Negro with a Hat: The Rise and Fall of Marcus Garvey

By Colin Grant

Book Overview

New in paperback, this groundbreaking biography captures the full sweep and epic dimensions of Marcus Garvey's life, the dazzling triumphs and the dreary exile. As Grant shows, Garvey was a man of contradictions: a self-educated, poetry-writing aesthete and unabashed propagandist, an admirer of Lenin, and a dandy given to elaborate public displays. Above all, he was a shrewd promoter whose use of pageantry evoked a lost African civilization and fired the imagination of his followers. Negro With a Hat restores Garvey to his place as one of the founders of black nationalism and a key figure of the 20th century.

"A searching, vivid, and (as the title suggests) complex account of Garvey's short but consequential life."
--Steve Hahn, The New Republic

"The story of Marcus Garvey, the charismatic and tireless black leader who had a meteoric rise and fall in the late 1910s and early '20s, makes for enthralling reading, and Garvey has found an engaging and objective biographer in Colin Grant.... Grant's book is not all politics, ideology, money and lawsuits. It is also an engrossing social history.... Negro With a Hat is an achievement on a scale Garvey might have appreciated."
--New York Times Book Review

"Dazzling, definitive biography of the controversial activist who led the 1920s 'Back to Africa' movement.... Grant's learned passion for his subject shimmers on every page. A riveting and well-wrought volume that places Garvey solidly in the pantheon of important 20th-century black leaders."
--Kirkus Reviews (Starred Review)

"This splendid book is certain to become the definitive biography. Garvey was a dreamer and a doer; Grant captures the fascination of both."
--Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)

"Grant's strength lies in his ability to re-create political moods and offer compelling sketches of colorful individuals and their organizations.... An engaging and readable introduction to a complicated and contentious historical actor who, in his time, possessed a unique capacity to inspire devotion and hatred, adulation and fear."
--Chicago Tribune

"A monumental, nuanced and broadly sympathetic portrait."
--Financial Times

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0195393090
• ISBN13: 9780195393095
• Release Date: March 2010
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Length: 544 Pages
• Weight: 1.90 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 8.5" x 9.1"

Customer Reviews

back to africa but without Garvey

A tragic figure who never made it to Africa. A great orator who thought unwisely he could be his own lawyer in a mail fraud case, was convicted and spent time in prison in Atlanta. When freed he was immediately deported back to Jamaica. He died in London a few weeks after reading his own obituary mistakenly published. Excellent summation of Garvey's life even though black history in America proceeded in a quite different path towards integration. Dr. King before his death paid his respects at Garvey's gravesite in Jamaica .

Excellent new bio of pioneering black leader

Lionized by some and pilloried by others within early 20th century black American leadership, Marcus Garvey was NOT ignorable. Between his push for a pan-African movement and a return to Africa by American blacks, on the one hand, and battles with other black leaders like W.E.B. Du Bois on the other -- including tussles over elitism and related events, Garvey brought an outsider's mileau, from Jamaica, to the American black experience and broadened it. The Black Power movement of the 1960s, the stress on titles and trappings within certain black American subcultures today and more all trace to this "Negro with a hat," as Du Bois called him with some condescension. Along the way, you'll get a side glance at 1920s Harlem, a battle for where to take black America beyond Booker T. Washington and more.

Kudos to Colin Grant!

Wow! What a wonderful read. I learned so much and Mr. Grant made so many pieces of history fall into place for me. Obviously my education regarding African-American History has been incomplete. Growing up in the sixties with "The Black Power Movement," I now understand where it began and Garvey has not received enough credit or press for his "dream." This book has greatly blessed me. Right on Colin Grant! Thank you.

Thoughtful and balanced presentation of a thoroughly complex individual's life.

Independent historian and BBC Radio script editor Colin Grant presents Negro with a Hat: The Rise and Fall of Marcus Garvey, an in-depth biography of Marcus Mosiah Garvey (1887-1940), who is perhaps best-known for his "Back to Africa" movement that sought to create an independent homeland through Pan-African emigration. Known as the "Black Moses" to his many admirers, and crowned Jamaica's first national hero after his death, Marcus Garvey also made plenty of enemies - he was deemed a enough of a threat by Winston Churchill and J. Edgar Hoover to warrant surveillance, and was scornfully derided as a "negro with a hat" by W.E.B. Du Bois. His talent for promoting his ideas and resurrecting memory of lost African civilization was unsurpassed, and he earned his place in history as one of the founders of black nationalism and a crucial figure of the twentieth century. Negro with a Hat spares no detail yet remains accessible to readers of all backgrounds, and is highly recommended for its thoughtful and balanced presentation of a thoroughly complex individual's life.