Together

Artist: Brendon Palmer-Angell

On December 1, 1927, an overall-clad longshoreman interrupted a Sunday evening gathering of the New Orleans Division of the Universal Negro Improvement Association: Marcus Garvey, the organization’s founder, was to be deported to Jamaica through the city’s port the next morning. Congregants held vigil at Liberty Hall, meeting the sun at the Mississippi River’s bank together that Monday. Altogether, an estimated 5,000 people flocked to the docks and levees on either side of the river to catch a glimpse of the man who had galvanized millions of Black people throughout the Americas, Africa, and Europe with the call “Africa, unite!”