Marcus Garvey Founds the UNIA

In July 1914, Marcus Garvey returned to Jamaica after years of travel through Central America and England, convinced that global unity was essential to advancing the welfare of Black people. Later that month in Kingston, Garvey and Amy Ashwood Garvey founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League. Dedicated to the uplifting of people of African ancestry, the organization adopted the motto One God! One Aim! One Destiny! and set out to build a transnational network that linked communities across the African continent and its diaspora.

Garvey relocated to the United States in 1916, and by 1918 the New York division, which began with only a small group of members, was growing quickly. Growth followed swiftly. The organization acquired Liberty Hall in Harlem to host large weekly gatherings, and it established a weekly multi-language newspaper, The Negro World, to circulate Garvey's editorials and international news across the diaspora. Auxiliaries like the African Legion and the African Black Cross Nurses offered ceremonial discipline and community service, while an ambitious economic wing sought to provide commercial self-sufficiency through ventures such as the Negro Factories Corporation.