From black Welsh miner to Marcus Garvey’s nemesis: Lionel Francis and the Black Atlantic

Abstract

This article uncovers the life of Lionel Francis, one of the people who ousted Marcus Garvey from the leadership of the United Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) and who would eventually lead the UNIA. Although described by Garvey’s biographers as a medical doctor from Trinidad, this article reveals that Francis was never a doctor but began his working life as a miner and a preacher in the South Wales coalfields, enduring racism and personal struggles before emigrating to the United States following the 1919 racist riots in Wales. There he became a major leader of the interwar Pan-African movement in the United States and was centrally involved in the ousting of Garvey and the fragmentation of the UNIA. During the second world war, Francis moved to Belize and became a populist yet anti-independence politician. His life straddled Trinidad, Wales, the United States, and Belize, reflecting the shifting politics and migratory patterns of the African diaspora, making him an exemplar of the lived reality of the Black Atlantic in the first half of the twentieth century.