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 (Liberty Hall opening, the Madison Square Garden audience of roughly 25,000, the Declaration of Rights of the Negro Peoples of the World) are corroborated by PBS American Experience drawing on this same project.

Scope of this record, stated plainly. Garvey’s claim of two million members by mid-1919 appears in the essay only as his claim, with the biographers’ skepticism attached (Colin Grant, Negro with a Hat, reached this pass at secondary tier). 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.