Person    | Male  Born 17/8/1887  Died 10/6/1940

Marcus Garvey

Pan-African nationalist leader. Born Marcus Mosiah Garvey in St Ann's Bay, Jamaica. He founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association in 1914 to foster worldwide black unity, and moved its headquarters to New York City two years later. His intention was that people of African descent would settle in Liberia and form a modern black state. Liberia feared that he intended to rule the country and rejected his plans. In 1925 he was convicted of fraud and deported back to Jamaica. He moved to rented accommodation at 53 Talgarth Road, Hammersmith, in 1935. At home recovering from a stroke he read in a newspaper his own premature, and uncomplimentary, obituary. He died shortly after.

Married Amy Ashwood in 1919, but the marriage was short-lived. In 1922 he married Amy E. Jacques, his first wife's chief bridesmaid. The same-name wives may have been convenient for him but they make the researcher's life rather difficult.

Garvey lived in London 1912-14. During that time he studied at Birkbeck College, spoke at Speakers' Corner in Hyde Park, and engaged with other pan-Africanists. On his return to Jamaica in 1914, he established the UNIA and African Communities League. In 1935, Garvey relocated to London, where he died in 1940. He was buried in Kensal Green. In 1964, his remains were moved to the National Heroes Park in Kingston, Jamaica.

2025: Hammersmith and Fulham Council reported: "In one of his last acts as outgoing US president, Joe Biden posthumously pardoned ... Marcus Garvey."

Credit for this entry to: Alan Patient of www.plaquesoflondon.co.uk

Comments are provided by Facebook, please ensure you are signed in here to see them

This section lists the memorials where the subject on this page is commemorated:
Marcus Garvey

Commemorated ati

Amy Garvey

Amy lived here for 26 years. Unveiled by Jamaica's High Commissioner to the ...

Read More

Marcus Garvey - Beaumont Crescent

The plaque is very badly eroded and partly illegible, maybe the result of hav...

Read More

Marcus Garvey - Haringey

This is the foundation stone for the building.

Read More

Marcus Garvey - Talgarth Road

Marcus Garvey, 1887 - 1940, Pan-Africanist leader, lived and died here. L.C.C. 

Read More

Marcus Garvey - Willesden Library

The bust was unveiled on Garvey's 129th birthday, and is now inside a glass c...

Read More

Show all 6

Other Subjects

James Stephen

James Stephen

Anti-slavery campaigner.  Born Dorset.  Trained in law and worked for a time in the Carribean where he saw the cruelty to slaves and became an abolitionist.  The death of his first wife deepened hi...

Person, Law, Politics & Administration, Race Issues, Religion, Caribbean Islands

1 memorial
Alfred Lafone

Alfred Lafone

Politician.  Born Liverpool.   Moved to Bermondsey and became a leather merchant.  Chairman of the Commissioners of the 1890 Bermondsey Library. MP for Bermondsey 1886 -1892 and 1895 -1900.  Died ...

Person, Politics & Administration

1 memorial
Gainsford Bruce

Gainsford Bruce

Judge. Chairman of Committee at the Royal Free Hospital in 1895.

Person, Politics & Administration

1 memorial
Jewish expulsion and resettlement

Jewish expulsion and resettlement

In 1290 Edward I expelled Jews from England and for centuries, apart from those that practised their religion in secret, there were no Jews in England.  In 1657, following a petition to Cromwell an...

Event, Politics & Administration, Religion

4 memorials
Frank Sharp

Frank Sharp

Frank William Sharp was born on 31 December 1923 in Ludlow, Shropshire, the elder child of Robert Kendrick Roberts Sharp (1883-1969) and Julia Mary Sharp née Turpin ( 1886-1975). His father was a l...

Person, Politics & Administration

3 memorials

Previously viewed

Roman building at Cannon Street

Roman building at Cannon Street

Londonist, our Picture source, have a good post on this. They write: "Underneath Cannon Street station is an enormous building that dates to around the late first or early second century AD. It was...

Building, Romans

1 memorial
Benjamin Disraeli

Benjamin Disraeli

Born Theobalds Road which at the time was 6 King's Road. Novelist, e.g. Coningsby, Sybil, and Tancred. Tory Prime Minister in 1868 and 1874 - 1880. 1st Earl of Beaconsfield. Clearly an interesting ...

Person, Literature, Politics & Administration, Seriously Famous

6 memorials
Frederick T. Baker

Frederick T. Baker

Overseer of St Marys Rotherhithe in 1886.

Person, Politics & Administration

2 memorials
Bob, the street cat

Bob, the street cat

This photo shows Bob on James Bowen's shoulders at the Angel station.

Animal, Animals

1 memorial
Abraham Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln

16th President of the USA. Born Kentucky. Assassinated while watching a very popular British play "Our American Cousin" in Ford's theatre, Washington, by John Wilkes Booth, an actor and Confederate...

Person, Politics & Administration, Seriously Famous, USA

3 memorials