Black in Appalachia: Race First | Marcus Garvey and the Universal Negro Improvement Association

Black in Appalachia

On this episode of the Black in Appalachia podcast, Director William Isom sits down with Enkeshi El-Amin to talk about the Marcus Garvey led Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) and the organization’s early twentieth century impact across Appalachia. Explore the scope of the UNIA and the types of activities that were attractive to working class Black people in the mountains, how informal networks and the organization's newspaper facilitated its spread and the challenges the group faced particularly from the feds.