Thereafter, in order to support his interest in organizational work, such as leading strikes and organizing black people, he moved to a higher-paying job in Costa Rica as a United Fruit Company banana plantation timekeeper. As a timekeeper, he kept track of the hours worked by company employees, many of them black West Indians like himself. He saw that the workers worked long hours in the swamps, where they battled snakes and other wild animals. They worked for low wages and their money often was often stolen or given to dishonest bankers (Lawler 25).

He soon quit this job over the exploitation of the peasants. After he quit the banana plantation, Garvey worked in other Latin American countries, such as Colombia, Venezuela, and in Central America. In Panama, thousands of blacks were helping to build the nearly completed canal that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers was constructing. Black workers did much of the heavy excavating labor on the 50-mile length of the canal, but compared to their white co-workers, they were poorly paid and lived in separate and les

2. Organizes workers--British unsympathetic

He went to Jamaica, where he continued the work of the UNIA. He toured the Caribbean and Central America, visiting local UNIA divisions. In 1928, he traveled to Europe

and established a UNIA branch in London and Paris. He also presented a second "Petition of the Negro Race" to the League of Nations, demanding redress of a detailed list of grievances suffered by black people throughout the world. Failing to get the attention of the League, Garvey went to Canada, where he rashly advised his followers to cross the border and vote for the Democratic presidential candidate, Alfred E. Smith, in the coming election. After the American consul in Montreal complained, the Canadian government deported Garvey before he could speak to UNIA groups in Canada. Undaunted, Garvey held the sixth international UNIA convention in Jamaica. This convention, which emphasized ways of improving black conditions in the world, showed that the UNIA was still a viable group. It stressed the need to improve the health of black people and created a department of health and public education.

Lawler, Mary. Marcus Garvey. New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1988.

Many of Garvey's views were shared by the Ku Klux Klan and other white supremacist groups, who also believed in racial separatism and purity. Early in 1922, Garvey made the mistake of meeting with Klan leader Edward Young Clarke in the hopes of winning Klan support for his Back to Africa movement Lawler 85). Garvey did not support the Klan's violence a