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I didn't know Garvey was a socialist. I thought he was a "right winger" who advocated "Black capitalism" and who hated (and was hated by) the Communists (and the NAACP for that matter).

Garvey had one of those lives.

In 1908 he was a 21 year old socialist union organizer.

He went to college in the UK and became a disciple of Dousey Muhammad Ali the Nigerian pan-African nationalist.

In 1914 he started the UNIA in furtherance of Ali's goals, as the New World wing of the African racialist movement.

He split with the NAACP in 1919 when he began the back-to-Africa movement.

It wasn't until after this break that he began becoming more of an economic conservative as a reaction to NAACP criticism. He converted to Catholicism after his return to the UK.

He died a social and economic conservative - but he wasn't one all his life.