Elia Garcia of U.N.I.A. writes to C. D. B. King of Liberia
One hundred years ago today … Elia Garcia, auditor-general of Universal Negro Improvement Association, wrote to C. D. B. King, the newly elected President of Liberia.
1920. Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Jean Blackwell Hutson Research and Reference Division, The New York Public Library. "His excellency the Hon. C.D.B. King, LL.D., President-Elect and Secretary of State of the Liberian Republic." The New York Public Library Digital Collections.
Garcia, at the direction of Marcus Garvey, proposed that U.N.I.A. and the African nation forge strong economic ties, and that U.N.I.A. establish its headquarters in the Liberian capital, Monrovia, or on available land elsewhere in the country.
In return, Garcia wrote, the organization would use its financial resources to support Liberia and alleviate its $ 1.7 million in debt (Grant, 280).
The U.N.I.A. would be prepared to do anything possible to help the Government of Liberia out of its economic plights and to raise subscriptions all over the world to help the country to liquidate its debts to foreign governments.
Read the full text of the letter here.
Note: we previously reported on U.N.I.A. in posts of January 25, January 30, and February 3.
Elie Garcia, having begun working for U.N.I.A. in 1919, was tapped as its official representative to Liberia in the Spring of 1920. Shortly after dispatching the letter to King, he would travel to Liberia and report back to Garvey on its conditions.
Elie Garcia. The Marcus Garvey and Universal Negro Improvement Association Papers, Vol. II: August 1919-August 1920. Edited Robert Hill. (Columbia, S.C.: Model Editions Partnership, 2000). Electronic version based on The Marcus Garvey and Universal Negro Improvement Association Papers, ed. Robert A. Hill, Volume 8, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983.
Garcia was a Haitian immigrant, having moved to New York in 1917, at a moment when many Haitians of the elite of business classes were emigrating due to the US occupation (1915-1935), and many settling in Harlem (Jackson and Dunbar, 516).
Garcia subsequently lived in West Virginia and Philadelphia before returning to New York in 1920. Grant describes him as “neat and nimble, and puckish” (279) while Levering Lewis refers to him as “impressive” (275).
Sources/Further reading:
The Marcus Garvey and Universal Negro Improvement Association Papers, ed. Robert A. Hill (Columbia, S.C.: Model Editions Partnership, 2000).
Grant, Colin. Negro With a Hat: The Rise and Fall of Marcus Garvey. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2008.
Jackson, Kenneth and David S. Dunbar, Ed. Empire City: New York Through the Centuries. New York: Columbia UP: 2005.
Lewis, David Levering. W.E.B. Du Bois: The Fight for Equality and the American Century, 1919-1963. New York: Owl Books, 2000.
WRITTEN BY JONATHAN GOLDMAN, JUNE 8, 2020.
TAGS: Elie Garcia, U.N.I.A., African American History, Haitian immigration, Marcus Garvey,