Feb 27, 2007 - Sale 2105

Sale 2105 - Lot 211

Price Realized: $ 4,800
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 4,000 - $ 6,000
THE S.S. PHILLIS WHEATLEY AND GARVEY'S UNDOING (GARVEY, MARCUS.) Now in America. S. S. Phillis Wheatley, Latest Addition to Fleet of Black Star Line, Inc. Poster, 14x9 inches with a 2 1/4x6 1/4 inch picture of the ship in the center; faint creases where folded; paper evenly toned. New York: Hunt Printing Company, 34 West 136th Street, [1921]
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Marcus Garvey (1887-1940) was the most powerful "radical" black leader of the twentieth century. While Elijah Muhammad and Malcolm X both had strong followings, neither galvanized the black community across economic and social lines as did Garvey and his United Negro Improvement Association. By 1919, Garvey's huge success among African Americans had triggered an all-out effort by the FBI to find some weakness, some mistake that would lead to his arrest and indictment.
In 1921, Garvey's Black Star Line provided the opportunity. The Line had been trying to buy a large ship to be called the Phillis Wheatley. In their efforts to raise the money to buy it, the UNIA issued posters such as this one. The only problem was, they didn't yet own the ship. The FBI had found the excuse they needed. Garvey and several others within the Association were arrested on charges of mail fraud--soliciting funds through the mail. By September 1922, Garvey was tried, found guilty, and sent to federal prison.
Though he was later pardoned and deported, Garvey's UNIA movement was never was able to recover the momentum it had lost. Garvey died in 1940.