Marcus Garvey: Celebrating his 110th Anniversary, Lecture to be launched in Atlanta

Atlanta’s First Annual Marcus Garvey Lecture to be launched at Big Bethel AME Church on Monday, March 25th at 6:30 pm at the International Day of Remembrance for Victims of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade

The inaugural lecture commemorating Marcus Garvey’s first lecture 107 years ago, will be held at the oldest black church in Atlanta, Big Bethel AME on Monday, March 25th at 6:30 pm on 220 Auburn Avenue, Atlanta, GA 30303. It will mark the anniversary of the 17th anniversary of the International Day of Remembrance for Victims of Slavery and Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, so designated by the United Nations in 2007.

The keynote speaker will be Steven Golding who is the current President of the UNIA-ACL in Jamaica, the very same office Garvey held at the time that he visited Atlanta in 1917.  All are invited to attend and hear the Professor of Garveyism who also happens to be the son of Jamaica’s former Prime Minister.

Jamaica’s first national hero the Right Excellent Marcus Garvey first visited Atlanta and gave his first public lecture to a mass audience in the United States of America on March 25, 1917.  It was 110 years since the TransAtlantic trafficking of enslaved Africans had been abolished by the British parliament, and Garvey delivered an electrifying address before an audience of over three hundred people at Big Bethel AME Church on Auburn Avenue.

Within three years of this, Marcus Garvey would become the most popular black man in the world and the only one to ever claim leadership of his race globally with over 12 million members registered under the Red, Black and Green banner of his Universal Negro Improvment Association and African Communities League by 1920.

The city of Atlanta provided the launching pad for Garvey to promote himself as the greatest orator of the Negro race at the start of his remarkable career, and it would figure again prominently at the height of it when Garvey met with the grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan in Atlanta in 1922.

Even after Garvey’s organization was infiltrated and they became the first victim of a counter-intelligence program pioneered by J Edgar Hoover’s Bureau of Investigation, it was in Atlanta that Garvey was incarcerated between 1925-27 at the Federal penitentiary before being pardoned by President Calvin Coolidge.  In every sense, Marcus Garvey and the city of Atlanta have a delicate and intricate history.  Indeed they shared a sense of destiny which we hope to highlight at the first Annual Marcus Garvey Lecture in Atlanta on March 25, 2024. Sponsored by Atlanta Jamaica Association, Big Bethel AME Church, Sons of Allen (AMEC), Consul General of Jamaica, Nubian Jak Community Trust U.K., UNIA, Connie Tucker Legacy Foundation, and J.K.Smith Sr. Foundation.  For interviews contact International Publicist Olimatta Taal at +1-470-428-6050, connietuckerlegacyfoundation@gmail.com, or for general information uniajamaica@gmail.com or @uniajamaica on all social media handles.