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The Marcus Garvey and Universal Negro Improvement Association Papers, Vol. XI: The Caribbean Diaspora, 1910-1920. Edited by robert a. hill. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2011. 1128 pp. $120 (cloth).
Since the publication of the first volume of this collection more than two decades ago, Robert A. Hill's Marcus Garvey and the Universal Negro Improvement Association Papers has served as an indispensable source to understanding the impact and spread of the ideals of Marcus Garvey and his organization throughout the African diaspora. The letters, writings, and speeches in this current volume delve intricately into the West Indian side of the Garvey phenomenon that to this point has been neglected in the scholarship on the movement. By beginning the volume in 1910 (prior to the founding of the movement in 1914) Hill situates Garvey and his organization within the context of early twentieth-century West Indian history in which the impact of British colonial neglect manifested itself in a variety of ways. Issues such as color and class prejudices, elite monopolization of land ownership, a declining sugar industry and its low wages, and the lack of educational opportunities for large segments of the population created circumstances in which emigration to the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Central and South America, and the Spanish Caribbean were the only viable options for improving the political, economic, and cultural realities of the masses of West Indians. As one document in the volume from a Grenadian contributor to the UNIA paper The Negro World stated in 1919, "the system of government, the hardships being endured by the working class, the lack of general move for upliftand advances of the masses along economic...