A recreational park named in honor of Marcus Mosiah Garvey will be erected in Jamaica in his birth parish of St. Ann. Slated to open next year during the Jamaica 50 celebrations, the park will feature a memorial wall, story boards as well as other traditional aspects associated with cultural sites.
During a ceremony attended by members of the island’s parliament as well as advocates of the teachings of the iconic figure, outgoing Prime Minister Bruce Golding dug deep into the soil of St. Ann’s Bay to officially break ground where construction will begin for a memorial park dedicated to the nation’s first national hero.
Perhaps, one of the most important and memorable task PM Golding will initiate before his tentative exit from office, he lauded the work and effort of the Pan-African advocate who migrated to the USA where he launched a united movement that motivated millions throughout the world.
“Marcus Garvey is in a place and a class by himself because there is no other hero that we have whose work, whose life, whose legacy, has had such a profound impact far beyond our shores, and whose work, whose philosophy continues to endure,” the leader said.
“When Marcus Garvey, in the 1920s and 1930s, ignited the consciousness of Black people, he was not just talking to the people in Jamaica, he wasn’t just talking to the people who would meet so regularly at Liberty Hall (Garvey’s UNIA meeting place), he was talking to the world, and the world had started to listen.”
“There are so many parts of the world you go today and the philosophy of Marcus Garvey is not just alive, but it is informing the way people live and the way people relate to each other. We in Jamaica perhaps have not done as much as we need to do to propagate, to evangelize the philosophy of Marcus Garvey.”
Golding did not mince words regaling the son of the soil. He admonished Garvey’s detractors saying: “When the powers of the world at that time saw that the world was listening to this little Black man from Jamaica, then he had to be quieted, he had to be put down, he had to be pushed back, he had to be suppressed.”
Golding’s son, Stephen is president of the local United Negro Improvement Association – the organization Garvey founded.
As leader of the UNIA, he participated in the groundbreaking proceedings by shoveling away earth raised by his father’s public gesture.
