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From the Publisher

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Steamships already existed when Marcus Mosiah Garvey began to travel from his homeland of Jamaica into Central and North America in the early part of the twentieth century, but we have to presume these early steam engine vessels were relatively slow. Garvey, then, spent a lot of time on the sea moving from here to there. Garvey put in a lot of work increasing his knowledge of the region, and then building his organization — the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA).

The point I want to make is about British Honduras at the time when Isaiah Morter died in 1923 and willed his very wealthy estate to Marcus Garvey’s cause of “African Redemption.” Garvey’s headquarters were in New York City at the time, and very few people would have known of tiny British Honduras except Garvey himself, who had visited here at least twice, if I remember correctly.

A lady who contacted me recently from London said that Garvey was in London from 1935 to 1940, when he died. The Privy Council decision against him and in favor of the charlatan, Dr. Lionel Francis, came in 1939, I believe. I had always thought that Mr. Garvey had only been in London for a year or two before he was felled by a massive stroke, at the relatively young age of 53. But, if we are to believe my source, he had been in London fighting for the Morter estate from 1935.

Garvey was the most powerful black man in the world in the twentieth century, and clearly his international status and wealth accumulation began to alarm the white power structure in the early 1920’s.

A few weeks ago, I said to you that the white power structure decided in the early/middle 1960’s that Malcolm X had to be put in check, or let’s say removed, and they conspired to have him assassinated.

I always felt that Stokely Carmichael moved to Africa to live after marrying Miriam Makeba around 1967 or so, because he knew that he would be killed by the white power structure in the United States. Was this intelligence on Stokely’s part, or cowardice? None of us has the authority to give a definitive opinion on this score, but this column is not about Stokely, a hero of mine when I was attending college in the United States between 1965 and 1968.

The column is about Isaiah Morter, and how important it was, in the eyes of the white power structure, for Garvey not to access the wealth Morter possessed in British Honduras and had willed to Garvey. Around the same time that Morter died and his sensational will was read, Garvey was being framed on mail fraud charges in New York, for which he went to jail in Atlanta State Penitentiary.

When Garvey was released from jail around 1927 or so, he was immediately deported to Jamaica, where he experienced hard times. Access to the Morter estate resources would have given Marcus a chance to rebuild his fame and organization.

A bogus version of the UNIA had emerged while Garvey was in prison, and the Privy Council gave Isaiah Morter’s wealth to a Trinidad physician named Dr. Lionel Francis, who came to Belize in 1940 thereabouts to take control of the Morter estate.

No one in the media here ever talks about Francis and his dealings in this Garvey/Morter/Francis matter. Lionel Francis, in fact, entered politics in British Honduras and was one of the leaders of the pro-British National Party (NP) which fought against the People’s United Party (PUP) in the early and middle 1950’s.

Going to school in Belize between 1952 and 1965, I was never taught anything about Garvey, Morter, or Francis. That paradigm remains in place today. It amounts to orchestrated ignorance, which serves the purposes of the white power structure here. They say, of course, that there is no race problem in Belize. But history would be served for Belizean children if they were taught that a self-made black millionaire in British Honduras named Isaiah Morter would have saved the iconic Marcus Garvey from an early demise had the British courts served the cause of natural justice. I’m just saying.

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