Rhetorical Persona

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Communication Monographs

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The rhetorical persona: Marcus Garvey as blackmoses

B. L. Ware & Wil A. Linkugel

To cite this article: B. L. Ware & Wil A. Linkugel (1982) The rhetorical persona: Marcus Garveyas black moses, Communication Monographs, 49:1, 50-62, DOI: 10.1080/03637758209376070

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03637758209376070

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THE RHETORICAL PERSONA: MARCUS GARVEY ASBLACK MOSES

B. L. WAREWIL A. LINKUGEL

The persona concept of traditional dramaturgy which refers to the masks worn byactors in Greek and Roman theater can assist a rhetorical critic in explaining thepersuasive power of speakers who strongly remind their auditors of an archetypalhero. When a speaker's rhetorical self becomes so closely associated with some set ofhuman experiences or ideas that it becomes virtually impossible for an audience tothink of one without the other, then that individual stands in a symbolic relationshipto 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, aprototype Moses for Harlem blacks who were fervently awaiting a deliverer. Theessay is grounded in the formistic world view of Stephen C. Pepper. The Black MosesPersona is treated as the transcendent form, and the factors of deliverance rhetoricfound in Garvey's speecheselection, captivity, and liberationare the particularsthat allow Garvey to participate in the form. The authors argue that it is precisely theBlack Moses Persona that explains why Garvey's importance survives him by thirtyyears, despite the loss of his ideology's influence.

TyERSONA, in its strictest sense, is aJL Latin word referring to the masksworn in Greek and Roman theater. TheLatin dictionary speaks of it as a "mask"or "false face," covering the head, "wornby actors."1 These masks symbolized arole, an assumed character, or persona,and existed apart from individual actors.When an actor put on one,of thesemasks, he became the persona that themask symbolized. Robert Langbaum,literary critic, tells us that the termpersona implies the existence of a "maskthat is required by the mythical pattern,the ritual, the plotthe mask that isthere before any person turns up to fillit."2 Thus in traditional dramaturgy,persona does not refer to the personality

B. L. Ware is adjunct professor of law at BatesCollege of Law, University of Houston. Wil A.Linkugel is professor of communication studies atthe University of Kansas.

1See for example: Oxford Latin Dictionary (Oxford:At the Clarendon Press, 1968) or any other standardclassical Latin dictionary.

2Robert Langbaum, "The Mysteries of Identity,"The American Scholar, 34 (1965), 576.

of the actor qua person but to the charac-ter assumed by the actor when he donsthe mythical mask. We think thispersona conceptthe mask that is therebefore any person turns up to fill itapplies equally well to rhetorical criti-cism.

Rhetorical personae reflect the aspira-tions and cultural visions of audiencesfrom which stems the symbolic construc-tion of archetypal figures. An archetype,of course, is the original model, a proto-type; it is the pattern from which copiesare made. Thus an archetypal figure is aclassic figure that exists either in history,in myth, or literature and which hasgained such prominence in the minds ofpeople that rhetors who remind them ofthe archetype will gain additional credi-bility as leaders. When a speaker's rhe-torical self becomes so closely associatedwith some set of human experiences orideas that it becomes virtually impossiblefor auditors to think of one without theother, then that individual stands in asymbolic relationship to those ideas orexperiences. The speaker, in such cases,

COMMUNICATION MONOGRAPHS, Volume 49, (March) 1982

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THE RHETORICAL PERSONA: MARCUS GARVEY AS BLACK MOSES 51

assumes the role of a rhetorical persona.As observed above: The rhetoricalpersona is not the rhetor qua person butis an attributed character created by theauditor's symbolic construction (andimplied assessment) of the rhetor. Wedraw a sharp distinction here betweenthe rhetor's personal ethos and the ethosrepresented by the rhetorical persona thespeaker assumes when he reminds thelisteners of its archetypal herothatprototype in their psyches whom theyimagine will be their deliverer. Thecharacter of the archetypal mask,because of its peculiar importance to theaudience, will normally possess fargreater ethos than that of the actor wear-ing the mask. A rhetor, for example,who strongly reminds auditors of aprophetif a prophet is central to theircultural visionwill be ascribed theethos of the audience's archetypalprophet, perhaps an Elijah figure, orany other prophet people imagine to betheir prototype deliverer. The speaker,in that sense, transcends personal iden-tity and becomes a truly charismaticleader.

If we have learned nothing else fromGeorge Herbert Mead, we can now seethat an individual's concept of self is asocial construction, that self-identity, asLangbaum argues, "exists outside us inthe form of cultural symbols. In assimi-lating ourselves therefore, to thesesymbols or roles or archetypes, we do notlose the self but find it. Such symbolsor rhetorical personae naturally wieldmoral authority over those who assist intheir construction. To achieve theircultural vision, a people stands readysymbolically to transcend its physicalreality and enter into the world of myth.Such transcendence seems to be aninnate human propensity. KennethBurke explains that "to say man is a

3Langbaum, p. 586.

symbol-using animal is by the sametoken to say that he is a 'transcendinganimal.' "4

PURPOSE OF THIS ESSAY

We intend this essay as a thresholdinquiry into the nature of rhetoricalpersonae by examining Marcus Garveyas a prototype Moses for Harlem blackswho were fervently awaiting a deliverer.We begin with a philosophical orienta-tion to form. We understand a formisticphilosophy to be one in which the princi-pal critical categories are (1) form, (2)particulars, and (3) participation.5

Forms are two types: (1) immanentand (2) transcendent. Immanent formsare derived from "the simple common-sense perception of similar things."6Immanent classification consists of de-scriptive grouping of objects which"face-value" observation tells us lookalike, even though they may not beentirely the same. Stephen C. Pepperexplains: "The world is full of thingsthat seem to be just alike: blades of grass,leaves on a tree, a set of spoons, newspa-pers under a newsboy's arm, sheets of asingle ream of paper."7 In the world ofrhetoric, courtroom summationspeeches, for example, would easily clus-ter together in terms of face-value. Weprefer the term "genre" as an indicationof immanent formism. On the otherhand, there is a type of form Pepperrefers to as "transcendent." He tells usthat transcendent formism "comes fromtwo closely allied sources: the work ofthe artisan in making different objects onthe same plan or for the same reason . . .and the observation of natural objects

4Kenneth Burke, A Rhetoric of Motives (New York:Prentice-Hall, 1950), p. 192.

5Stephen C. Pepper, World Hypotheses: A Study inEvidence (Berkeley: University of California Press,1942), pp. 153-54,163-64.

6Pepper, p. 151.7Pepper, p. 151.

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52 COMMUNICATION MONOGRAPHS

appearing or growing according to thesame plan."8 Such formism is tran-scendent in the sense that classification ismade on the basis of similarity to some-thing, either to an archetype or norm,that is not represented in the concretemanifestation of the objects being classi-fied. Whereas immanent formism isgrounded in Aristotle, transcendentformism is fundamentally Platonic. Wefind the term "archetype" to be indica-tive of criticism based upon transcendentformism.

Particulars are those peculiar quali-ties that characterize the form. Forexample, addresses we call sermons allhave the quality of being theologicallyoriented and in an ultimate sense involvethe spiritual salvation of human souls.They are commonly delivered inchurches, but that is not a necessaryquality because sometimes they mayoccur out-of-doors on college campusesor in a public building. Other addressesmay also have religious elements buttheir ultimate motive is other than spiri-tual salvation. Participation is the cate-gory of terms used to explain the connec-tion between the other two, that is, howit is that specific discourse becomes asso-ciated with a certain rhetorical form.

This essay on Marcus Garvey asBlack Moses is an example of criticismoriented toward transcendent formism.The "Moses" persona exists indepen-dent of the rhetor in the minds of theaudience before communication occurs.We argue that downtrodden peoplestend to possess in common the mentalform of the "Moses" persona because oftheir quest for deliverance. And thatrhetors who include in their rhetoric thethemes of Moseselection, captivity,and liberationmay evoke that form.Thus, Moses is the transcendent form.The particulars of the Moses form are

8Pepper, p. 162.

election, captivity, and liberation; Gar-vey, by employing these particulars inhis rhetoric, was able to participate inthe form. The result of this participationwas increased rhetorical impact. In nosmall way the audience actively partici-pated in their own persuasion becauseHarlem blacks possessed cultural reser-voirs of the substancethe awareness ofMoses' deliverance of oppressed peopleand the hope of their own deliverance.

There is another type of rhetoricalform of importance to this essay. Thediscourse that we term "deliverance" inthis essay can appropriately be labeled arhetorical genre.

There are of course limitations towriting a piece grounded in formisticphilosophy. For example, many ofGarvey's speeches contain the themes ofdeliverance rhetoric: election, captivity,and liberation, while others do not. Inmany respects Garvey's different rhetor-ical efforts are just thatvery differentfrom one another. One of the problemswith formistic philosophy is how toexplain this phenomenon, that is, howartifacts can be dissimilar and yet beperceived as similar and categorizedaccordingly. No few philosophers havestruggled with these problems for centu-ries. We feel that despite this problem ofsimilarityor occasional dissimilarityanyone who reads the composite ofGarvey's rhetoric carefully can discernthe qualities of election, captivity, andliberation. Thus taken at its entirety,Garvey's rhetoric, employing the partic-ulars of deliverance rhetoric, is an exam-ple of transcendent formism because itallowed him to participate in the Mosesform.

BACKGROUND OF GARVEY'SLEADERSHIP

When Marcus Mosiah Garvey cameto Harlem in 1916 as the obscure headof the embryonic Universal Negro

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Improvement Association, until then anorganization enjoying in the main onlylimited support in the West Indies, heencountered problems familiar to allwho would lead oppressed groups sincethe time of the biblical Moses. By whatsigns would the black people know himas their rightful leader? How could heestablish the necessary authority for thepeople to follow him? To be sure, theleadership problem was minimized bycertain social conditions existing in theUnited States from 1916 to 1924, theyears during which Garvey foundAmerican blacks so receptive to him astheir chieftain. The death of Booker T.Washington in 1915 left the position oftitular head of the black communitytemporarily vacant. The war yearsresulted in considerable disruption ofblacks from their traditional life styles,due to migration to industrial centers.Furthermore, the rhetoric of democracysurrounding American participation inWorld War I created expectations of abetter life among all minorities, hopesthat were dashed after the Armistice bythe continuance of race riots and thegrowth of the Ku Klux Klan.9

The social and economic frustrationsof the day, however, were not sufficientin and of themselves to account forGarvey's rise as a leader of the blackcommunity. These disorders, thoughperhaps more extreme than previously,were not new experiences to the race. Atbest, they suggest why the times wereripe for the rise of a popular blackleader. They do not offer a critical,definitive understanding of why Garveyin particular became that leader. Thebasis of Garvey's authority was the needfor a characterization of a Black Moses,a persona, around which a true blackculture might form.

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

Garvey, through the appeal of hisrhetoric and the activities of the Univer-sal Negro Improvement Association,became a new leader of blackAmericans. And as that new leader, inJames G. Frazer's terms, he wore the"magic mask of Kingship [someone whohas authority over people]."10 The magicface that Garvey wore, we contend, wasthe Black Moses mask, a myth that gaveauthenticity to his leadership. MichaelC. McGee, in speaking of the politicalvision of mass man, notes, "In a sensethe myth contains all other stages of theprocess; it gives specific meaning to asociety's ideological commitments; it isthe inventional source for arguments ofratification among those seduced byit.. . ."n We certainly find this to be trueof black Harlem and the Black MosesPersona in Garvey's day. The power ofGarvey's appeal came from the fact thathe came to represent his people's arche-typal hero. Edmund David Crononaptly discerned that Garvey "symbolizedthe longings and aspirations of the blackmasses."12

Certainly, when a rhetor's importancesurvives him by thirty years despite theloss of his ideology's influence, ashappened to Garvey's only a decadeafter its inception, the basis for thatauthority must be attributed to forcesbeyond the discursive content of hisdiscourse.13 The study of Garvey's rheto-

10Sir James G. Frazer, The Golden Bough, A Studyin Magic and Religion, 2nd ed. (London: Macmillan,1900); and Lectures on the Early History of Kingship(London: Macmillan, 1905); Michael C. McGee, "InSearch of 'The People': A Rhetorical Perspective," TheQuarterly Journal of Speech, 61 (1975), pp. 235-49.

11McGee, p. 243.l2Edmund David Cronon, Black Moses: The Story of

Marcus Garvey and the Universal Negro ImprovementAssociation (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press,1955), p. xii.

13Conservatively estimated, the Universal NegroImprovement Association once numbered between oneand four million blacks throughout the world assupporters. See "Two Prophets of Race Pride," Life, 6Dec. 1968, p. 98. Garvey himself claimed a peakmembership worldwide of eleven million. See Emory

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ric, consequently, promises insight intothe manner by which individuals take onmythical qualities.

T H E BLACK MOSES PERSONA: ATRANSCENDENT FORM

Joseph R. Washington, Jr., arguesthat it is an error to speak of a black"culture" existing in the 1920's. Hecontends that the experience of slavery,working in combination with later polit-ical subjugation, precluded blacks fromdeveloping appreciation of themselves asa people sharing common viewpointsand experiences. "Slavery, segregation,and discrimination" had been used todeny the black man participation inwhite culture. Only the religious compo-nent of white culture was freely sharedby blacks. Blacks of Garvey's daycreated a "half-culture," a number ofquasi-religious cults resulting from aconfluence of "African primitive surviv-als and white primitive evangelicalism."Because the dominant white societydenied blacks the opportunity for a fullcultural experience, cults became thefocus for the black social order, inade-quate though they were in providingoutlets for the human impetus towardpolitical and economic organization. Forblacks in the early part of the century,"the religious order constituted the social

Tolbert, "Outpost Garveyism and the U.N.I.A. Rankand File," Journal of Black Studies, 5 Mar. 1975, pp.233-53. We are told the U.N.I.A. had over eighthundred chapters in forty countries on four continents.See Theodore C. Vincent, Black Power and the GarveyMovement (Berkeley, Cal.: The Ramparts Press, n.d.),p. 13. Despite this tremendous influence Garveyismheld at its zenith, ten years after its inception Garvey'sideology, for all practical purposes, had lost its potency.Perhaps this is what prompted one writer to observethat "Garveyism did not have any permanentinfluence." See Jabez Ayodele Langley, "Garveyismand African Nationalism," Race, 11 (1969), p. 159. Butit is equally interesting to note that another writer hasproclaimed Garvey "the central figure in twentieth-century Negro history." See Robert G. Weisbord,"Marcus Garvey, Pan-Negroist: The View fromWhitehall," Race, 11 (1970), p. 419.

order." Consequently, it is not surpris-ing to discover that the cults carriedwithin them beginnings of concern forobtaining "authentic social, 'tribal,' orcommunity well-being." "The emo-tional fervor of black cults," concludesWashington, "was the method andassurance of social solidarity, a unitywhich could be used for the superficialor abiding good of black people."14

Regardless of the specific religiousteachings of particular cults, they alltaught the Exodus story, the story that"has always been understood as theprototype of racial and nationalisticredemption."15 As many traditional spir-ituals, such as "Go Down, Moses," indi-cate, the American black man has longidentified with the plight of biblicalIsrael. The slaves of the last century,when away from their white overseers,"worshipped the God who led the chil-dren of Israel out of Egyptian bondage,"despite the white evangelists' preferencefor sermons stressing obedience ofservant to master.16 The importance ofthe Exodus story extended into thiscentury in the thinking of black religion-ists. The basis for such widespreadappeal of biblical Jewish travail tomodern day blacks is obvious, for asGayraud S. Wilmore observes:

The Egyptian captivity of the Jews, their miracu-lous deliverance from the hands of the Pharoahs,and their eventual possession of the land promisedby God to their fathersthis was the inspirationto which the Black religionists so often turned inthe dark night of his soul. Whenever the Judeo-Christian tradition has been accessible tooppressed peoples, the scenario of election, captiv-ity and liberation has captured the imagination ofreligious leadership.17

14Joseph R. Washington, Jr., Black Sects and Cults(Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1972), p. 52.

15Gayraude S. Wilmore, Black Religion and BlackRadicalism (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1972), p.52.

16Bryan Fulks, Black Struggle (New York: Dell,1969), p. 68.

17Wilmore, p. 52. Italics added.

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Although Garvey was not dramati-cally called to leadership by a voice froma burning bush, as was the biblicalMoses, to Garvey the call to lead hispeople to freedom was clear and certain.George Alexander McGuire asserts:As to Moses of old, so to Garvey, there came aclear call to duty and leadership. As a member ofa race free from the spirit of retaliation andvindictiveness, with the desire to treat allmankind as brothers without regard to differencesin creed, race or country, this young man, whilerespecting ttie rights and admiring the progress ofalien people, resolved to make the material, politi-cal, social and spiritual development of his blood-kin wherever found, and the fostering within himof the spirit of self-reliance, and self-determina-tion, the sole consecrated purpose of his life, to theend that the Negro might eventually take hisGod-given place in the fraternity of man.18

Just as Moses of old used signs todemonstrate to the Israelites that he hadbeen called to leadership, mostly in theform of miracles stemming from hisstaff, Garvey demonstrated to blackHarlem that he was an authentic leader.He did not turn his staff into a snake orcause hordes of frogs to emerge from theHarlem River; nevertheless, Garvey'sactivities must have seemed equallymiraculous to Harlem blacks. Themiraculous growth of the UniversalNegro Improvement Association, forexample, was an unprecedented phe-nomenon among Negro masses. By themiddle of 1919, Cronon reports, "thereis no doubt that large numbers ofNegroes were listening with everincreasing interest to the serious black

18George Alexander McGuire, "Preface," in AmyJacques Garvey, ed., Philosophy and Opinions ofMarcus Garvey, (New York: Universal PublishingHouse, 1926), II, v; Hereafter cited as Philosophy andOpinions. Garvey's mother, according to tradition,sought to groom her son for the Moses role. Crononreports that "tradition has it that his mother, Sarah,sought to give him the middle name of Moses in thehope that like the biblical Moses, he would grow up tolead his people. His father, a far-from-devout-stone-mason, objected, and the parents compromised withMosiah." Cronon, Marcus Garvey, p. 1.

man whose persuasive words seemed topoint the way to race deliverance."19

Then in October of the same yearGarvey was attacked by an insaneformer employee. Two bullets struckhim, one grazing his forehead, narrowlymissing his right eye, and the otherpiercing his right leg. With bloodstreaming down his face, the woundedGarvey chased the assailant down thestreet until the police apprehended theassailant in the streets of Harlem.Almost immediately, "The assault as-sumed heroic proportions in the Negropress and Garvey became overnight apersecuted martyr working for the salva-tion of his people."20 Then in January,1918, Garvey established the NegroWorld, a newspaper with "One Aim,One God, One Destiny." It was pricedfor low income blacks and quicklybecame, according to one of Garvey'ssharpest critics, "the leading nationalNegro Weekly."21 The front page of thepaper always carried a lengthy editorialsigned, "Your obedient servant, MarcusGarvey, President General."

Garvey's signature as "PresidentGeneral" was not without significance.Early on he was concerned with ques-tions such as:"Where is the black man's Government?""Where is his King and his Kingdom?" "Whereis his President, his country, and his ambassador,his army, his navy, his men of affairs?" I couldnot find them, and then I declared, "I will help tomake them."22

He sought to give blacks self-regardwithin the U.N.I.A. through an AfricanLegion, brilliantly attired in dark blueuniforms and marching in parades withwell-drilled precision. Individual mem-

19Cronon, Marcus Garvey, p. 44.20Cronon, Black Moses, p. 45.21Claude McKay, Harlem: Negro Metropolis (New

York: E. P. Dutton & Co., 1940), p. 148.22

"The Negro's Greatest Enemy," Sept. 1923, Philos-ophy and Opinions, II, 126.

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bers of the Legion were given paramili-tary titles. Garvey himself is commonlypictured wearing a plumed helmet andan ornately decorated uniform. Womenof the movement were organized into auniformed Black Cross Nurses group,neatly garbed in white, and also welltrained in the skill of marching. Thisparamilitary aspect of the U.N.I.A.must have been evidence to Harlemblacks of Garvey's call to leadership.

The greatest and perhaps mostconvincing sign of Garvey's call to lead-ership was the Black Star Line.Although the ships Garvey purchasedlacked seaworthiness, failing to deliver asingle emigrant to Africa, and althoughthe Black Star Line was constantlyenshrouded with debt and was the buttof ridicule from Garvey's numerous crit-ics, the enterprise belonged solely toNegroes, was operated by Negroes, and"gave even the poorest black the chanceto become a stockholder in a big businessenterprise."23 Black owned ships an-chored in a harbor for all to see musthave assumed the proportions to Harlemblacks of some of the miracles of Moses'staff. Thus to millions of blacks in theearly 1920's Marcus Garvey personifiedan archetypal deliverer necessary tocomplete the construction of recent blackhistory as being equivalent to the proto-type story of Jewish captivity. In orderto assume the Moses persona, all thatremained was for Garvey's rhetoric toconstruct the necessary particulars of thediscourse of exiles: election, captivity,and liberation.

DELIVERANCE RHETORIC:PARTICULARS OF THE

TRANSCENDENT FORM

ElectionThe theme of election, the initial step

in the discourse of exiles, was expressed

23Cronon, Black Moses, p. 57.

in Garvey's insistence upon a blackethos, an affirmation and validation ofthe race's worthiness. In the course ofmany of his speaking engagements andin his editorials that appeared in theNegro World, the U.N.I.A. weeklyorgan from 1918 to 1933, Garveyespoused a black ethos by maintainingthat blacks should feel pride as a conse-quent of their racial membership. Tobegin with, Garvey attempted to supplyblacks with a sense of racial history.Reconstruction of the past so as to giveoppressed people legitimate origins isessential to deliverance rhetoric. Makingreference to the. ancient African king-doms, for example, Garvey recalled that"when Europe was inhabited by a raceof cannibals, a race of savages, nakedmen, heathens and pagans, Africa was apeople with a race of cultured blackmen . . . ; men who, it was said, were likethe gods."24 On occasion, he remindedhis black audiences that "this race ofours gave civilization, gave art, gavescience, gave literature to the world."25

Not content with recounting thecultural achievements of the race,Garvey was also fond of mentioning theexploits of black armies and soldiers,men who had fought creditably inMesopotamia during the Revolutionaryand Civil Wars in America, and mostrecently at the battles of the Marne andVerdun.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 aresatisfied to know . . . that our race gave the first greatcivilization to the world; and, for centuries Africa, ourancestral home, was the seat of learning; and whenblackmen who were only fit then for the company of thegods, were philosophers, artists, scientists, and men ofvision and leadership, the people of other races weregroping in savagery, darkness and continentalbarbarism." See "History and the Negro," Philosophyand Opinions, II, 82.

25Speech delivered on Emancipation Day at LibertyHall, New York City, Jan. 1, 1922, Philosophy andOpinions, I, 80.

26"The Principles of the Universal Negro Improve-

ment Association," speech delivered at Liberty Hall,New York City, Nov. 25, 1922, Philosophy and Opin-ions, II, 93, 99.

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the "two million Negroes" who foughtwith the Allies during World War I,while "white fellow citizens of Americarefused to fight."27 Naturally, he did notneglect the experience of slavery: "Youwho have not lost trace of your historywill recall the fact that over threehundred years ago your fore-bears weretaken from the great Continent of Africaand brought here for the purpose ofusing them as slaves."28 And Garvey didfear that some of those in his audiencehad lost their history for he warned that"the white world has always tried to roband discredit us of our history."29

Garvey's use of historical referencesin his rhetoric has greater significancethan simply informing his audiencesabout their past. No doubt such aneducation in race history as Garveyprovides would serve in and of itself toincrease the pride people could take inbeing black for one cannot be legitimatein the present or future without a legiti-mate past. However, the frequency withwhich Garvey relies upon detailed his-torical examples seems to involve morethan the simple transmittal of informa-tion. Specifically, he seems to be request-ing his auditors to project themselvesinto a number of diverse roles, to playthe part of black artists, soldiers, andslaves from the past.

By identifying with the roles of blacksin history, those who attended toGarvey's rhetoric reorganized their pastcultural experience. On reading the

27Statement on Arrest, Jan. 1922, Philosophy andOpinions, I, 99.

28Speech delivered on Emancipation Day at LibertyHall, New York City, Jan. 1, 1922, Philosophy andOpinions, I, 79.

29"Who and What Is a Negro?" April 26, 1923,

Philosophy and Opinions, II, 19. On another occasionGarvey said: "White historians and writers have tried torob the black man of his proud past in history, andwhen anything new is discovered to support the race'sclaim and attest the truthfulness of our greatness inother ages, then it is skillfully rearranged and creditedto some other unknown race or people." "History andthe Negro," Philosophy and Opinions, II, 82.

numerous historical references, we arestrongly reminded of Mead's account ofthe nineteenth century romanticists,writers who produced a literatureconcerned with an idealized world andwho asked their readers to take on theviewpoints of children, criminals,knights errant, and other exotics.30Langbaum effectively summarizesMead's thought:

According to Mead, the romanticists found them-selves in a world in which public symbols had lostmoral authority. Their aim was to re-establishvalues on an empiric basis. Since they felt analysiscould not yield values but could only destroythem, the romanticists developed a projectivehabit of mind. They came to know the world, notfrom the outside by applying ideas to it, or bypassively responding to it, but by playing roles initby projecting themselves into nature, the pastand other people. In other words, they wereaware of themselves as inside, or as having organ-ized, the experience they were perceiving. Thusthey came to know the object and the self in theobject, and it was through maintaining a sense ofcontinuity among the ever-increasing number oftheir projected selves that they evolved a sense ofidentity/1

In reconstructing their history, Gar-vey was actually providing his blackaudiences with legitimate, honorableself-identity. In identifying with blacksin history, those who attended toGarvey's rhetoric developed a sense oftheir cultural unity, the consequence ofrole playing that symbolic interactionistssuch as Mead posit as the prerequisitefor the satisfactory construction of a self-identity.32

Because of the importance of commu-nity in the black religious cults'doctrines, as alluded to previously,Garvey was able to create a racial identi-

30George Herbert Mead, Movements of Thought inthe Nineteenth Century, ed. Merritt H. Moore (Chica-go: University of Chicago Press, 1936), p. 85.

31Langbaum, pp. 569-70.32George Herbert Mead, The Philosophy of Act, ed.

Charles W. Morris (Chicago: University of ChicagoPress, 1938), pp. 310-11, 448, 610-11, et passim.

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ty, or black ethos, through the use ofreligious references as a complement tohistorical examples. "Garvey's extremeracial nationalism" wrote Cronon, "de-manded fulfillment in a truly Negroreligion."33 Not accidentally, therefore,

/ the African Orthodox Church became amajor subsidiary organization to theU.N.I.A. Among its tenets was a beliefin a black God and the Negro ancestry ofChrist. When challenged concerning the"Negro ancestry of Christ," Garveydenied claiming that Christ was a Negrobut that "Christ's ancestry included allraces, so that He was Divinity incarnatein the broadest sense of the word."34With God being a spirit, not a creature,and Christ being multiracial, it waspossible for members of a race to see theDivinity in terms of themselves, as, ofcourse, the white race had always done.35Garvey proclaimed that "the highestcompliment we can pay our risen Lordand Savior, is that of feeling that he hascreated us as His masterpiece Whenit is said that we are created in His ownimage, we ourselves reflect his great-ness."36

This construction of a multiracialGod was no doubt a significant contribu-tion in and of itself to the black ethos.However, as a result of the emphasisupon identification with a multiracialChrist, all who played the historicalroles depicted by Garvey's rhetoric, nomatter how diverse or exotic those rolesmight be, additionally participated inthe unifying experience of religion.

33Cronon, Black Moses, p. 178.34Rollin Lynde Hartt, "The Negro Moses," Inde-

pendent and Weekly Review, 26 Feb. 1921, p. 205.35Amy Jacques Garvey wrote to E. David Cronon:

"It is really logical that although we all know God is aspirit, yet all religions more or less visualize Him in alikeness akin to their own race. . . . Hence it was mostvital 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.

Whether an individual audience mem-ber chose to identify himself with aheroic solider in ancient Mesopotamia,to assume the role of a cultured scholarin Egypt, or to view himself as a lowlyslave in America, the religious referencesin Garvey's discourses emphasized "thechosen role" as one of a black man whopersonified the perfection of a blackGod. Furthermore, Garvey argued thatit was only after the recognition thatblacks too reflected God, that men, bothblack and white, could come to a "betterunderstanding of self, as individuals,"and that any white man could "realizehis true kinship with his Creator and bewhat his God expected him to be."37Consequently, he insisted that therecould be no salvation for the white manuntil the "powerful" races recognizedthe participation of blacks in divinity,until the "strong" peoples ceased abus-ing and oppressing God's creations asmanifested in black men.38 The religioussalvation of whites became, in a sense,dependent upon blacks.

Through reversal of the dependencyrelationship between blacks and whites,Garvey subtly brings the particulars ofelection to rhetorical completion. Whatcould be more complimentary to theblack ethos than the implicit suggestionthat the salvation of the white race wastied to the deliverance of black peoplefrom centuries of injustice and that theblack race didn't have to depend onwhites at all? In effect, Garvey'srepeated contention that blacks areGod's "masterpiece," reduces to theequivalent of saying that blacks areelected 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, Philoso-phy and Opinions, II, 31.

38"Christ the Greatest Reformer," speech delivered at

Liberty Hall, New York City, Dec. 24, 1922, Philoso-phy and Opinions, II, 31.

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treats the theme of election, his failure torefer overtly to blacks as being "chosen,"is itself not without rhetorical signifi-cance. Washington makes the point:

Precisely because the Negro has not called hispeople "chosen," it is in keeping with the faithand Negro Spirituals to perceive them as chosen.The idea of "chosen" is a religious interpretationof a people's experience. Indeed, Negroes wouldnot wish to be calledand would actively resistbeingthe "chosen people" were they con-sciously to understand and accept the biblicalmeaning of being poured out as "intercession fortransgressors." But just as they have neitherknown nor (consciously) accepted it, this is theirhistory: For it is through their experience that thepresence of God in all our midst can be affirmed.Through their suffering "we are healed"blackand white together.3'

CaptivityReconstruction of the past and the

deprecation of present conditions areessential to deliverance rhetoric for itallows the rhetor to point to a reformed,purified future. Thus a second pattern ofdeliverance discourse is deprecation ofthe present. Contrary to his treatment ofthe election theme, Garvey's speechesand editorials display little delicacy inthe 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, wasthere ever a serious attempt made to freenegroes."40 He emphasized at times thehistory of blacks with respect to bondagein the strictest sense of the term, remark-ing that his race had been forced "toendure the tortures and sufferings ofslavery for two hundred and fiftyyears."41 At other times, his emphasis

39Joseph R. Washington, Jr., The Politics of God(Boston: Beacon Press, 1967), p. 156.

40Speech delivered at Liberty Hall, New York City,during Second International Convention of Negroes,Aug. 1921, Philosophy and Opinions, 1,94.

41Speech delivered at Emancipation Day at LibertyHall, New York City, Jan . 1, 1922, Philosophy andOpinions, I, 80-81.

was upon the more insidious servitudeexperienced by his race in this century,and he warned that blacks "have beencamouflaged into believing that we weremade free by Abraham Lincoln. Thatwe were made free by Victoria ofEngland, but up to now we are stillslaves, we are industrial slaves, we aresocial slaves, we are political slaves."42

The full extent of the black race'senslavement in this century, however,was seen as going far beyond economic,social, and political deprivation. Moreimportant than material goods and polit-ical equality was the denial of opportu-nity for blacks to prove themselves as arace.

7In an open letter to whiteAmericans appearing in the NegroWorld, Garvey pleaded with whites notto encourage Negroes "to believe thatthey will become social equals and lead-ers of the whites in America, withoutfirst on their own account proving to theworld that they are capable of evolving acivilization of their own. The white racecan best help the Negro by telling himthe truth and not by flattering him intobelieving that he is as good as any whiteman without first proving the racial,national, constructive metal of which heis made."43

A people, having a shared culturalvision, should have common problems.The strongest identification comes froma threat to the people as a whole. Racialcaptivity, because it is inflicted upon oneas a result of membership in a group,emerges as a theme that maximizesunity of the people. By stressing thecaptivity theme, Garvey made apparentthe need for leaders who were liberators.The threat of enslavement, of course,readily implied the need for unification

42Speech 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," Philos-

ophy and Opinions, II, 5.

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of the people under one leaderGarvey,because he symbolized the Black Moses.Liberation

The third theme of the rhetoric ofdeliverance is to affirm a viable salva-tion, a "new" future. The conditions ofliberation must stand in sharp contrastto that of captivity. The biblicalIsraelites, for example, were told theywere headed to a land where the streamsflowed with milk and honey.

For Garvey, the theme of blackcaptivity naturally lead to the liberationtheme. As for economic liberation,Garvey's efforts were devoted to orga-nizing business enterprises such as theBlack Star Line steamship company.Garvey was convinced that only throughsuch ventures could blacks become free.In defense of his business activitiesbefore a white jury trial for mail fraud,he asserted:

The Universal Negro Improvement Associationand the Black Star Line employs thousands ofblack girls and black boys. Girls who could onlybe washer women in your homes, we made clerksand stenographers of them in the Black StarLine's office. You will see that from the start wetried to dignify our race.44

Although praise of economic enter-prises was quite prevalent in Garvey'srhetoric, he devoted considerably moreattention to the Pan-African componentof his ideology. In the days shortly afterWorld War I when the victorious Allieswere creating ethnically based home-lands in Europe with some ease, it is notunbelievable that they might have carveda place for blacks in Africa. Garveycertainly believed that the white raceowed this much to his people for heremarks that "as black men for threecenturies have helped white men buildAmerica, 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 buildAfrica."45 Nevertheless, for mostAmerican Negroes the important appealof Garvey's rhetoric was not its "prom-ised land" feature, and it was clearly notGarvey's intention, as so often ispresumed, to transport all the blacksscattered throughout the world back toAfrica. He could not more clearly havestated his point than when he said:

The thoughtful and industrious of our race wantto go back to Africa, because we realize it will beour only hope of permanent existence. We cannotall go in a day or year, ten or twenty years. It willtake time under the rule of modern economics, toentirely or largely depopulate a country of apeople, 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 theNegroes in Africa. Some are no good here, andnaturally will be no good there.46

In other words, Garvey saw Africa as anopportunity for the black race to build anation of its own, as a chance to provethat his people were as capable as otherraces. Africa was to be the spiritualhomeland for blacks, and the culturethey would build there would serve asultimate proof of their equality andworthiness to which they could point injustification of their claims for liberationin other countries. The final liberationwould come only when:

As children of captivity we look forward to a newday and a new, yet ever old, land of our fathers,the land of refuge, the land of the Prophets, theland of the Saints, and the land of God's crowningglory. We shall gather together our children, ourtreasures and our loved ones, and, as the childrenof Israel, we shall also stretch forth our hands andbless our country.47

45Speech delivered at Madison Square Garden, NewYork City, March 16, 1924, Philosophy and Opinions,II, 121.



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Robert Hughes Brisbane, Jr., hasobserved, "Under the stimulus ofGarveyism, Negro nationalism becamecreative, constructive, boastful, and defi-nitely more chauvinistic."48

Garvey's rhetorical works are markedby three strategies: election, captivity,and liberation. Taken separately, theyare ideological appeals in the Burkeiansense. But in Garvey's rhetoric, theybecome structured into a temporalsequence, that of the prototype story ofJewish captivity that is both uniquelyand universally appealing to oppressedpeoples. Burke reminds us that sequen-tially arranged "terms" that "so leadinto one another that the completion ofeach order leads to the next" are "ulti-mate" or "mystical" or mythicalterms.49

The perception of Garvey as a BlackMoses was the artifact of interactionbetween rhetor and his audiences.Garvey's rhetoric provided his audiencesaccess to the constituent ideas of thearchetypal story of racial deliverance.Because Garvey's rhetoric fused theblack experience with that of a NewIsrael, his auditors perceived him as aBlack Moses, a type of cultural symbolthat ultimately subsumed and stood forthe ideas of election, captivity, and liber-ation. As the numerous instances ofreferences to Garvey as "Black Moses"by. the press of his day indicates, theBlack Moses persona symbolized thecultural vision of his auditors.50 In the

48Robert Hughes Brisbane, Jr., "Some New Light onthe Garvey Movement," Journal of Negro History,36(1951), p. 59.

49Burke, Motives, p. 189.50Cronon suggests that "Garvey appeared fortui-

tiously at a time when the Negro masses were awaitinga black Moses, and he became the instrument throughwhich they could express their longings and deepdiscontent." Cronon, Marcus Garvey, p. 168. Forexamples of the use of it by the press see: World's Work,Dec. 1920, p. 153; Independent and Weekly Review, 26Feb. 1921, p. 205; Literary Digest, 19 Mar. 1921, p. 48;Liberator, Apr. 1922, p. 8; and The Nation, 18 Aug.1926, p. 147.

case of black auditors, who we shouldrecall were dependent upon Garvey forsome measure of their racial and self-identities, the Black Moses persona heldconsiderable authority, so much so thatGarvey was considered to be "withoutpeer as a mobilizer of black masses."51

Finally, as references to Garvey as the"Black Moses" in present day historicalwritings would indicate, it is the personathat lingers on long after his ideologyhas become ignored. When we find thiskind of crustaceous image, this "mask"that only awaits another to fill it, wewould argue that we can best refer to itas a rhetorical persona.

T H E RHETORICAL PERSONA ANDFORMISTIC CRITICISM

We think that the rhetorical personaconstruct is of value to critics interestedin the formistic criticism52 of rhetoricalartifacts, i.e., to students dedicated to"disclosing the elements common tomany discourses rather than the singu-larities of a few"53 in an attempt toidentify genres or forms of publicaddress. The symbolic construction ofarchetypal personae in the minds ofauditors entails the discernible factorsuseful in assessing rhetoric otherwise hoteasily explained. How else is one toexplain the impact of Marcus Garvey,for example? The Moses form was aunique motive force to blacks in Harlemin the early 1920's. Because audienceswith a strong cultural visionsuch asHarlem blacks in Garvey's timeareprone to impute mystical qualities

51Washington, Black Sects and Cults, p. 128.52For a discussion of the philosophical foundations of

formistic criticism, see B. L. Ware, "Theories ofRhetorical Criticism as Argument," Diss. University ofKansas 1972, esp. ch. III, "The Paradoxical World ofFormistic Criticism."

53Edwin Black, Rhetorical Criticism: A Study inMethod (New York: Macmillan, 1965), pp. 176-77.

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those of an archetypal figureto indi-vidual rhetors who fit their culturalvision, we as critics have the task ofexplaining and assessing how thesevisions interface with the characteristicsof a speaker and how his rhetoric fulfillsthe attributes of that archetype.

The formistic critic, therefore, is onewho faces a dual task. First, it is incum-bent to delineate and explain forms orgenres of public address that are usefulto the critical purpose.54 Second, theremust be an accounting of the phenome-non experienced by auditors whenrhetors themselves become rhetoricalforms or personae. In the instance ofGarvey, we contend that criticismreveals a rhetorical persona createdthrough the effective use of the particu-lars of address we term deliverance rhet-oric, or the discourse of exiles. Thegravamen of our argument is that theformistic study of rhetoric, in addition tothe causal study exemplified by neo-Aristotelians or to the study orientedtoward process as practiced byBurkeians, provides useful critical in-sight. We offer this study as an exampleof an heretofore unexplored aspect offormistic criticismthe use of a genre ofrhetoric resulting in the formation of arhetorical persona. This study of Garveysuggests that rhetorical personae maytypically be associated with a genre ofrhetoric, as Garvey himself relied upondeliverance rhetoric. We are aware of noevidence at this time suggesting that each

54We have elsewhere discussed a critical methodologyfor studying forms of public address. See B. L. Wareand Wil A. Linkugel, "They Spoke in Defense ofThemselves: On the Generic Criticism of Apologia,"The Quarterly Journal of Speech, 59 (1973), pp. 273-83.

genre results in an identifiable persona,a proposition that awaits further study.We conclude, therefore, simply that theconstruct of the rhetorical persona isuseful to the formistic critic whenconfronted with a rhetor who takes onmythical qualities.

The technique for discovering arhetorical persona is to identify a rhetorwho uniquely represents or symbolizesan historic period, a movement, orworld-view.55 The "rhetorical mask tobe filled" by a rhetor often stems fromthe aesthetic realm of literature or myth,or from an analogous historical episode.Then if the audience ascribes to thatspeaker the qualities of an archetypal,transcendent form, the persona thespeaker assumes will have inherentpersuasive connotations deep within thecultural psyche of that audience. Wemust remind ourselves, however, thatthe task of the critic does not end withthe identification of rhetorical personae.There remains the important function ofexplaining and assessing the manner inwhich a speaker's rhetoric effects thetransformation of the individual into atranscendent form. Such formistic criti-cism should fulfill the raison d'etre of thecritical artthe assessment of instancesof rhetoric and the extension of knowl-edge of critical and rhetorical theory.

55There are rhetorical personae in recent times otherthan Garvey. We think that some rhetors such asFranklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill are easilydiscernible by critics as instances in which individualshave come to symbolize a national myth through trans-formation into rhetorical personae. The discerning crit-ic, properly sensitized to the usefulness of the persona asa critical construct, would have little difficulty in usingthat construct to explain and evaluate the rhetoric of themyriad number of cult leaders endemic to any timeperiod. The Rev. Jim Jones, the central figure of theJonestown, Guiana, tragedy in 1979, challenges thecritic to explain the perversion of the Moses story.

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Rhetorical Persona

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