1887 — Marcus Garvey Is Born

On August 17, 1887, Marcus Mosiah Garvey Jr. was born in St. Ann's Bay, Jamaica. The printer's apprentice would grow far beyond that small beginning, becoming the greatest mass organizer in Black history and carrying a message of pride and return to millions across the Atlantic world and beyond.

He built the Universal Negro Improvement Association into a movement of millions and launched the Black Star Line to carry the diaspora home. Jailed, deported, and exiled, he never set foot on the continent — yet his words raised a generation of African nationalists, and Kwame Nkrumah called his writings the spark of his own fight for independence.