ABSTRACT
No Negro in the United States before or since has been able to develop an organizational structure to rival in its size or impact that developed by Marcus Garvey as the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities’ League, of the World. Yet surprisingly little attention has been paid to examining the regulatory basis for this achievement. In 1920 Marcus Garvey issued a call for an international convention of Negroes to be held in New York City during August of that year. This Convention publicized for the first time Garvey’s genius in involving the masses of Negroes in a mammoth organizational structure that not only met the expressed goals of the Universal Negro Improvement Association, but provided a sense of importance for the long downtrodden and ignored black men and women. From their parade down Lenox Avenue the surprised and impressed Negro world could gain a visual impression of the facets and goals of Garveyism. Revealing the discipline and pageantry so essential to a mass movement, the African Legion, the Black Cross Nurses, and the Juvenile Auxiliary paraded for all to see.
