor (The Negro World), emerges more fully than usual, with all his contradictions present. Dense with detail, but consistently readable, this splendid book is certain to become the definitive biography. Garvey was a dreamer and a doer; Grant captures the fascination of both." Publishers Weekly (Starred Review) (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

New in paperback, this groundbreaking biography captures the full sweep and epic dimensions of Marcus Garvey's life, the dazzling triumphs and the dreary exile. As Grant shows, Garvey was a man of contradictions: a self-educated, poetry-writing aesthete and unabashed propagandist, an admirer of Lenin, and a dandy given to elaborate public displays. Above all, he was a shrewd promoter whose use of pageantry evoked a lost African civilization and fired the imagination of his followers. Negro With a Hat restores Garvey to his place as one of the founders of black nationalism and a key figure of the 20th century.

A searching, vivid, and (as the title suggests) complex account of Garvey's short but consequential life.

--Steve Hahn, The New Republic

The story of Marcus Garvey, the charismatic and tireless black leader who had a meteoric rise and fall in the late 1910s and early '20s, makes for enthralling reading, and Garvey has found an engaging and objective biographer in Colin Grant.... Grant's book is not all politics, ideology, money and lawsuits. It is also an engrossing social history.... Negro With a Hat is an achievement on a scale Garvey might have appreciated.

--New York Times Book Review

Dazzling, definitive biography of the controversial activist who led the 1920s 'Back to Africa' movement.... Grant's learned passion for his subject shimmers on every page. A riveting and well-wrought volume that places Garvey solidly in the pantheon of important 20th-century black leaders.

--Kirkus Reviews (Starred Review)

This splendid book is certain to become the definitive biography. Garvey was a dreamer and a doer; Grant captures the fascination of both.

--Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)

Grant's strength lies in his ability to re-create political moods and offer compelling sketches of colorful individuals and their organizations.... An engaging and readable introduction to a complicated and contentious historical actor who, in his time, possessed a unique capacity to inspire devotion and hatred, adulation and fear.

--Chicago Tribune

A monumental, nuanced and broadly sympathetic portrait.

--Financial Times

Colin Grant is the son of Jamaican parents who came to Britain in the late 1950s. He has written and produced numerous plays and has worked as script editor and producer of arts programs on the BBC World Service. He is currently a producer for BBC Radio.

Prologue: A Premature Death

Chapter One: Bury the Dead and Take Care of the Living

Chapter Two: Almost an Englishman

Chapter Three: In the Company of Negroes

Chapter Four: An Ebony Orator in Harlem

Chapter Five: No Flag but the Stars and Stripes - and possibly the Union Jack

Chapter Six: If We Must Die

Chapter Seven: How to Manufacture a Traitor

Chapter Eight: Harlem Speaks for Scattered Ethiopia

Chapter Nine: Flyin' Home on the Black Star Line

Chapter Ten: A Star in the Storm

Chapter Eleven: He Who Plays the King

Chapter Twelve: Last Stop Liberia

Chapter Thirteen: Not to Mention his Colour

Chapter Fourteen: Behold the Demagogue or Misunderstood Messiah

Chapter Fifteen: Caging the Tiger

Chapter Sixteen: Into the Furnace

Chapter Seventeen: Silence Mr. Garvey

Chapter Eighteen: Gone to Foreign

Epilogue