Abstract
During the time we were in Germany, there was general unrest usually manifesting in strikes and demonstrations. Banners were carried by the Communists saying “Wer nicht arbeitet, soll auch nicht essen” (“He who does not work will not eat”). I wondered what it meant, and even though I asked my father and brothers for explanations, I remained in the dark about such movements connected with labor and wage disputes. One day there was a strike, and my brother George was beaten on his way to work. I overheard him tell the other boys about it, but I was unable to understand until much later.
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Notes
[These men were associated with Marcus Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA). James A. O’Meally was a New York City-based Jamaican UNIA “high commissioner” (referred to as “Sir James A. O’Meally” by Garvey), and William Strange was an engineer. They were in Hamburg to secure visas for Liberia, where they planned to travel to commence building a site for UNIA emigrants at Cape Palmas. Their entry to Liberia, however, was barred by President King and they returned to the United States. O’Meally broke with Garvey in 1925, with successful legal action against him over an unpaid salary, contributing to the bankruptcy of Garvey’s scheme. Fatima Massaquoi’s stepmother, Ma Sedia, was the daughter of Gabriel Moore Johnson, UNIA’s titular “potentate” who was on the payroll of the UNIA and a stockholder in the Black Star Line. At the opening of the Second International Convention of the UNIA in New York City, Johnson “wore a military-shaped helmet, with a large flowing white feather,” and was referred to as the “President of Africa.” Garvey and his Liberia immigration scheme were greatly opposed by the government of the United States, which spied on activities in Liberia and followed Johnson in the United States, and was aware of Johnson’s connections with Momolu Massaquoi. In 1921, J. Edgar Hoover had written that Johnson was the “father-in-law of a very prominent ex-chief, who was ousted by the British as a trouble maker in Sierra Leone, but who now lives in Liberia.” See The Marcus Garvey Papers, Vol. 3, September 1920–August 1921, p. 547. For an account of the failed UNIA scheme in Liberia, see M. B. Akpan, “Liberia and the Universal Negro Improvement Association: Background to the Abortion of Garvey’s Scheme for African Colonization,” Journal of African History, Vol. 14, No. 1 (1973), pp. 105–127. Eds.]
[Fatima Massaquoi would later write a number of children’s books with African themes and images. The first was Fatima Massaquoi Fahnbulleh and Artiste Doris Banks Henries, Fatu’s Experiences: A Liberian First Reader (New York: Frederick Fell, 1953).
By this time Massaquoi had married and taken on her husband’s surname. While the book is meant to be a general reader, the names and images were based on Massaquoi’s life (the name “Fatu” is a contraction of “Fatima”). Henries (1918–1981) was from 1951 to 1955 the director of the William V. S. Tubman Teachers’ College at the University of Liberia, and had emigrated to Liberia from the United States. Massaquoi’s second book, with the author named as Princess Fatima Massaquoi, was The Leopard’s Daughter: A Folk Tale from Liberia ‘Translated from the Vai Language (Boston: Bruce Humphries, 1961). She wrote five others including one on the history of Liberia University. Eds.]
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© 2013 Fatima Massaquoi, Vivian Seton, Konrad Tuchscherer and Arthur Abraham
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Massaquoi, F., Seton, V., Tuchscherer, K., Abraham, A. (2013). Hard Times, “Isms,” and School. In: Seton, V., Tuchscherer, K., Abraham, A. (eds) The Autobiography of an African Princess. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137102508_12
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137102508_12
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