The Tribune

EDITOR, The Tribune.

There is one striking similarity between Sir Randol Fawkes, Dr Martin Luther King, Jr, and Jamaican National Hero Marcus Garvey that caught my attention after reading their biographies. All three were falsely accused of being Communists, as will be seen in the following. In the first half of the twentieth century, Garvey was the most influential civil rights activist in the United States, eclipsing W.E.B Dubois of the NAACP and A Philip Randolph. King would carry on the metaphorical civil rights baton from Garvey, as the most influential civil rights leader in the second half of the twentieth century. In 1958, after the famous sedition trial of Fawkes, King would visit New Providence, where he gave a speech at Fawkes' Bahamas Federation of Labour Federation Hall in November 1958. Fawkes was charged with uttering seditious remarks in an August 1958 speech at Windsor Park against Magistrate Maxwell J Thompson. Fawkes had taken exception to being charged with disorderly behaviour and trespassing at the Bahamas Lumber Company Limited site in Mastic Point, North Andros.

A little over two years prior to the trial, Fawkes, as a member of the Progressive Liberal Party, was elected to Parliament on June 8, 1956. Seven days prior to the election, the first Labour Day Parade was held, drawing approximately 20 thousand Bahamians. Fawkes would also flex his muscles in the 1958 General Strike that brought Nassau's economy to a screeching halt. The Father of Labour mentioned in his "The Faith that moved the Mountain" that he patterned the strike after the 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott, using the nonviolent strategy of King. Both civil rights activists realized that any violence by their supporters would've given the White controlled state justification to use excessive force disproportionately. The official colour of Fawkes' BFL was red, which is, coincidentally, the colour of the flags of Communist China and Russia. Fawkes' enemies within the United Bahamian Party took notice of the similarities, and decided to use the Communist boogeyman label in order to derail the Fawkes movement, which was gathering significant momentum in the late fifties. It was a bogus allegation. The White oligarchs were using the Red Scare strategy of J. Edgar Hoover of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which he used against King and Garvey.

Both Garvey and King were considered Negro agitators by Hoover, who became head of the Bureau of Investigation in 1924, heading a branch of the government funded agency named the American Protective League. Hoover would falsely accuse Garvey's Universal Negro Improvement Association of inciting racial violence in the US in the 1920s. Like Fawkes and King after him, the White powers-that-be were afraid of him. Calling himself the Provisional President of Africa, Garvey would draw thousands of African Americans to his fist UNIA International Convention of the Negro Peoples of the World on August 1, 1920 at Madison Square Garden in New York, where a Black Bill of Rights was drafted. Garvey called on the US and Europe to hand over Africa to the African people. Africa was colonized by Europe, with Ethiopia being the exception, other than between 1935 and 1940 when it was occupied by Italy. Relocating his UNIA headquarters to Liberia, which had gained independence in 1847, Garvey appeared to be serious about establishing an African state with himself as head. At least that was the interpretation of his White detractors in the US, who were aware of the UNIA having its own national anthem titled "Advance."

As head of a defacto Black government who sent telegrams to other heads of states, the US government viewed Garvey as a threat. That's why the government assigned Hoover to the task of dismantling the Garveyite movement. Historians have noted that Garvey was Hoover's first civil rights leader to be harassed. Garvey was also perennially harassed by Edwin P Kilroe of the New York District Attorney's Office. Historians have alleged that Garvey's failed assassin, George Tyler, was linked to Kilroe. Failing to link Garvey to any Communist operatives, Hoover and the US government charged the UNIA leader of committing mail fraud with his Black Star Line enterprise in 1922. Regarding King, the foregoing Montgomery Bus Boycott in 1955 catapulted him into the national and international spotlight. Hoover and the FBI began their surveillance of King after this important event. The FBI was aware of Stanley Levison's collaboration with King in the civil rights movement. Levison, who was introduced to King by Bayard Rustin, was active in the Communist Party of the United States of America between the 1940s and 1956. The agency also knew that King had hired another suspected Communist named Jack O'Dell to work alongside him in his Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

However, notwithstanding O'Dell and Levison, the FBI's counterintelligence programme, dubbed COINTELPRO, revealed no Communist leanings by King. Communism was considered the greatest threat to North America prior to the rise of radical islamic terrorism, as was demonstrated on 9/11 by Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden. In 1953, two years before the Montgomery Bus Boycott, the US government executed Julius and Ethel Rosenberg for spying for Communist Russia. Allegations of colluding with Communists, especially during the Cold War, were taken seriously by the Americans. This is why enemies of Fawkes and King attempted to portray them both as Communists, with the aim of destroying them. It was a well coordinated smear campaign, motivated by racism, that failed spectacularly.

KEVIN EVANS

Freeport,

Grand Bahama.

March 5, 2023.