As he wrote in The Philosophy and Opinions of Marcus Garvey, “Education is the medium by which a people are prepared for the creation of their own particular civilization, and the advancement and glory of their own race.”

(Philosophy and Opinions of Marcus Garvey)

In his seminal work, Race First, Tony Martin asserts, “practically every aspect of the organization [UNIA] was designed to bolster the black man’s self-esteem and to foster pride in self.”

(Philosophy and Opinions of Marcus Garvey)

Garvey, who has been called the “black angel of success,” preached a gospel of entrepreneurship and empowerment: “Now is the chance for every Negro to make every effort toward a commercial, industrial standard that will make us comparable with the successful business men of other races.”

It is this sense of history that led Marcus Garvey to write in “African Fundamentalism”: “We must canonize our own saints, create our own martyrs, and elevate to positions of fame and honor black men and women who have made their distinct contributions to our racial history.

(Philosophy and Opinions of Marcus Garvey)

Garvey’s life has inspired other Black leaders such as Kwame Nkrumah, Kwame Toure, Jomo Kenyatta, Nelson Mandela, Patrice Lumumba, Julius Nyerere, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr, who said that Garvey was “the first man, on a mass scale, to give millions of Negroes a sense of dignity and destiny … He gave us a sense of personhood, a sense of manhood, a sense of somebodiness.”