DuBois versus Garvey: Race Propagandists at War

Abstract

After World War I, large numbers of Negroes were stirred by race pride and demanded a spiritual emancipation. They were encouraged to seek improvement of their own living conditions and work for the betterment of the natives on the African continent. During this post-war decade two prominent leaders, W. E. B. DuBois and Marcus Garvey, clashed in their separate plans to establish an African and an international organization of Negroes. Both men were propagandists. DuBois was editor of the Crisis, the official magazine of the N.A.A.C.P. and Garvey owned the Negro World. (The Jamaican regularly wrote articles for his newspaper and the editorial writers he hired adopted his tone.) The present article is based primarily on a study of these two publications and seeks to examine the DuBois-Garvey debate which-especially from Garveyite quarters-was abusive and acrimonious. In 1917, DuBois favored the formation of a great free central African state (the amalgamation of German East Africa and the Belgian Congo); later, he declared that the should be enlarged to include Uganda, French Equatorial Africa, German Southwest Africa, and the Portuguese territories of Angola and Mozanbique.1 In his conception, a Brain Trust of Negro administra-