Communication Monographs

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The rhetorical persona: Marcus Garvey as black

moses
B. L. Ware & Wil A. Linkugel
To cite this article: B. L. Ware & Wil A. Linkugel (1982) The rhetorical persona: Marcus Garvey
as black moses, Communication Monographs, 49:1, 50-62, DOI: 10.1080/03637758209376070
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03637758209376070

Published online: 02 Jun 2009.

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THE RHETORICAL PERSONA: MARCUS GARVEY AS

BLACK MOSES

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B. L. WARE
WIL A. LINKUGEL

The persona concept of traditional dramaturgy which refers to the masks worn by
actors in Greek and Roman theater can assist a rhetorical critic in explaining the
persuasive power of speakers who strongly remind their auditors of an archetypal
hero. When a speaker's rhetorical self becomes so closely associated with some set of
human experiences or ideas that it becomes virtually impossible for an audience to
think of one without the other, then that individual stands in a symbolic relationship
to those ideas or experiences and may wear the mask of a rhetorical persona.
Listeners, in such cases, impute to the speaker the ethos of their archetypal deliverer.
The purpose of this essay is to test this concept by applying it to Marcus Garvey, a
prototype Moses for Harlem blacks who were fervently awaiting a deliverer. The
essay is grounded in the formistic world view of Stephen C. Pepper. The Black Moses
Persona is treated as the transcendent form, and the factors of deliverance rhetoric
found in Garvey's speecheselection, captivity, and liberationare the particulars
that allow Garvey to participate in the form. The authors argue that it is precisely the
Black Moses Persona that explains why Garvey's importance survives him by thirty
years, despite the loss of his ideology's influence.
TyERSONA, in its strictest sense, is a of the actor qua person but to the characJL Latin word referring to the masks ter assumed by the actor when he dons
worn in Greek and Roman theater. The the mythical mask. We think this
Latin dictionary speaks of it as a "mask" persona conceptthe mask that is there
or "false face," covering the head, "worn before any person turns up to fill it
by actors."1 These masks symbolized a applies equally well to rhetorical critirole, an assumed character, or persona, cism.
and existed apart from individual actors.
Rhetorical personae reflect the aspiraWhen an actor put on one,of these tions and cultural visions of audiences
masks, he became the persona that the from which stems the symbolic construcmask symbolized. Robert Langbaum, tion of archetypal figures. An archetype,
literary critic, tells us that the term of course, is the original model, a protopersona implies the existence of a "mask type; it is the pattern from which copies
that is required by the mythical pattern, are made. Thus an archetypal figure is a
the ritual, the plotthe mask that is classic figure that exists either in history,
there before any person turns up to fill in myth, or literature and which has
it."2 Thus in traditional dramaturgy, gained such prominence in the minds of
persona does not refer to the personality people that rhetors who remind them of
the archetype will gain additional credibility as leaders. When a speaker's rheB. L. Ware is adjunct professor of law at Bates
College of Law, University of Houston. Wil A. torical self becomes so closely associated
Linkugel is professor of communication studies at with some set of human experiences or
the University of Kansas.
ideas that it becomes virtually impossible
1
See for example: Oxford Latin Dictionary (Oxford: for auditors to think of one without the
At the Clarendon Press, 1968) or any other standard
other, then that individual stands in a
classical Latin dictionary.
symbolic relationship to those ideas or
2
Robert Langbaum, "The Mysteries of Identity,"
experiences. The speaker, in such cases,
The American Scholar, 34 (1965), 576.
COMMUNICATION MONOGRAPHS, Volume 49, (March) 1982

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THE RHETORICAL PERSONA: MARCUS GARVEY AS BLACK MOSES

assumes the role of a rhetorical persona.

As observed above: The rhetorical
persona is not the rhetor qua person but
is an attributed character created by the
auditor's symbolic construction (and
implied assessment) of the rhetor. We
draw a sharp distinction here between
the rhetor's personal ethos and the ethos
represented by the rhetorical persona the
speaker assumes when he reminds the
listeners of its archetypal herothat
prototype in their psyches whom they
imagine will be their deliverer. The
character of the archetypal mask,
because of its peculiar importance to the
audience, will normally possess far
greater ethos than that of the actor wearing the mask. A rhetor, for example,
who strongly reminds auditors of a
prophetif a prophet is central to their
cultural visionwill be ascribed the
ethos of the audience's archetypal
prophet, perhaps an Elijah figure, or
any other prophet people imagine to be
their prototype deliverer. The speaker,
in that sense, transcends personal identity and becomes a truly charismatic
leader.
If we have learned nothing else from
George Herbert Mead, we can now see
that an individual's concept of self is a
social construction, that self-identity, as
Langbaum argues, "exists outside us in
the form of cultural symbols. In assimilating ourselves therefore, to these
symbols or roles or archetypes, we do not
lose the self but find it. Such symbols
or rhetorical personae naturally wield
moral authority over those who assist in
their construction. To achieve their
cultural vision, a people stands ready
symbolically to transcend its physical
reality and enter into the world of myth.
Such transcendence seems to be an
innate human propensity. Kenneth
Burke explains that "to say man is a
3

Langbaum, p. 586.

51

symbol-using animal is by the same

token to say that he is a 'transcending
animal.' " 4
PURPOSE OF T H I S ESSAY

We intend this essay as a threshold

inquiry into the nature of rhetorical
personae by examining Marcus Garvey
as a prototype Moses for Harlem blacks
who were fervently awaiting a deliverer.
We begin with a philosophical orientation to form. We understand a formistic
philosophy to be one in which the principal critical categories are (1) form, (2)
particulars, and (3) participation.5
Forms are two types: (1) immanent
and (2) transcendent. Immanent forms
are derived from "the simple commonsense perception of similar things."6
Immanent classification consists of descriptive grouping of objects which
"face-value" observation tells us look
alike, even though they may not be
entirely the same. Stephen C. Pepper
explains: "The world is full of things
that seem to be just alike: blades of grass,
leaves on a tree, a set of spoons, newspapers under a newsboy's arm, sheets of a
single ream of paper."7 In the world of
rhetoric, courtroom summation
speeches, for example, would easily cluster together in terms of face-value. We
prefer the term "genre" as an indication
of immanent formism. On the other
hand, there is a type of form Pepper
refers to as "transcendent." He tells us
that transcendent formism "comes from
two closely allied sources: the work of
the artisan in making different objects on
the same plan or for the same reason . . .
and the observation of natural objects
4
Kenneth Burke, A Rhetoric of Motives (New York:
Prentice-Hall, 1950), p. 192.
5
Stephen C. Pepper, World Hypotheses: A Study in
Evidence (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1942), pp. 153-54,163-64.
6
Pepper, p. 151.
7
Pepper, p. 151.

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COMMUNICATION MONOGRAPHS

appearing or growing according to the

same plan."8 Such formism is transcendent in the sense that classification is
made on the basis of similarity to something, either to an archetype or norm,
that is not represented in the concrete
manifestation of the objects being classified. Whereas immanent formism is
grounded in Aristotle, transcendent
formism is fundamentally Platonic. We
find the term "archetype" to be indicative of criticism based upon transcendent
formism.
Particulars are those peculiar qualities that characterize the form. For
example, addresses we call sermons all
have the quality of being theologically
oriented and in an ultimate sense involve
the spiritual salvation of human souls.
They are commonly delivered in
churches, but that is not a necessary
quality because sometimes they may
occur out-of-doors on college campuses
or in a public building. Other addresses
may also have religious elements but
their ultimate motive is other than spiritual salvation. Participation is the category of terms used to explain the connection between the other two, that is, how
it is that specific discourse becomes associated with a certain rhetorical form.
This essay on Marcus Garvey as
Black Moses is an example of criticism
oriented toward transcendent formism.
The "Moses" persona exists independent of the rhetor in the minds of the
audience before communication occurs.
We argue that downtrodden peoples
tend to possess in common the mental
form of the "Moses" persona because of
their quest for deliverance. And that
rhetors who include in their rhetoric the
themes of Moseselection, captivity,
and liberationmay evoke that form.
Thus, Moses is the transcendent form.
The particulars of the Moses form are
8

Pepper, p. 162.

election, captivity, and liberation; Garvey, by employing these particulars in

his rhetoric, was able to participate in
the form. The result of this participation
was increased rhetorical impact. In no
small way the audience actively participated in their own persuasion because
Harlem blacks possessed cultural reservoirs of the substancethe awareness of
Moses' deliverance of oppressed people
and the hope of their own deliverance.
There is another type of rhetorical
form of importance to this essay. The
discourse that we term "deliverance" in
this essay can appropriately be labeled a
rhetorical genre.
There are of course limitations to
writing a piece grounded in formistic
philosophy. For example, many of
Garvey's speeches contain the themes of
deliverance rhetoric: election, captivity,
and liberation, while others do not. In
many respects Garvey's different rhetorical efforts are just thatvery different
from one another. One of the problems
with formistic philosophy is how to
explain this phenomenon, that is, how
artifacts can be dissimilar and yet be
perceived as similar and categorized
accordingly. No few philosophers have
struggled with these problems for centuries. We feel that despite this problem of
similarityor occasional dissimilarity
anyone who reads the composite of
Garvey's rhetoric carefully can discern
the qualities of election, captivity, and
liberation. Thus taken at its entirety,
Garvey's rhetoric, employing the particulars of deliverance rhetoric, is an example of transcendent formism because it
allowed him to participate in the Moses
form.
BACKGROUND OF GARVEY'S
LEADERSHIP

When Marcus Mosiah Garvey came

to Harlem in 1916 as the obscure head
of the embryonic Universal Negro

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T H E RHETORICAL PERSONA: MARCUS GARVEY AS BLACK MOSES

Improvement Association, until then an

organization enjoying in the main only
limited support in the West Indies, he
encountered problems familiar to all
who would lead oppressed groups since
the time of the biblical Moses. By what
signs would the black people know him
as their rightful leader? How could he
establish the necessary authority for the
people to follow him? To be sure, the
leadership problem was minimized by
certain social conditions existing in the
United States from 1916 to 1924, the
years during which Garvey found
American blacks so receptive to him as
their chieftain. The death of Booker T.
Washington in 1915 left the position of
titular head of the black community
temporarily vacant. The war years
resulted in considerable disruption of
blacks from their traditional life styles,
due to migration to industrial centers.
Furthermore, the rhetoric of democracy
surrounding American participation in
World War I created expectations of a
better life among all minorities, hopes
that were dashed after the Armistice by
the continuance of race riots and the
growth of the Ku Klux Klan.9
The social and economic frustrations
of the day, however, were not sufficient
in and of themselves to account for
Garvey's rise as a leader of the black
community. These disorders, though
perhaps more extreme than previously,
were not new experiences to the race. At
best, they suggest why the times were
ripe for the rise of a popular black
leader. They do not offer a critical,
definitive understanding of why Garvey
in particular became that leader. The
basis of Garvey's authority was the need
for a characterization of a Black Moses,
a persona, around which a true black
culture might form.

9
E. David Cronon, ed., Marcus Garvey (Englewood
Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1973), p. 5.

53

Garvey, through the appeal of his

rhetoric and the activities of the Universal Negro Improvement Association,
became a new leader of black
Americans. And as that new leader, in
James G. Frazer's terms, he wore the
"magic mask of Kingship [someone who
has authority over people]."10 The magic
face that Garvey wore, we contend, was
the Black Moses mask, a myth that gave
authenticity to his leadership. Michael
C. McGee, in speaking of the political
vision of mass man, notes, "In a sense
the myth contains all other stages of the
process; it gives specific meaning to a
society's ideological commitments; it is
the inventional source for arguments of
ratification among those seduced by
it.. . ." n We certainly find this to be true
of black Harlem and the Black Moses
Persona in Garvey's day. The power of
Garvey's appeal came from the fact that
he came to represent his people's archetypal hero. Edmund David Cronon
aptly discerned that Garvey "symbolized
the longings and aspirations of the black
masses."12
Certainly, when a rhetor's importance
survives him by thirty years despite the
loss of his ideology's influence, as
happened to Garvey's only a decade
after its inception, the basis for that
authority must be attributed to forces
beyond the discursive content of his
discourse.13 The study of Garvey's rheto10

Sir James G. Frazer, The Golden Bough, A Study

in Magic and Religion, 2nd ed. (London: Macmillan,
1900); and Lectures on the Early History of Kingship
(London: Macmillan, 1905); Michael C. McGee, "In
Search of 'The People': A Rhetorical Perspective," The
Quarterly Journal of Speech, 61 (1975), pp. 235-49.
11
McGee, p. 243.
l2
Edmund David Cronon, Black Moses: The Story of
Marcus Garvey and the Universal Negro Improvement
Association (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press,
1955), p. xii.
13
Conservatively estimated, the Universal Negro
Improvement Association once numbered between one
and four million blacks throughout the world as
supporters. See "Two Prophets of Race Pride," Life, 6
Dec. 1968, p. 98. Garvey himself claimed a peak
membership worldwide of eleven million. See Emory

54

COMMUNICATION MONOGRAPHS

ric, consequently, promises insight into

the manner by which individuals take on
mythical qualities.

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T H E BLACK MOSES PERSONA: A

TRANSCENDENT FORM

Joseph R. Washington, Jr., argues

that it is an error to speak of a black
"culture" existing in the 1920's. He
contends that the experience of slavery,
working in combination with later political subjugation, precluded blacks from
developing appreciation of themselves as
a people sharing common viewpoints
and experiences. "Slavery, segregation,
and discrimination" had been used to
deny the black man participation in
white culture. Only the religious component of white culture was freely shared
by blacks. Blacks of Garvey's day
created a "half-culture," a number of
quasi-religious cults resulting from a
confluence of "African primitive survivals and white primitive evangelicalism."
Because the dominant white society
denied blacks the opportunity for a full
cultural experience, cults became the
focus for the black social order, inadequate though they were in providing
outlets for the human impetus toward
political and economic organization. For
blacks in the early part of the century,
"the religious order constituted the social
Tolbert, "Outpost Garveyism and the U.N.I.A. Rank
and File," Journal of Black Studies, 5 Mar. 1975, pp.
233-53. We are told the U.N.I.A. had over eight
hundred chapters in forty countries on four continents.
See Theodore C. Vincent, Black Power and the Garvey
Movement (Berkeley, Cal.: The Ramparts Press, n.d.),
p. 13. Despite this tremendous influence Garveyism
held at its zenith, ten years after its inception Garvey's
ideology, for all practical purposes, had lost its potency.
Perhaps this is what prompted one writer to observe
that "Garveyism did not have any permanent
influence." See Jabez Ayodele Langley, "Garveyism
and African Nationalism," Race, 11 (1969), p. 159. But
it is equally interesting to note that another writer has
proclaimed Garvey "the central figure in twentiethcentury Negro history." See Robert G. Weisbord,
"Marcus Garvey, Pan-Negroist: The View from
Whitehall," Race, 11 (1970), p. 419.

order." Consequently, it is not surprising to discover that the cults carried

within them beginnings of concern for
obtaining "authentic social, 'tribal,' or
community well-being." "The emotional fervor of black cults," concludes
Washington, "was the method and
assurance of social solidarity, a unity
which could be used for the superficial
or abiding good of black people."14
Regardless of the specific religious
teachings of particular cults, they all
taught the Exodus story, the story that
"has always been understood as the
prototype of racial and nationalistic
redemption."15 As many traditional spirituals, such as "Go Down, Moses," indicate, the American black man has long
identified with the plight of biblical
Israel. The slaves of the last century,
when away from their white overseers,
"worshipped the God who led the children of Israel out of Egyptian bondage,"
despite the white evangelists' preference
for sermons stressing obedience of
servant to master.16 The importance of
the Exodus story extended into this
century in the thinking of black religionists. The basis for such widespread
appeal of biblical Jewish travail to
modern day blacks is obvious, for as
Gayraud S. Wilmore observes:
The Egyptian captivity of the Jews, their miraculous deliverance from the hands of the Pharoahs,
and their eventual possession of the land promised
by God to their fathersthis was the inspiration
to which the Black religionists so often turned in
the dark night of his soul. Whenever the JudeoChristian tradition has been accessible to
oppressed peoples, the scenario of election, captivity and liberation has captured the imagination of
religious leadership.17

14

Joseph R. Washington, Jr., Black Sects and Cults

(Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1972), p. 52.
15
Gayraude S. Wilmore, Black Religion and Black
Radicalism (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1972), p.
52.
16
Bryan Fulks, Black Struggle (New York: Dell,
1969), p. 68.
17
Wilmore, p. 52. Italics added.

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Although Garvey was not dramatically called to leadership by a voice from

a burning bush, as was the biblical
Moses, to Garvey the call to lead his
people to freedom was clear and certain.
George Alexander McGuire asserts:
As to Moses of old, so to Garvey, there came a
clear call to duty and leadership. As a member of
a race free from the spirit of retaliation and
vindictiveness, with the desire to treat all
mankind as brothers without regard to differences
in creed, race or country, this young man, while
respecting ttie rights and admiring the progress of
alien people, resolved to make the material, political, social and spiritual development of his bloodkin wherever found, and the fostering within him
of the spirit of self-reliance, and self-determination, the sole consecrated purpose of his life, to the
end that the Negro might eventually take his
God-given place in the fraternity of man.18

Just as Moses of old used signs to

demonstrate to the Israelites that he had
been called to leadership, mostly in the
form of miracles stemming from his
staff, Garvey demonstrated to black
Harlem that he was an authentic leader.
He did not turn his staff into a snake or
cause hordes of frogs to emerge from the
Harlem River; nevertheless, Garvey's
activities must have seemed equally
miraculous to Harlem blacks. The
miraculous growth of the Universal
Negro Improvement Association, for
example, was an unprecedented phenomenon among Negro masses. By the
middle of 1919, Cronon reports, "there
is no doubt that large numbers of
Negroes were listening with ever
increasing interest to the serious black
18

George Alexander McGuire, "Preface," in Amy

Jacques Garvey, ed., Philosophy and Opinions of
Marcus Garvey, (New York: Universal Publishing
House, 1926), II, v; Hereafter cited as Philosophy and
Opinions. Garvey's mother, according to tradition,
sought to groom her son for the Moses role. Cronon
reports that "tradition has it that his mother, Sarah,
sought to give him the middle name of Moses in the
hope that like the biblical Moses, he would grow up to
lead his people. His father, a far-from-devout-stonemason, objected, and the parents compromised with
Mosiah." Cronon, Marcus Garvey, p. 1.

55

man whose persuasive words seemed to

point the way to race deliverance."19
Then in October of the same year
Garvey was attacked by an insane
former employee. Two bullets struck
him, one grazing his forehead, narrowly
missing his right eye, and the other
piercing his right leg. With blood
streaming down his face, the wounded
Garvey chased the assailant down the
street until the police apprehended the
assailant in the streets of Harlem.
Almost immediately, "The assault assumed heroic proportions in the Negro
press and Garvey became overnight a
persecuted martyr working for the salvation of his people."20 Then in January,
1918, Garvey established the Negro
World, a newspaper with "One Aim,
One God, One Destiny." It was priced
for low income blacks and quickly
became, according to one of Garvey's
sharpest critics, "the leading national
Negro Weekly."21 The front page of the
paper always carried a lengthy editorial
signed, "Your obedient servant, Marcus
Garvey, President General."
Garvey's signature as "President
General" was not without significance.
Early on he was concerned with questions such as:
"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 affairs?" I could
not find them, and then I declared, "I will help to
make them."22

He sought to give blacks self-regard

within the U.N.I.A. through an African
Legion, brilliantly attired in dark blue
uniforms and marching in parades with
well-drilled precision. Individual mem19

Cronon, Marcus Garvey, p. 44.

Cronon, Black Moses, p. 45.
Claude McKay, Harlem: Negro Metropolis (New
York: E. P. Dutton & Co., 1940), p. 148.
22
"The Negro's Greatest Enemy," Sept. 1923, Philosophy and Opinions, II, 126.
20

21

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COMMUNICATION MONOGRAPHS

bers of the Legion were given paramilitary titles. Garvey himself is commonly
pictured wearing a plumed helmet and
an ornately decorated uniform. Women
of the movement were organized into a
uniformed Black Cross Nurses group,
neatly garbed in white, and also well
trained in the skill of marching. This
paramilitary aspect of the U.N.I.A.
must have been evidence to Harlem
blacks of Garvey's call to leadership.
The greatest and perhaps most
convincing sign of Garvey's call to leadership was the Black Star Line.
Although the ships Garvey purchased
lacked seaworthiness, failing to deliver a
single emigrant to Africa, and although
the Black Star Line was constantly
enshrouded with debt and was the butt
of ridicule from Garvey's numerous critics, the enterprise belonged solely to
Negroes, was operated by Negroes, and
"gave even the poorest black the chance
to become a stockholder in a big business
enterprise."23 Black owned ships anchored in a harbor for all to see must
have assumed the proportions to Harlem
blacks of some of the miracles of Moses'
staff. Thus to millions of blacks in the
early 1920's Marcus Garvey personified
an archetypal deliverer necessary to
complete the construction of recent black
history as being equivalent to the prototype story of Jewish captivity. In order
to assume the Moses persona, all that
remained was for Garvey's rhetoric to
construct the necessary particulars of the
discourse of exiles: election, captivity,
and liberation.
DELIVERANCE RHETORIC:
PARTICULARS OF THE
TRANSCENDENT FORM

Election
The theme of election, the initial step
in the discourse of exiles, was expressed
23

Cronon, Black Moses, p. 57.

in Garvey's insistence upon a black

ethos, an affirmation and validation of
the race's worthiness. In the course of
many of his speaking engagements and
in his editorials that appeared in the
Negro World, the U.N.I.A. weekly
organ from 1918 to 1933, Garvey
espoused a black ethos by maintaining
that blacks should feel pride as a consequent of their racial membership. To
begin with, Garvey attempted to supply
blacks with a sense of racial history.
Reconstruction of the past so as to give
oppressed people legitimate origins is
essential to deliverance rhetoric. Making
reference to the. ancient African kingdoms, for example, Garvey recalled that
"when Europe was inhabited by a race
of cannibals, a race of savages, naked
men, heathens and pagans, Africa was a
people with a race of cultured black
men . . . ; men who, it was said, were like
the gods."24 On occasion, he reminded
his black audiences that "this race of
ours gave civilization, gave art, gave
science, gave literature to the world."25
Not content with recounting the
cultural achievements of the race,
Garvey was also fond of mentioning the
exploits of black armies and soldiers,
men who had fought creditably in
Mesopotamia during the Revolutionary
and Civil Wars in America, and most
recently at the battles of the Marne and
Verdun.26 In a similar vein, he praised
24
"The Future as I See It," Philosophy and Opinions,
1, 77. On another occasion Garvey proclaimed: "We are
satisfied to know . . . that our race gave the first great
civilization to the world; and, for centuries Africa, our
ancestral home, was the seat of learning; and when
blackmen who were only fit then for the company of the
gods, were philosophers, artists, scientists, and men of
vision and leadership, the people of other races were
groping in savagery, darkness and continental
barbarism." See "History and the Negro," Philosophy
and Opinions, II, 82.
25
Speech delivered on Emancipation Day at Liberty
Hall, New York City, Jan. 1, 1922, Philosophy and
Opinions, I, 80.
26
"The Principles of the Universal Negro Improvement Association," speech delivered at Liberty Hall,
New York City, Nov. 25, 1922, Philosophy and Opinions, II, 93, 99.

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THE RHETORICAL PERSONA: MARCUS GARVEY AS BLACK MOSES

the "two million Negroes" who fought

with the Allies during World War I,
while "white fellow citizens of America
refused to fight."27 Naturally, he did not
neglect the experience of slavery: "You
who have not lost trace of your history
will recall the fact that over three
hundred years ago your fore-bears were
taken from the great Continent of Africa
and brought here for the purpose of
using them as slaves."28 And Garvey did
fear that some of those in his audience
had lost their history for he warned that
"the white world has always tried to rob
and discredit us of our history."29
Garvey's use of historical references
in his rhetoric has greater significance
than simply informing his audiences
about their past. No doubt such an
education in race history as Garvey
provides would serve in and of itself to
increase the pride people could take in
being black for one cannot be legitimate
in the present or future without a legitimate past. However, the frequency with
which Garvey relies upon detailed historical examples seems to involve more
than the simple transmittal of information. Specifically, he seems to be requesting his auditors to project themselves
into a number of diverse roles, to play
the part of black artists, soldiers, and
slaves from the past.
By identifying with the roles of blacks
in history, those who attended to
Garvey's rhetoric reorganized their past
cultural experience. On reading the
27
Statement on Arrest, Jan. 1922, Philosophy and
Opinions, I, 99.
28
Speech delivered on Emancipation Day at Liberty
Hall, New York City, Jan. 1, 1922, Philosophy and
Opinions, I, 79.
29
"Who and What Is a Negro?" April 26, 1923,
Philosophy and Opinions, II, 19. On another occasion
Garvey said: "White historians and writers have tried to
rob the black man of his proud past in history, and
when anything new is discovered to support the race's
claim and attest the truthfulness of our greatness in
other ages, then it is skillfully rearranged and credited
to some other unknown race or people." "History and
the Negro," Philosophy and Opinions, II, 82.

57

numerous historical references, we are

strongly reminded of Mead's account of
the nineteenth century romanticists,
writers who produced a literature
concerned with an idealized world and
who asked their readers to take on the
viewpoints of children, criminals,
knights errant, and other exotics.30
Langbaum effectively summarizes
Mead's thought:
According to Mead, the romanticists found themselves in a world in which public symbols had lost
moral authority. Their aim was to re-establish
values on an empiric basis. Since they felt analysis
could not yield values but could only destroy
them, the romanticists developed a projective
habit of mind. They came to know the world, not
from the outside by applying ideas to it, or by
passively responding to it, but by playing roles in
itby projecting themselves into nature, the past
and other people. In other words, they were
aware of themselves as inside, or as having organized, the experience they were perceiving. Thus
they came to know the object and the self in the
object, and it was through maintaining a sense of
continuity among the ever-increasing number of
their projected selves that they evolved a sense of
identity/1

In reconstructing their history, Garvey was actually providing his black

audiences with legitimate, honorable
self-identity. In identifying with blacks
in history, those who attended to
Garvey's rhetoric developed a sense of
their cultural unity, the consequence of
role playing that symbolic interactionists
such as Mead posit as the prerequisite
for the satisfactory construction of a selfidentity.32
Because of the importance of community in the black religious cults'
doctrines, as alluded to previously,
Garvey was able to create a racial identi-

30
George Herbert Mead, Movements of Thought in
the Nineteenth Century, ed. Merritt H. Moore (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1936), p. 85.
31
Langbaum, pp. 569-70.
32
George Herbert Mead, The Philosophy of Act, ed.
Charles W. Morris (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1938), pp. 310-11, 448, 610-11, et passim.

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ty, or black ethos, through the use of

religious references as a complement to
historical examples. "Garvey's extreme
racial nationalism" wrote Cronon, "demanded fulfillment in a truly Negro
religion."33 Not accidentally, therefore,
/ the African Orthodox Church became a
major subsidiary organization to the
U.N.I.A. Among its tenets was a belief
in a black God and the Negro ancestry of
Christ. When challenged concerning the
"Negro ancestry of Christ," Garvey
denied claiming that Christ was a Negro
but that "Christ's ancestry included all
races, so that He was Divinity incarnate
in the broadest sense of the word."34
With God being a spirit, not a creature,
and Christ being multiracial, it was
possible for members of a race to see the
Divinity in terms of themselves, as, of
course, the white race had always done.35
Garvey proclaimed that "the highest
compliment we can pay our risen Lord
and Savior, is that of feeling that he has
created us as His masterpiece
When
it is said that we are created in His own
image, we ourselves reflect his greatness."36
This construction of a multiracial
God was no doubt a significant contribution in and of itself to the black ethos.
However, as a result of the emphasis
upon identification with a multiracial
Christ, all who played the historical
roles depicted by Garvey's rhetoric, no
matter how diverse or exotic those roles
might be, additionally participated in
the unifying experience of religion.
33

Cronon, Black Moses, p. 178.

Rollin Lynde Hartt, "The Negro Moses," Independent and Weekly Review, 26 Feb. 1921, p. 205.
35
Amy Jacques Garvey wrote to E. David Cronon:
"It is really logical that although we all know God is a
spirit, yet all religions more or less visualize Him in a
likeness akin to their own race. . . . Hence it was most
vital that pictures of God should be in the likeness of the
(Negro) race." Cronon, Black Moses, p. 178.
36
"The Resurrection of the Negro," Easter Sunday
sermon delivered at Liberty Hall, New York City, Apr.
16, 1922, Philosophy and Opinions, I, 91.
34

Whether an individual audience member chose to identify himself with a

heroic solider in ancient Mesopotamia,
to assume the role of a cultured scholar
in Egypt, or to view himself as a lowly
slave in America, the religious references
in Garvey's discourses emphasized "the
chosen role" as one of a black man who
personified the perfection of a black
God. Furthermore, Garvey argued that
it was only after the recognition that
blacks too reflected God, that men, both
black and white, could come to a "better
understanding of self, as individuals,"
and that any white man could "realize
his true kinship with his Creator and be
what his God expected him to be."37
Consequently, he insisted that there
could be no salvation for the white man
until the "powerful" races recognized
the participation of blacks in divinity,
until the "strong" peoples ceased abusing and oppressing God's creations as
manifested in black men.38 The religious
salvation of whites became, in a sense,
dependent upon blacks.
Through reversal of the dependency
relationship between blacks and whites,
Garvey subtly brings the particulars of
election to rhetorical completion. What
could be more complimentary to the
black ethos than the implicit suggestion
that the salvation of the white race was
tied to the deliverance of black people
from centuries of injustice and that the
black race didn't have to depend on
whites at all? In effect, Garvey's
repeated contention that blacks are
God's "masterpiece," reduces to the
equivalent of saying that blacks are
elected by God as His chosen people.
And the subtlety with which Garvey

37
"Christ the Greatest Reformer," speech delivered at
Liberty Hall, New York City, Dec. 24, 1922, Philosophy and Opinions, II, 31.
38
"Christ the Greatest Reformer," speech delivered at
Liberty Hall, New York City, Dec. 24, 1922, Philosophy and Opinions, II, 31.

THE RHETORICAL PERSONA: MARCUS GARVEY AS BLACK MOSES

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treats the theme of election, his failure to

refer overtly to blacks as being "chosen,"
is itself not without rhetorical significance. Washington makes the point:
Precisely because the Negro has not called his
people "chosen," it is in keeping with the faith
and Negro Spirituals to perceive them as chosen.
The idea of "chosen" is a religious interpretation
of a people's experience. Indeed, Negroes would
not wish to be calledand would actively resist
beingthe "chosen people" were they consciously to understand and accept the biblical
meaning of being poured out as "intercession for
transgressors." But just as they have neither
known nor (consciously) accepted it, this is their
history: For it is through their experience that the
presence of God in all our midst can be affirmed.
Through their suffering "we are healed"black
and white together.3'

Captivity
Reconstruction of the past and the
deprecation of present conditions are
essential to deliverance rhetoric for it
allows the rhetor to point to a reformed,
purified future. Thus a second pattern of
deliverance discourse is deprecation of
the present. Contrary to his treatment of
the election theme, Garvey's speeches
and editorials display little delicacy in
the development of the captivity theme.
"At no time in the history of the world,"
Garvey bluntly insisted on one occasion,
"for the last five hundred years, was
there ever a serious attempt made to free
negroes."40 He emphasized at times the
history of blacks with respect to bondage
in the strictest sense of the term, remarking that his race had been forced "to
endure the tortures and sufferings of
slavery for two hundred and fifty
years."41 At other times, his emphasis

39
Joseph R. Washington, Jr., The Politics of God
(Boston: Beacon Press, 1967), p. 156.
40
Speech delivered at Liberty Hall, New York City,
during Second International Convention of Negroes,
Aug. 1921, Philosophy and Opinions, 1,94.
41
Speech delivered at Emancipation Day at Liberty
Hall, New York City, J a n . 1, 1922, Philosophy and

Opinions, I, 80-81.

59

was upon the more insidious servitude

experienced by his race in this century,
and he warned that blacks "have been
camouflaged into believing that we were
made free by Abraham Lincoln. That
we were made free by Victoria of
England, but up to now we are still
slaves, we are industrial slaves, we are
social slaves, we are political slaves."42
The full extent of the black race's
enslavement in this century, however,
was seen as going far beyond economic,
social, and political deprivation. More
important than material goods and political equality was the denial of opportunity for blacks to prove themselves as a
race. 7In an open letter to white
Americans appearing in the Negro
World, Garvey pleaded with whites not
to encourage Negroes "to believe that
they will become social equals and leaders of the whites in America, without
first on their own account proving to the
world that they are capable of evolving a
civilization of their own. The white race
can best help the Negro by telling him
the truth and not by flattering him into
believing that he is as good as any white
man without first proving the racial,
national, constructive metal of which he
is made."43
A people, having a shared cultural
vision, should have common problems.
The strongest identification comes from
a threat to the people as a whole. Racial
captivity, because it is inflicted upon one
as a result of membership in a group,
emerges as a theme that maximizes
unity of the people. By stressing the
captivity theme, Garvey made apparent
the need for leaders who were liberators.
The threat of enslavement, of course,
readily implied the need for unification
42
Speech delivered at Liberty Hall, New York City,
during Second International Convention of Negroes,
Aug. 1921, Philosophy and Opinions, I, 95.
43
"An Appeal to the Soul of White America," Philosophy and Opinions, II, 5.

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of the people under one leaderGarvey,

because he symbolized the Black Moses.

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Liberation
The third theme of the rhetoric of
deliverance is to affirm a viable salvation, a "new" future. The conditions of
liberation must stand in sharp contrast
to that of captivity. The biblical
Israelites, for example, were told they
were headed to a land where the streams
flowed with milk and honey.
For Garvey, the theme of black
captivity naturally lead to the liberation
theme. As for economic liberation,
Garvey's efforts were devoted to organizing business enterprises such as the
Black Star Line steamship company.
Garvey was convinced that only through
such ventures could blacks become free.
In defense of his business activities
before a white jury trial for mail fraud,
he asserted:
The Universal Negro Improvement Association
and the Black Star Line employs thousands of
black girls and black boys. Girls who could only
be washer women in your homes, we made clerks
and stenographers of them in the Black Star
Line's office. You will see that from the start we
tried to dignify our race.44

Although praise of economic enterprises was quite prevalent in Garvey's

rhetoric, he devoted considerably more
attention to the Pan-African component
of his ideology. In the days shortly after
World War I when the victorious Allies
were creating ethnically based homelands in Europe with some ease, it is not
unbelievable that they might have carved
a place for blacks in Africa. Garvey
certainly believed that the white race
owed this much to his people for he
remarks that "as black men for three
centuries have helped white men build
America, surely generous and grateful
44
"Mr. Garvey's Address to Jury at Close of Trial,"
Philosophy and Opinions, II, 184.

white men will help black men build

Africa." 45 Nevertheless, for most
American Negroes the important appeal
of Garvey's rhetoric was not its "promised land" feature, and it was clearly not
Garvey's intention, as so often is
presumed, to transport all the blacks
scattered throughout the world back to
Africa. He could not more clearly have
stated his point than when he said:
The thoughtful and industrious of our race want
to go back to Africa, because we realize it will be
our only hope of permanent existence. We cannot
all go in a day or year, ten or twenty years. It will
take time under the rule of modern economics, to
entirely or largely depopulate a country of a
people, who have been its residents for centuries,
but we feel that with proper help for fifty years,
the problem can be solved. We do not want all the
Negroes in Africa. Some are no good here, and
naturally will be no good there.46

In other words, Garvey saw Africa as an

opportunity for the black race to build a
nation of its own, as a chance to prove
that his people were as capable as other
races. Africa was to be the spiritual
homeland for blacks, and the culture
they would build there would serve as
ultimate proof of their equality and
worthiness to which they could point in
justification of their claims for liberation
in other countries. The final liberation
would come only when:
As children of captivity we look forward to a new
day and a new, yet ever old, land of our fathers,
the land of refuge, the land of the Prophets, the
land of the Saints, and the land of God's crowning
glory. We shall gather together our children, our
treasures and our loved ones, and, as the children
of Israel, we shall also stretch forth our hands and
bless our country.47

45
Speech delivered at Madison Square Garden, New
York City, March 16, 1924, Philosophy and Opinions,
II, 121.
46
Speech delivered at Madison Square Garden, New
York City, March 16, 1924, Philosophy and Opinions,
II, 122.
47
Speech delivered at Madison Square Garden, New
York City, March 16, 1924, Philosophy and Opinions,
II, 121.

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T H E RHETORICAL PERSONA: MARCUS GARVEY AS BLACK MOSES

Robert Hughes Brisbane, Jr., has

observed, "Under the stimulus of
Garveyism, Negro nationalism became
creative, constructive, boastful, and definitely more chauvinistic."48
Garvey's rhetorical works are marked
by three strategies: election, captivity,
and liberation. Taken separately, they
are ideological appeals in the Burkeian
sense. But in Garvey's rhetoric, they
become structured into a temporal
sequence, that of the prototype story of
Jewish captivity that is both uniquely
and universally appealing to oppressed
peoples. Burke reminds us that sequentially arranged "terms" that "so lead
into one another that the completion of
each order leads to the next" are "ultimate" or "mystical" or mythical
terms.49
The perception of Garvey as a Black
Moses was the artifact of interaction
between rhetor and his audiences.
Garvey's rhetoric provided his audiences
access to the constituent ideas of the
archetypal story of racial deliverance.
Because Garvey's rhetoric fused the
black experience with that of a New
Israel, his auditors perceived him as a
Black Moses, a type of cultural symbol
that ultimately subsumed and stood for
the ideas of election, captivity, and liberation. As the numerous instances of
references to Garvey as "Black Moses"
by. the press of his day indicates, the
Black Moses persona symbolized the
cultural vision of his auditors.50 In the
48
Robert Hughes Brisbane, Jr., "Some New Light on
the Garvey Movement," Journal of Negro History,
36(1951), p. 59.
49
Burke, Motives, p. 189.
50
Cronon suggests that "Garvey appeared fortuitiously at a time when the Negro masses were awaiting
a black Moses, and he became the instrument through
which they could express their longings and deep
discontent." Cronon, Marcus Garvey, p. 168. For
examples of the use of it by the press see: World's Work,
Dec. 1920, p. 153; Independent and Weekly Review, 26
Feb. 1921, p. 205; Literary Digest, 19 Mar. 1921, p. 48;
Liberator, Apr. 1922, p. 8; and The Nation, 18 Aug.
1926, p. 147.

61

case of black auditors, who we should

recall were dependent upon Garvey for
some measure of their racial and selfidentities, the Black Moses persona held
considerable authority, so much so that
Garvey was considered to be "without
peer as a mobilizer of black masses."51
Finally, as references to Garvey as the
"Black Moses" in present day historical
writings would indicate, it is the persona
that lingers on long after his ideology
has become ignored. When we find this
kind of crustaceous image, this "mask"
that only awaits another to fill it, we
would argue that we can best refer to it
as a rhetorical persona.
T H E RHETORICAL PERSONA AND
FORMISTIC CRITICISM

We think that the rhetorical persona

construct is of value to critics interested
in the formistic criticism52 of rhetorical
artifacts, i.e., to students dedicated to
"disclosing the elements common to
many discourses rather than the singularities of a few"53 in an attempt to
identify genres or forms of public
address. The symbolic construction of
archetypal personae in the minds of
auditors entails the discernible factors
useful in assessing rhetoric otherwise hot
easily explained. How else is one to
explain the impact of Marcus Garvey,
for example? The Moses form was a
unique motive force to blacks in Harlem
in the early 1920's. Because audiences
with a strong cultural visionsuch as
Harlem blacks in Garvey's timeare
prone to impute mystical qualities

51

Washington, Black Sects and Cults, p. 128.

For a discussion of the philosophical foundations of
formistic criticism, see B. L. Ware, "Theories of
Rhetorical Criticism as Argument," Diss. University of
Kansas 1972, esp. ch. III, "The Paradoxical World of
Formistic Criticism."
53
Edwin Black, Rhetorical Criticism: A Study in
Method (New York: Macmillan, 1965), pp. 176-77.
52

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those of an archetypal figureto individual rhetors who fit their cultural

vision, we as critics have the task of
explaining and assessing how these
visions interface with the characteristics
of a speaker and how his rhetoric fulfills
the attributes of that archetype.
The formistic critic, therefore, is one
who faces a dual task. First, it is incumbent to delineate and explain forms or
genres of public address that are useful
to the critical purpose.54 Second, there
must be an accounting of the phenomenon experienced by auditors when
rhetors themselves become rhetorical
forms or personae. In the instance of
Garvey, we contend that criticism
reveals a rhetorical persona created
through the effective use of the particulars of address we term deliverance rhetoric, or the discourse of exiles. The
gravamen of our argument is that the
formistic study of rhetoric, in addition to
the causal study exemplified by neoAristotelians or to the study oriented
toward process as practiced by
Burkeians, provides useful critical insight. We offer this study as an example
of an heretofore unexplored aspect of
formistic criticismthe use of a genre of
rhetoric resulting in the formation of a
rhetorical persona. This study of Garvey
suggests that rhetorical personae may
typically be associated with a genre of
rhetoric, as Garvey himself relied upon
deliverance rhetoric. We are aware of no
evidence at this time suggesting that each

54
We have elsewhere discussed a critical methodology
for studying forms of public address. See B. L. Ware
and Wil A. Linkugel, "They Spoke in Defense of
Themselves: On the Generic Criticism of Apologia,"
The Quarterly Journal of Speech, 59 (1973), pp. 27383.

genre results in an identifiable persona,

a proposition that awaits further study.
We conclude, therefore, simply that the
construct of the rhetorical persona is
useful to the formistic critic when
confronted with a rhetor who takes on
mythical qualities.
The technique for discovering a
rhetorical persona is to identify a rhetor
who uniquely represents or symbolizes
an historic period, a movement, or
world-view.55 The "rhetorical mask to
be filled" by a rhetor often stems from
the aesthetic realm of literature or myth,
or from an analogous historical episode.
Then if the audience ascribes to that
speaker the qualities of an archetypal,
transcendent form, the persona the
speaker assumes will have inherent
persuasive connotations deep within the
cultural psyche of that audience. We
must remind ourselves, however, that
the task of the critic does not end with
the identification of rhetorical personae.
There remains the important function of
explaining and assessing the manner in
which a speaker's rhetoric effects the
transformation of the individual into a
transcendent form. Such formistic criticism should fulfill the raison d'etre of the
critical artthe assessment of instances
of rhetoric and the extension of knowledge of critical and rhetorical theory.
55
There are rhetorical personae in recent times other
than Garvey. We think that some rhetors such as
Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill are easily
discernible by critics as instances in which individuals
have come to symbolize a national myth through transformation into rhetorical personae. The discerning critic, properly sensitized to the usefulness of the persona as
a critical construct, would have little difficulty in using
that construct to explain and evaluate the rhetoric of the
myriad number of cult leaders endemic to any time
period. The Rev. Jim Jones, the central figure of the
Jonestown, Guiana, tragedy in 1979, challenges the
critic to explain the perversion of the Moses story.