Marcus Garvey and UNIA Papers Project (UCLA)

The authoritative scholarly archive of the UNIA’s own records, and the source of the only membership-scale statement the essay makes as fact: hundreds of chapters worldwide by 1920. The August 1920 convention details (delegates from 22 countries, the mass meeting at Madison Square Garden) are carried by PBS American Experience (pbs-american-experience-unia-convention-1920). PBS also estimates the audience for Garvey’s speech there at twenty-five thousand; the essay states no audience figure.

Scope of this record, stated plainly. Garvey’s claim of two million members by mid-1919, and his biographers’ skepticism of it, are no longer in the essay (corrected 2026-10-01): no source the essay lists carries either. No dues-paying membership total is stated anywhere in the essay because none is reliably sourced; the “1,900 divisions” figure that circulates in popular retellings is unsourced to a specific scholar and is not used. If a later draft needs a scholarly membership estimate, it goes through Judith Stein’s The World of Marcus Garvey or Hill’s introductions to the Papers volumes directly.