“The Second Battle for Africa Has Begun”

Abstract

This chapter examines the underappreciated impact of Garveyism in shaping Liberian politics and life during the 1970s. This work was spearheaded by Rev. Clarence W. Harding Jr., a dynamic Chicago-born African American leader, who relocated to Monrovia in 1966 and headed the local division of the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) until his passing in 1978. Through the local division, and through the Marcus Garvey Memorial Institute, a UNIA-affiliated elementary and secondary school, Harding successfully disseminated the principles of Garveyism widely among working-class and indigenous Liberians living in Monrovia and collaborated with the emergent Movement for Justice in Africa. In tracing Harding’s work in Liberia, the chapter also highlights connections between Liberia and the U.S. Midwest—or what the author has fashioned as the “diasporic Midwest.”