If We Must Die: The Negro Movement

We are already introduced with the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, which is an African-American civil rights organization started by Ida B. Wells, W.E.B Du Bois, and many others to end the civil rights struggle. However, according “The Negro Movement”, some African-American critics began to challenge NAACP’s approach to the civil rights struggle, which is portrayed on the poem “If We Must Die”. From the excerpt “Black Conflict Over World War I” till “James Holden Johnson and Harlem in the 1920s” evidences flow throughout as the challengers not only challenged the NAACP’s approach to civil rights struggle, but also proposed different programs instead.

As the poem If We Must Die ends with the lines, “Like men we’ll face the murderous, cowardly pack, Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back!” Claude McKay
However, Marcus Garvey was one of the biggest challengers of NAACP, as he represented the Black Nationalism opposing the Liberal Integrationism philosophy of the NAACP. Marcus Garvey was inspired by Booker T. and organized the largest black nationalist organization movement in history, the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA). The UNIA was an organization that was directly opposing NAACP’s approach and worked on a different approach instead. As it is stated, “The Universal Negro Improvement Association teaches our race self-help and self-reliance, not only in one essential, but in all those things that contribute human happiness and well-being”, it can be clearly understood that UNIA specifically supports nationalism and opposes integrationism, which is however supported by the NAACP. Being part of UNIA, Garvey’s 2nd wife Euphemia Jacques Garvey was also a challenger to NAACP’s approach to civil rights, as she represented her husband to public and worked as a regular columnist in the UNIA’s newspaper, The Negro