ABSTRACT
Laura Adorkor Kofey first appeared in the South in 1927, the last year Garvey served in Atlanta Penitentiary before his release and deportation. According to her critics she was merely a fraud: an American Negro named Laura Champion from Athens, Georgia, who betrayed the black community either by luring people from the established churches, or by subverting the nationalist goals of Marcus Garvey's Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) with the divisive nature of her leadership, her unauthorized collection of funds, and the religious character of her message. At the conclusion of her preaching services she would extend her right hand and say, "Enroll your names with your Mother, children. If you does not have but one drop of black blood in you, and know you cannot pass for white, enroll your name with your Mother". The church in Liberia, a black section of Dania, Florida, is called St. Adorkor's African Universal Church.
