Abstract
This article uncovers the life of Lionel Francis, one of the people who ousted Marcus Garvey from the leadership of the United Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) and who would eventually lead the UNIA. Although described by Garvey’s biographers as a medical doctor from Trinidad, this article reveals that Francis was never a doctor but began his working life as a miner and a preacher in the South Wales coalfields, enduring racism and personal struggles before emigrating to the United States following the 1919 racist riots in Wales. There he became a major leader of the interwar Pan-African movement in the United States and was centrally involved in the ousting of Garvey and the fragmentation of the UNIA. During the second world war, Francis moved to Belize and became a populist yet anti-independence politician. His life straddled Trinidad, Wales, the United States, and Belize, reflecting the shifting politics and migratory patterns of the African diaspora, making him an exemplar of the lived reality of the Black Atlantic in the first half of the twentieth century.
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References
1.
See the main works on Garvey and the UNIA for references to Lionel Francis: Robert A. Hill (ed.), The Marcus Garvey and UNIA Papers , vol. 2 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983), p. 380; E. David Cronin, Black Moses: the story of Marcus Garvey and the Universal Negro Improvement Association (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1969), p. 165; and Theodore G. Vincent, Black Power and the Garvey Movement (San Francisco: Ramparts Press, 1972), p. 268. He is not mentioned in Tony Martin’s Race First: the ideological and organizational struggles of Marcus Garvey and the Universal Negro Improvement Association (Dover: Majority Press, 1976), Adam Ewing, The Age of Garvey: how a Jamaican activist created a mass movement and changed global black politics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014) or Colin Grant, Negro with a Hat: the rise and fall of Marcus Garvey (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008). Judith Stein in The World of Marcus Garvey: race and class in modern society (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1986) notes that ‘some UNIA presidents, like Lionel Francis of Philadelphia, even feigned professional credentials’, p. 235.
2.
This study aims to build on the classic works on the subject such as Ron Ramdin, The Making of the Black Working Class in Britain (London: Gower, 1987); Peter Fryer, Staying Power: the history of black people in Britain (London: Pluto Press, 1984); Alan Llwyd, Cymru Ddu: Black Wales (Wrexham: Hughes & Son, 2005); Paul Gilroy, The Black Atlantic: modernity and double consciousness (London: Verso, 1993).
3.
Torquil Cowan, Labour of Love: the story of Robert Smillie (Dumfries: Neil Wilson, 2011), Robert Turnbull, Climbing Mount Sinai: Noah Ablett 1883–1935 (London: Socialist History Society, 2017), and Nina Fishman, Arthur Horner: a political biography 1894–1944 (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 2010).
4.Dundee Evening Post , 24 July 1900.
5.Western Mail , 2 September 1891; Merthyr Express , 11 September 1897. The comment about all being black in the pit can be found in the memoir of black miner turned comedian Charlie Williams, Ee – I’ve Had Some Laughs (London: Wolfe, 1973), p. 22.
6.
Alfred Lawes interview 1998, https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/rhondda-valley-accent-alfred-father (accessed 12 February 2020 ).
7.South Wales Gazette , 13 January 1905; Cardiff Times , 14 January 1905.
8.Cardiff Times , 7 January 1905.
9.Pembroke County Guardian , 2 February 1905.
10.South Wales Gazette , 24 August 1900 and 14 February 1913.
11.South Wales Gazette , 24 August 1900; Dundee Evening Post , 24 July 1900.
12.South Wales Gazette , 14 August 1914.
13.Cardiff Times , 22 April 1905.
14.South Wales Gazette , 21 December 1906.
15.South Wales Gazette , 25 January 1906.
16.South Wales Gazette , 18 October 1918.
17.South Wales Gazette , 20 April 1920.
18.
Kenneth L. Little, Negroes in Britain: a study of racial relations in English society (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Turner & Co, 1947), p. 57. For extensive coverage of the riots see Jacqueline Jenkinson, Black 1919: riots, racism and resistance in imperial Britain (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2009) and Neil Evans, ‘The South Wales race riots of 1919’, Llafur: The Journal of the Society for the Study of Welsh Labour History 3, no. 1 (1980): pp. 5–29.
19.Picture Post , 22 April 1950, p. 16.
20.
Winston James, Claude McKay – the making of a Black Bolshevik (New York: Columbia University Press, 2022), p. 201. The New York Age , 11 February 1933, estimated that 17 per cent of Harlem’s population were born outside of the USA, mainly from the West Indies.
21.
James, Claude McKay , p. 210.
22.
Full details of the convention can be found in Robert A. Hill, Emory J. Talbot, Deborah Forczek (eds), The Marcus Garvey and UNIA Papers , vol. 2 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983).
23.Monthly Review of Revolutionary Movements in British Dominions Overseas and Foreign Countries , August 1920, no. 22, 26, in The National Archives, CAB-24-112a.
24.
He is listed as a delegate under the name Lionel Antonio Francis in Hillet al ., The Marcus Garvey and UNIA Papers , vol. 2, p. 682.
25.Negro World , 3 September 1921. For the history of the UNIA in Britain, see Jake Thorrold, ‘Black political worlds in port cities: Garveyism in 1920s Britain’, Twentieth Century British History 33, no. 1 (2022): pp. 1–28.
26.Negro World , 5 August 1922.
27.
For examples of his career stories see the Pittsburgh Courier , 18 October and 15 August 1925. He does not appear in the alumni lists of any of these institutions.
28.Philadelphia Inquirer , 30 April 1922.
29.Philadelphia Inquirer , 30 April 1922.
30.Evening Public Ledger (Philadelphia), 12 April 1922.
31.Philadelphia Inquirer , 11 and 12 June 1922.
32.Kingston Whig-Standard , 29 September 1922.
33.Pittsburgh Courier , 14 June 1924.
34.New York Age , 30 August 1924.
35.Pittsburgh Courier , 18 October 1924.
36.Pittsburgh Courier , 15 August 1925.
37.Pittsburgh Courier , 20 February 1926.
38.The Times-Tribune (Scranton, Pennsylvania), 20 September 1928.
39.Dayton Daily News , 1 August 1926.
40.
‘Marcus Garvey and the UNIA in British Honduras’, Amandala , 16 September 1994, available at https://amandala.com.bz/news/marcus-garvey-and-the-unia-in-british-honduras/ (accessed 6 March 2022 ).
41.
See Peter Ashdown, ‘Marcus Garvey, the UNIA and the Black cause in British Honduras, 1914–49’, Journal of Caribbean History 15 (1981): pp. 41–55.
42.
The fullest accounts of the Morter dispute can be found in the Pittsburgh Courier , 13 August 1932, and the New York Age , 27 August 1932.
43.New York Age , 20 August 1932.
44.New York Age , 10 September 1932.
45.
Quoted in Theodore Vincent, Black Power and the Garvey Movement (San Francisco: Ramparts Press, 1972), p. 231.
46.Pittsburgh Courier , 19 May 1934.
47.New York Age , 14 April 1934.
48.
Gunnar Myrdal, An American Dilemma: the Negro problem and modern democracy (New York: Harper Bros, 1944), p. 813.
49.
O. Nigel Bolland, Colonialism and Resistance in Belize , 2nd edition (Kingston: University of the West Indies Press, 2003), p. 180.
50.
Bolland, Colonialism and Resistance , p. 176; Colonial Reports: British Honduras 1949 (London: HMSO, 1949), p. 5.
51.Plain Dealer (Kansas City), 12 September 1947.
52.
Larry Vernon, ‘A history of political parties in Belize’ in Lita Hunter Krohnet al ., Readings in Belize History , 2nd edition (Belize: St John’s College, 1987), pp. 239–55.
53.Daily Clarion , 10 and 11 May 1961.