Thus to the world a name was born, a movement created, and a man became known.Originally from Saint Ann's Bay, Jamaica, Marcus Garvey left at 23 and traveled throughout Central America and moved for a time to England.

Garvey contributed a front-page editorial each week in which he developed the organization's position on different issues related to people of African ancestry around the world, in general, and the UNIA, in particular.

Incorporated in Delaware as a domestic corporation on June 27, 1919, the Black Star Line, Inc. (BSL) was capitalized at 10 million dollars.

[5] With the growth of its membership from 1918 through 1924, as well as income from its various economic enterprises, UNIA purchased additional Liberty Halls in the US, Canada,[6] Costa Rica, Belize, Panama, Java, and other countries.

[citation needed] For the entire month of August 1920, the UNIA-ACL held its first international convention at Madison Square Garden in New York City.

Eason, leader of the fifteen million "Negroes" of the United States of America; and Henrietta Vinton Davis, International Organizer.

In Philadelphia, where he had earlier been the rector of St. Thomas Episcopal Church, McGuire had been an early member of the American Negro Historical Society.

Four mounted policemen, and the heads of Black Star Line and Negro Factories Corporation, led the parade, followed by cars carrying Garvey and Mayor of Monrovia, capital of Liberia, and other UNIA officials, then the Black Star Line Choir, on foot, and contingents from throughout US and Caribbean, Canada, Nigeria, carrying banners, and including 12 bands, with about 500 cars bringing up the rear.

Even after Garvey had left Harlem (he was imprisoned in 1925 and deported to Jamaica in 1927), the UNIA paraded each August throughout the 1920s, with the place of honour given to portraits of their absent leader.

[5] According to the preamble of the 1929 constitution as amended, the UNIA is a social, friendly, humanitarian, charitable, educational, institutional, constructive and expansive society, and is founded by persons desiring to do the utmost to work for the general uplift of the people of African ancestry of the world.

Therefore, let justice be done to all mankind, realizing that if the strong oppresses the weak, confusion and discontent will ever mark the path of man but with love, faith and charity towards all the reign of peace and plenty will be heralded into the world and the generations of men shall be called Blessed.Although UNIA was not solely a "Back to Africa" movement, the organization did work to arrange for emigration for African Americans who wanted to go there.

In late 1923, an official UNIA delegation that included Robert Lincoln Poston and Henrietta Vinton Davis traveled to Liberia to survey potential land sites for possible purchase.

By 1924 the Chief Justice J. J. Dossen of Liberia wrote to UNIA conveying the government's support: The President directs me to say in reply to your letter of June 8 setting forth the objects and purposes of the Universal Negro Improvement Association, that the Government of Liberia, appreciating as they do the aims of your organization as outlined by you, have no hesitancy in assuring you that they will afford the Association every facility legally possible in effectuating in Liberia its industrial, agricultural and business projects.About two months later, however, the Liberian President unexpectedly ordered all Liberian ports to refuse entry to any member of the "Garvey Movement".

The commercial agreement with Firestone Tire dealt a severe blow to the UNIA's African repatriation program and inspired speculation that the actions were linked.

[10] After Garvey's conviction and imprisonment on mail fraud charges in 1925 and deportation to Jamaica in 1927, the organization began to take on a different character.

[citation needed] But the UNIA continued to be officially recognized as the "Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League".

[citation needed] Garvey appointed Maymie de Mena as his official representative to head the American field after his ouster to Jamaica.

[12] In a historic 1939 British Supreme Court decision, President-General Francis was recognized as the rightful administrative heir to the huge Sir Isaiah Emmanuel Morter (DSOE) Estate in Belize.

After his death in the early 1980s, longtime Garveyite organizer Milton Kelly, Jr. assumed the administrative reins and continued to head the association until 2007.

Secretary-General Ethel Collins briefly managed the affairs of the UNIA from New York until a successor to Garvey could be formally installed to complete his term as President-General.

[citation needed] When Stewart died from cancer in 1964, the Parent Body was moved from Monrovia to Youngstown, Ohio, where James A. Bennett took the reins.

Hargrave testified during United States congressional hearings in August 1987 in relation to the proposed exoneration of Marcus Garvey on charges of mail fraud.

Although the Committee determined he had been found guilty earlier due to the social climate of America at the time, they had no legal basis upon which to exonerate a person who had died.

[citation needed] After President General Hargrave died in 1988, all his papers and other Parent Body material were turned over to the Western Reserve Historical Society in Cleveland, Ohio, for safe-keeping.