‘Marcus Garvey returning to Africa on the Black Star Line’

This lantern depicts a ship carrying the huge, seated figure of Marcus Garvey moving in front of the judges of the lantern parade. Garvey was a Jamaican political activist. A black nationalist and Pan-Africanist, his ideas were influential in the Rastafari movement to which many members of Mandela Youth Organisation (the club that built this lantern) belonged. In 1919 he became President of the Black Star Line shipping and passenger company, designed to facilitate African-American migration to Liberia.