According to Dr. Julius Garvey, National Hero Marcus Garvey’s call for people of color to liberate themselves from mental slavery on their way to obtaining ultimate freedom, which was popularized by reggae icon Bob Marley decades ago, is still applicable today.
Dr. Garvey stated during his keynote speech at a Black History/Reggae Month event on Tuesday at The Mico University College in St. Andrew that Booker T. Washington, one of the most significant African-American intellectuals of the late 19th century in the United States, had an effect on his father’s philosophical outlook.
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His son reminded the audience that Garvey gave the order while delivering a lecture in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, in 1937.
Dr. Garvey noted, “he said that we must liberate our minds from mental slavery while others may help us free our bodies, no one but ourselves can really free our mind. He saw this as a central problem because when we were kidnapped from Africa for were not able to bring anything. All we had were memories, and over a period of time, from generation to generation, those memories became dim, and also, they were replaced with the violence Iles and the miseducation that occurred over four centuries.”
“So, we had a problem of miseducation, misunderstanding, and misidentification and he recognized that,” he stated at the event hosted by the Faculty of Humanities and Liberal Arts and the college’s United Negro Improvement Association Garvey club.
Dr. Caney, a surgeon with expertise in thoracic and cardiovascular surgery, informed his audience, which included students from The Mico University College and Marcus Garvey Technical High School, that black people were the first humans and that they originated in Egypt’s Nile Valley.
“All the civilizations which sprang from that area were the first and were transmitted around the world to places like India, China, and even to the Americas, so civilization did not begin with the Greeks or any of the Europeans, so when the Greeks and European after the Ice Age saw us in Africa, they were astounded at how beautiful we were, proud of our achievements and they tried to imitate our achievements,” he explained.
Dr. Garvey stated that in order for individuals to occupy their proper place in modern society, they must learn—or relearn—about the brilliance of their predecessors because they were never able to match the accomplishments of these old Black civilizations.
“Many of us have forgotten because our education process over time has been a miseducation process and that’s why a teacher’s college like The Mico comes in, to teach us who we really are, to teach us our history in terms of where we are coming from, and we know that we will then we able to face up to all of the obstacles that are out there and to be able then to really free ourselves. We’ll be able to liberate our minds,” he explained.
Among the many quotations from his father, Dr. Garvey believes that this one is most essential to his conception of self-identity and self-empowerment “God and nature first made us what we are and then out of our own creative genius, we make ourselves what we want to be. Follow always that great law. Let the sky and God be our limit and eternity our measurement.”
The importance of receiving the proper education was stressed to his audience by Dr. Garvey. In light of the fact that education does not solely occur in the classroom, he asserted that “ the best part of education is really self-education that you search for and look for through books, through listening to people with knowledge.”
“Education hat interactive process. It’s not only what your teacher gives you, it’s not just the lesson plan but also what you bring to the table because it has to be interactive, you have to use your critical intelligence to use the facts and the knowledge that you need to really transform yourselves,” he shared.
Dr. Garvey believes that of all of his father’s quotes, this one is most essential to his conception of self-identity and self-empowerment, “God and nature first made us what we are, and then out of our own creative genius, we make ourselves what we want to be. Follow always that great law. Let the sky and God be our limit and Eternity our measurement.”
Dr. Garvey stressed to his audience the significance of receiving an appropriate education, noting that learning does not simply occur in formal educational settings.
“… The best part of education is really going to be self-education — the education that you search for and look for through books, through listening to people with knowledge,” he noted.
“Education is an interactive process. It’s not only what your teacher gives you, it’s not just the lesson plan but also what you bring to the table because it has to be interactive, you have to use your critical intelligence to use the facts and the knowledge that you need to really transform yourselves. That was the essence of Marcus Garvey’s philosophy in terms of self-transformation because he realized that we were disconnected from ourselves by propaganda and the long period of enslavement and he realized that we had to transform ourselves in terms of the freedom that we gained, through our different victories over people who had enslaved us, by people such as Nanny, Sam Sharpe, Paul Bogle, and so on,” he concluded.
