“I asked, ‘Where is the black man’s Government?’ ‘Where is his King and his kingdom?’ ‘Where is his President, his country, and his ambassador, his army, his navy, his men of big affairs?’ I could not find them, and then I declared, ‘I will help to make them.’”

“The Negro’s Greatest Enemy,” published in Current History (18:6, September 1923), written in the Tombs Prison in New York City.

“The Dream of a Negro Empire
. . . What we want is an independent African nationality. . . It is hoped that when the time comes for American and West Indian Negroes to settle in Africa, they will realize their responsibility and their duty. . .  it shall be the purpose of the Universal Negro Improvement Association to have established in Africa the brotherly co-operation which will make the interest of the African native and the American and West Indies Negro one and the same, that is to say, we shall enter into a common partnership to build up Africa in the interest of our race.”

Excerpt from the Negro World, Vol. XII, No. 10? New York, Saturday, April 22, 1922

Written by Marcus Garvey, President General, Universal Negro Improvement Association, New York, April 18, 1922