'The League Will Not Ignore the Cry of the Negro Race for Justice': Marcus Garvey, the League of Nations and South-West Africa.

Marcus Garvey's petitions to the League of Nations on behalf of the Universal Negro Improvement Association in 1922 and 1928 were a central but overlooked component of his anti-colonial politics in the 1920s. In both cases, Garvey's main objective was to have the League of Nations mandate for South-West Africa transferred from South Africa and given to the Universal Negro Improvement Association, particularly in the wake of the Bondelswarts rebellion and what he considered to be South Africa's white supremacist colonial rule following the end of German imperialism in the area. These petitions reflect the significant place of southern African racial and colonial politics in the USA in this period and further reveal the agency of Namibians in political movements beyond Africa and throughout the African diaspora. Far from being ineffectual, these petitions called attention to racial injustice and set a pattern for post-Second World War diasporic politics and decolonisation movements that scholars have not hitherto appreciated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]