James Robert Stewart (October 1, 1903–April 30, 1964) was a member of the. Stewart succeeded Marcus Garvey as President-General of the UNIA. He successfully relocated its headquarters to Liberia.
Stewart was born in, Mississippi, the son of a wealthy plantation owner; his uncle, Professor William Stewart taught in , Mississippi. He began school in Morehead and moved to Cleveland by 1915 where he studied art and commercial business.
After completing school he temporarily served as a mail clerk at the post office, became a Spanish instructor and served as an interpreter for the Pennsylvania Railroad. He became an amateur boxing champion in Ohio weighing 138 pounds.
Stewart joined the UNIA as a juvenile in 1919. He became the President of the Cleveland Division in 1933 and State Commissioner in 1937 after taking the course of African Philosophy from President-General Garvey and graduating with high honors.
After Garvey’s death in June 1940, the August 1940 Emergency Conference of the UNIA Commissioners in New York City elected James Stewart President-General to complete the final two years of Garvey’s uncompleted term.
As President-General, Stewart transferred the International Headquarters of the UNIA from New York to Cleveland and immediately launched a national speaking tour to inspire existing Divisions and create new ones. He held a series of Conferences and Conventions, launched the New Negro World Newspaper and resumed offering the Course of African Philosophy. By 1943, he obtained 65 acres of farmland in and within 6 years transformed it into a modern community.
Unhappy with this development, a rehabilitating committee held a conference in Detroit, Michigan. In 1949, President-General Stewart successfully repatriated his family and other supporters to Zanzu, Gbandela, Liberia, officially establishing the International Headquarters of the UNIA-ACL on African soil.
The main thrust behind the idea of the Post Colonial Cultural & Economic Conference (PCEC), is to bring the focus of the UNIA ACL back to Africa. PCEC lives as death comes to the tech smart enslavers’ civilizations.
Today’s headlines read—American Economic Collapse, Global Real Estate Gets Flush, Stock Market will fall within 12 months, LYFT falls into bear market, Zombie Corporations and the debt fiasco, The Global Economic Contagion, IMF and BIS warn next crisis we can’t save you, Why 95 percent of Americans will be bankrupt by 2020.
However, let us turn our focus to the Right Excellent Marcus Garvey, he wrote Look For Me In The Whirlwind.
There is no future for a people who deny their past. My Fore-parents, My Grandparents, My Mother, My Father did not suffer and die to give me an education to slight, oppress or discourage my people. Whatsoever education I acquired out of their sacrifice of over 300 years, I shall use for the salvation of the 400 million Black people of the world. And the DAY when I forsake my people; may GOD Almighty say, “There shall be no more life for you.”
I unequivocally rejected the racist assumption of much White American Christianity. Namely, that God had created the Black man inferior. And that he intended Negroes to be a servant class, heavers of wood and drawers of water. Well, I predicated my view of man on the doctrine of E Margo de E “all men regardless of color are created in the image of GOD.” From this premise come the equality of all men and brotherhood of all men. The Biblical injunction of Acts 17:26 reminds us that He created of one blood all nations of men to dwell on the face of the Earth and is most interested in brotherhood than with ones own race. Because if Negroes are created in God’s image, and Negroes are Black then God must IN SOME SENSE be Black.
Mr. Garvey continued—
If the White man has the Idea of a white God let him worship his God as he desires. We have found a new ideal. Because God has No color, and yet it is HUMAN to see everything through one’s own spectacles, and since the white people have seen their god thru their white spectacles, we have only now started to see our God thru our own Spectacles.
But we believe in the God of Ethiopia, the everlasting God; God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy One, the one God of all the Ages; that is the God of whom we believe but we shall worship HIM thru the spectacles of Ethiopia.
For two hundred and fifty years we have struggled under the burden and rigors of slavery. We were maimed, we were brutalized, we were ravaged in every way. We are men, we have hopes, we have passions, we have feelings, we have desires just like any other race. The cry of race all over the world, of Canada for the Canadians, of America for the Americans, of England for the English, of France for the French or Germany for the Germans; do they think it unreasonable that we the Blacks of the world should raise our cry, Africa for the Africans?
The Negro is a MAN; we represent the New Negro. His back is not yet against the wall, we do not want his back against the wall because that would be a peculiar and desperate position. We do not want him there. It is because of this we are asking for a fair compromise. Well, the Belgians have control over the Belgian Congo, which they cannot use. They have not the resources to develop, nor the intelligence. The French have more territory than they can develop, there’s certain parts of Africa in which they cannot live at all. So it is for YOU to come together and give us a United States of Africa.
We are not going to be a race without a country. God never intended it and we are not going to disappoint God’s confidence in us as Men. We are Men, human beings, capable of the same acts as any other race. Possessing under fair circumstances the same INTELLIGENCE as any other race. Now Africa’s been sleeping. Not dead, only sleeping. Today Africa is walking around not only on our feet but on our brains. You can enslave us for some 300 years, the bodies of men, you can shackle the hands of men, you can shackle the feet of men, you can imprison the bodies of men, BUT YOU CANNOT SHACKLE OR IMPRISON THE MINDS OF MEN.
Rise up Black Men, and take your stand. Reach up Black men and women and pull all nature’s knowledge to you.
Addressing the global Black Race in the name of the UNIA ACL may I repeat—the headlines—American Economic Collapse, Global Real Estate Gets Flush, Stock Market will fall within 12 months, LYFT falls into bear market, Zombie Corporations and the debt fiasco, The Global Economic Contagion, IMF and BIS warn next crisis we can’t save you, Why 95 percent of Americans will be bankrupt by 2020.
Upon reading the above news articles this past week I have contemplated the passing of my mentors, Mr. Charles F. Vanderpool & Mr. Benjamin Samuel. I am one of those people who think about death a lot. Not because I am morbid. It’s just that death seems to be of central significance to our racial improvement process as UNIA ACL members, as Garveyites. So often we live pretending death isn’t a part of life. But observe Africa’s 21st century—life begins as the slavers descendants’ Arab/Euro-American civilization dies.
Observe in Kenya there is a new business venture, Ital-Plastick Africa Kenya that is proving that Negro Improvement begins with the concept of Race First. The concept of Race First moves one to contemplate our death and set the agenda for our lives on the advancement of the next generation. (Study the above illustration with Brother Oduno Tarik.) When that day comes, who do we want to have become? What do we want to have achieved? What do we want people to say about us on that day?
Getting back to Mr. Garvey, he wrote, “Turn ye around and make a conquest of everything North and South, East and West. And then we, you have wrought well, you will have merited God’s blessing, you will become God’s chosen people and naturally you’ll become leaders of the world. And as you bow down to the white man today, so will others bow down to you and call you a race of masters because of the intelligence of your mind and your achievements. No race has the last word on culture and civilization. They do not know what we’re capable of; they do not know what we’re thinking. They’re thinking in terms of dreadnaughts, battleships, airplanes and submarines. You know what we’re thinking about? That is our own private business.
“So give us credit for being able to use our minds. And once people are in concept of themselves; determined to use their minds you do not know to what extent they can go. Liberate the minds of men and ultimately you will liberate the bodies of men.
“Let up the white race, not for social fellowship but for the common good of God and tell him he should live. What satisfaction can anyone get in being happy and see his brother wallowing in filth, death and disease? How can you be happy living in luxury and your brother is living in disease? Then when you try to help the one out of the disease, there are talks of a disloyalty.
“Black men of Carthage, Black men of Ethiopia, of Timbuktu to Alexandria gave the likes of civilization to this world. Ethiopia shall stretch forth her hands unto God and princes shall come out of Egypt. Those classes, nations, races have been quite quiet for over four centuries. Who have merely borne the view in self humiliation, whose forbearance can only be compared to the prophet Job as likewise lifted his bowed head and raised it up at God’s cries, and cried out ‘I am a man and demand a man’s chance and a man’s treatment in this world.’
“As I shall teach the Black man, I shall teach the Black man to see beauty in his own kind and stop bleaching his skin and otherwise looking like what he’s not. Back in the days of slavery, Race mixture, Race miscegenation all occurred BECAUSE THE AFRICAN WOMAN HAD NO PROTECTION FROM THE SLAVE MASTER. Therefore there is no need today for Black people themselves to freely continue a PRACTICE that SMACKS so much of slavery.”
Back to PCEC. In my opinion—if that doesn’t give us a compass to plan by and live by, then nothing else will. How is it that Mr. Garvey died in the year of 1940 yet we are getting pointers from him about life and living as we observe those who enslaved the Black Race, even as their civilizations die? From that frame of reference, death is our friend—points of Black Racial Perspective that can set our values and determine our PCEC Race First village goals.
The PostColonial Cultural and Economic Conference begins with the prototype Borehole Project 2020, on to 2022. The 21st Century UNIA ACL and Garveyism, via PCEC, will offer new precepts on African Life & Living to the global Black communities of family.
All in all, the great skill of life is dealing with change. The art of life is accepting change and then making the most of what is to follow. The global Black Race will advance and improve due to our diversity operating as a single entity. Yet, when it comes to culture and economics, One God One Aim One Destiny is the advance process preceding individualism. That is why, that is how we grow, how we mature. It is how we become better.
Observe the facial expressions of the little ones in the photograph above. Observe her/his eyes, their mouths open. Do you suppose they realize this world belongs to them, their kin and kind? It is a question of the 21st century Black Race picking up on the concept that both Mr. Garvey and James Robert Stewart as a collective had the formula for Black Racial Improvement. Indeed, “there is no culture without agriculture.” There is no family without the Villages operating as a Black Racial Global Collective. One God! One Aim! One Destiny!