over a hundred years ago the black nationalist movement in america reached an unprecedented level of popularity because of the efforts of the charismatic leader of the universal negro improvement association marcus garvey born in jamaica garvey grew up in poverty he came to understand race relations through the lens of british colonialism throughout the caribbean and latin america as his thinking matured he began to formulate a revolutionary social movement in 1914 he founded the universal negro improvement association dedicated to uniting all the black people throughout the world two years later he immigrated to the united states where his powerful message quickly gained traction we want to unite the liberation this country we want everything to work for one common object that of building a nation of his own on the great continent of africa for the purpose of bettering our industrial commercial educational social and political conditions he arrives in an era where blacks are still being lynched regularly in the south around the same time that movies like birth of the nation are showing extraordinarily racist depictions of african americans as monsters you have this really charismatic and dynamic individual and he's talking about look our place is never going to be here in the united states it's never going to be in europe it's going to be in africa we need to reclaim africa so garvey is going to be preaching a philosophy of black pride he's going to come up with a scheme to repatriate to africa and he provides a huge sense of hope for millions of african americans a centerpiece of garvey's program was the creation of the black star line a steamship line launched to transport african americans who wish to emigrate to africa the black star line is this idea that garvey can buy ships through the support of local african american people sending in money so you can have a share in the black star line and these ships were going to take thousands of people back to africa to the colony that garvey was going to establish but his advocacy for black americans to move back to africa drew the attention of the united states government and especially j edgar hoover's federal bureau of investigation which monitored garvey's movement seeking grounds for his arrest and deportation garvey was growing too powerful jagger hoover is going to hire their first negro agents to subvert marcus garvey and eventually they're going to say that he's been committing mail fraud with the black star line scheme he's eventually tried arrested placed in jail 1925 he's deported in 1927 and he's never allowed to return to united states he dies in london in 1940 garvey's legacy as the father of the modern back to africa movement cannot be underestimated he created the largest popular political movement in the history of black america and would be an inspiration both to the anti-colonial movement and black nationalist leaders throughout the remainder of the century [Music] foreign