“While architects are primarily focused on the aesthetic and functional design of buildings (and other entities)–that is, conceptualizing and actually envisioning the building design and how the parts fit and meld together– structural engineers and master builders are responsible for ensuring that those designs are structurally sound and safe for occupants, and getting them built solidly. “
Marcus Garvey was a Pan-African architect. Though much of his stock and trade was serving as the primary messenger for Pan-Africanism through the first half of the 20th century, he conceptualized modern Pan-African nationalism and self-determination. He could see it.
In the Declaration of the Rights of the Negro Peoples of the World, the document forged and agreed upon by the majority of the 20,000 attendees to the U.N.I.A. Conference of African Peoples in Madison Square Garden, 1920 (a document serious contemporary Pan-Africanists must revisit), Garvey, in close discussion and analysis with international delegates, laid out a set of guiding principles ( designs) for the development of Pan-African power and respect in the world. He left succeeding Pan-African structural and construction engineers (president generals and others) the task of implementing those Pan-African designs.
Garvey, as a Pan-African architect, was the conceptualist (drawing on both his individual genius and the prior work of others who believed in African agency), leaving succeeding generations the future structural designs to build.
In the contemporary world, as Africa rises, we can see the manifestation of Garvey’s Pan-African architecture: Africa for the Africans—at home and abroad. In the new Sahel States Coalition, in the Tanganyika-Zanzibar Union (Tanzania), the large and increasing population of female legislators in Rwanda and Burundi, the success of many of the Regional Economic Communities (RECs) of the African Union, and the strong moves toward designating citizens from individual countries as all-Africa citizens with access to readily accessible non-visa travel freedoms.
Also, with the future rise of the Pan African Parliament as the legislative body of Africa, the development of a common business language for Africans everywhere (most likely to be Kiswahili), the developing success of the African Free Trade Agreement emphasizing continent-wide interior African trade and communications, etc., we see Garvey’s Pan African architecture taking shape and being built more broadly and more strongly.
The current UNIA-ACL RC 2020 (the Universal Negro Improvement Association, Rehabilitating Committee, 2020, the current official rebuilders of Garveyism) is part of that architectural development. They are part of the pantheon of builders of Pan-Africanism in the modern world. They are following the architecture laid out by Marcus Garvey. Though many claim allegiance to the spirit and history of the U.N.I.A. (and the Red-Black-Green flag) that Garvey built, without learning enough about its history in its time and place, the word is, and will continue to be, Garvey to the African Future.
Come to the Barbara Morrison Theater in Leimert Park, October 9th, 10th, and 11th this year to see a real Marcus Garvey play.
