AFRICAN FUNDAMENTALISM

The time has come for the Negroes to forget and cast behind him his hero worship and adoration of other races, and to start out immediately to create and emulate heroes of his own.  We must canonize our own saints, create our own martyrs and elevate to position of fame and honor black men and women who have made their distinct contribution to our racial history.  Sojourner Truth is worthy of the place of sainthood alongside of Joan of Arc: Crispus Attucks and George Williams Gordon are entitled to the halo of martyrdom with no less glory than that other martyrs of any other race.  Toussaint L'Ouverture brilliancy as a soldier and statesman out shown that of a Cromwell,  Napoleon and Washington: hence he is entitled to the highest place as a hero among men.  Africa has produced countless numbers of men and women, in war and in peace, whose luster and bravery outshine that of any other people. Then why not see good and perfection in ourselves?  We must inspire a literature and promulgate a doctrine of our own without any apologies to the powers that be.  The right is God’s and ours.  Let contrary sentiment and cross opinions go to the winds. Opposition to race independence is the weapon of the enemy to defeat the hopes of an unfortunate people.  We are entitled to our own opinions and not obligated to or bound by the opinions of theirs.

If other laugh at you return the laughter to them: if they mimic you, return the compliment with equal force.  They have no more right to dishonor ,disrespect and disregard your feeling and manhood than you have in dealing with them.  Honor them when they honor you: disrespect and disregard them when they vilely treat you.  Their arrogance is but skin deep and an assumption that has no foundation in morals or in law.  They have sprung from the same family tree of obscurity as we have: their history is as rude in its primitiveness as ours: their ancestors ran wild and naked, lived in caves and in branches of trees like monkeys as ours: they made sacrifices, ate the flesh of their own dead and the raw meat of the wild beast for centuries even as they accuse us of doing: their cannibalism was more prolonged than ours: when we were embracing the arts and sciences on the banks of the Nile, their ancestors were still drinking human blood and eating our of the skulls of their conquered dead: when our civilization had reached the noon day of progress, they were still running naked and sleeping in holes and caves with rats,  bats and others insects and animals.  After we had already unfathomed the mystery of the stars and reduced the heavenly constellations to minutes and regular calculus they were still backwoodsmen, living in ignorance and blatant darkness.

The world is indebted to us for the benefits of civilization.  They stole our arts and sciences from Africa.  Then why should we be ashamed of ourselves?  Their modern improvements are but duplicates of a grander civilization that we reflected thousands of years ago, without the advantage of what is buried and still hidden, to be resurrected and re-introduced by the intelligence of our generation and our posterity.  Why should we be discouraged because somebody laughs at us today?  Who will tell what tomorrow will bring forth?  Did they not laugh at Moses, Christ and Mohammed?  Was there not a Carthage, Greece and Rome?  We see and have changes every day, so pray, work, be steadfast and be not dismayed.

As the Jew is held together by his religion, the white races by the assumption and the unwritten law of superiority, and the Mongolian by the precious tie of blood, so likewise the Negro must be united in one grand racial hierarchy.  Our union must know no clime, boundary or nationality.  Like the great Church of Rome Negroes the world over must practice one faith, that of Confidence in themselves, with One God; One Aim; One Destiny; Let   no religious scruples, no political machination divide us, but let us hold together under all climes and in every country making among ourselves a Racial Empires upon which “the sun shall never set.”

Let no voice but your own speak to you from the depths: Let no influence but your own rouse you in time of peace and time or war.  Hear all, but attend only to that which concerns you.  Yours allegiance shall be to your God, then to your family, race and country.  Remember always that the Jew in his political and economic urge is always first a Jew: the white man is first a White man under all circumstances, and you can do no less than being first and always a Negro, and then all else will take care of itself.  Let no one inoculate you with evil doctrines to suit their own conveniences.  There is no humanity before that which starts with your self, “Charity begins at home.” First to thyself be true, and “thou canst not then be false to any man.”

God and Nature first made us what we are, and then out of our own creative genius we make ourselves what we want to be.  Follow always that great law.  Let the sky and God be our limit, and Eternity our measurement.  There is no height to which we cannot climb by using the active intelligence of our own minds.  Mind creates, and as much as we desire in Nature we can have through the creation of our own minds.  Being at present the scientifically weaker race, you shall treat others only as they treat you; but in your homes and everywhere possible you must teach the higher development of science to your children; and be sure to develop a race of scientists par excellence for in science and religion lie our only hope to withstand the evil designs of modern materialism.  Never forget your God.  Remember, we live, work and pray for the establishment of a great and binding racial hierarchy, the founding of a racial empire whose only natural, spiritual and political limits shall be God and  “Africa, at home and abroad.”

               Marcus Mosiah Garvey