Group receives grant to conduct research on Garvey

Richard Smyth, US Charge d'Affaires, hands over a US$15,000 grant to Professor Rupert Lewis, executive member of the Friends of Liberty Hall yesterday. - Ian Allen

THE FRIENDS of Liberty Hall received a grant of US$15,000 under the United States Ambassador's Fund for Cultural Preservation yesterday.

The grant, which was signed over to Professor Rupert Lewis, an executive member of the Friends of Liberty Hall, by Richard H. Smyth, the US Charge d'Affaires and Michael Koplovsky, Acting Public Affairs Officer and head of the Political Economics section at the U.S. Embassy, will be used to prepare research information about Marcus Garvey's life and work as well as over 900 articles written on Jamaica by him.

This information is expected to be made available to the Jamaican public in the restored Liberty Hall building, the first base of Garvey's United Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), at 79 King Street, downtown Kingston.

"I trust that the grant of US$15,000 ... will help to provide a tangible and historical record, as well as a vivid remembrance of Garvey's life and work, in the form of the Garvey Papers," said Mr. Smyth.

He said the preservation of cultural heritage was one of the cornerstones of the development and social cohesion of any country. Mr. Smyth said that it was out of respect for this fact that the US Embassy was honoured to be a part of the preservation of Jamaica's heritage.

Professor Lewis, in accepting the assistance from the Ambassador, said that the aim of the work being done by the Friends of Liberty Hall is to ensure that sufficient material on Jamaica's first National Hero and his philosophy is available to the Jamaican public as "there has been a deliberate strategy to keep Garvey's writings away from the Jamaican population".

Deliberate, he said, because Jamaican teachers have passively decided not to tackle the teaching of Garvey's philosophy in the classroom. "The will and interest to teach it is not there," said Prof. Lewis.

The three-storey Liberty Hall will house a 100-seater amphitheatre, interactive library, gift shop, museum and a 100-seater lecture hall.

Marcus Garvey, founded the UNIA in 1914 and directed it from Harlem in New York between 1919-1927. Born in Jamaica in 1887, August 17, Garvey worked as a printer in Kingston, then left to work on banana plantations in Central America before emigrating to New York.

He is best known for his initiation of Pan-Africanism. He was charged with U.S. federal mail fraud in 1925, pardoned by U.S. President Calvin Coolidge in 1927 and deported to Jamaica. He died in London in 1940.

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