#marcus-garvey — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #marcus-garvey, aggregated by home.social.
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Now on Verdant Square Radio:
https://mastodon.social/@VerdantSquareRadio/116032057647491550
#Arts #Art #Music #Sineadoconnor #Slyandrobbie #Slydunbar #ROBBIESHAKESPEARE #Marcusgarvey #Blackhistorymonth #Left #Liberal #Gratefuldreadsets #Kyndmix #Dissent #Getupstandup #Resist #Vsn #Radio #Diversespectrumoftheleft #SupportIndependentMedia
#VerdantSquareRadio #vsn #DiverseSpectrumOfTheLeft #SupportIndependentMedia
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"A people without the knowledge of their past history, origin and culture is like a tree without roots." – #MarcusGarvey #BlackHistory
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Plunder, Mystery, and Intrigue: Visiting the British Museum and the British Library
After leaving the Lake District, I traveled to London by train, for the third part of my trip. This was where I saw the most libraries during my trip. On my last day in London, August 3rd, I visited the British Museum, located in London’s West End, which was overcrowded with tourists. This made viewing the so-called “chronicle of Western collection,” which was acquired through extensive plunder and theft, as American tour guide Rick Steves describes the museum, very uncomfortable. Even so, there were two highlights. The first was the stately and round reading room. English writers Virginia Woolf and Beatrix Potter, Chinese revolutionary Sun Yat-sen, radical thinkers Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin, Black nationalist Marcus Garvey, women’s rights campaigner Sylvia Pankhurst, independence activist Mohandas K. Gandhi, and Irish author Bram Stoker all studied there.
Note: This serves as second part of my series on this blog about my library tourism last year, with the first part, about my attempted and successful library tourism in Edinburgh and Northern England, posted on this blog last week. The series begins, chronologically, with my guest post on Reel Librarians, on February 11th, in a post entitled “Edinburgh and the National Library of Scotland: Library tourism redux.” It will be reposted on here over a month later. There will be one more parts of this series, focusing on my continued library tourism in Belgium coming next week.
Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes, as noted in Doyle’s “The Complete Sherlock Holmes,” studied in the reading room. In the 1893 short story “The Adventure of the Musgrave Ritual” (sometimes abbreviated as “The Musgrave Ritual”), he studied “those branches of science which might make me more efficient” in the reading room. He learned other information from the British Museum in chapter 15 of 1902 novel The Hound of the Baskervilles and “The Tiger of San Pedro” chapter, within a 1917 collection entitled His Last Bow: Some Reminiscences of Sherlock Holmes (sometimes abbreviated as “His Last Bow”). There are mentions of libraries in the short stories “The Five Orange Pips”, “The Adventure of the Engineer’s Thumb”, and “The Adventure of the Beryl Coronet” in the 1892 short story collection The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.
The same is the case for “The Musgrave Ritual,” “The ‘Gloria Scott’”, and “The Reigate Squires” all within the 1893 short story collection The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, and the stories “The Adventures of the Three Students” and “The Adventure of the Golden Pince-Nez” in the 1905 short story collection The Return of Sherlock Holmes. Apart from that, chapter 10 of The Hound of the Baskervilles, chapter 7 of the 1915 novel The Valley of Fear, and the story “The Problem of Thorn Bridge” in the 1927 set of short stories The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes feature libraries as well. Lastly, there’s a mention of a London Library in St. James’s Square and Lomax, who is said to be a “sublibrarian,” in “The Illustrious Client.” This is another short story within The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes.
In an email communication, Nathalie Belkin, an archivist who works for the London Library, told me that Doyle was a library member, joining in 1896 after his friend, and fellow writer, Arthur Griffith, nominated him. According to Belkin, Doyle was an active library user, even serving on the library’s committee. In fact, it is believed that The Illustrious Client, also entitled The Adventure of the Illustrious Client, was written in the library’s main reading room. While the borrowing history from the time has been lost, he was a “well-known fixture” of the library.
Otherwise, Karl Marx formulated ideas on communism, including within Das Kapital (also known as Capital), in the aforementioned reading room within the British Museum. Displays within the room describe it as a place for diverse thought. Many patrons left behind their mark in the visitors log. It was even one of the first places in London to have electric light (in 1879)! The room could, at maximum, hold 302 readers sitting at 38 tables, sitting across from each other, and was heated from underneath. Readers would consult a catalogue of printed books in the room’s center, then fill out a request form. In some ways, this makes this room similar to the Library of Congress’s Reading Room, since books for the British Library could be accessed there until they were moved to their current location in 1997. In fact, 62,000 people came when this reading room opened in 1857. A sign, when looking into the reading room, tells visitors to be quiet, feeding into the common conception of libraries as quiet places, which is not always the case for all libraries anymore.
Compilation of four photographs of the Reading Room within the British Library, taken on August 3, 2025 (Photographs by me. Sorry for the blurriness in one of these photos)What Rick Steves didn’t mention is that the historic reading room only re-opened to the public in 2024 after being closed for eleven years. The room was designed by Sydney Smirke, inspired by Rome’s domed Pantheon, and opened in 1857. It first re-opened to visitors in 2000 (after it stopped being an active reading room in 1997), then closed in 2013, when it was used for archival storage. The room, described by some as “legendary,” “stunning,” and an impressive sight for bibliophiles (protagonist and book-defender Elianna Bernstein of Bibliophile Princess would be right at home there) is not technically a library anymore. You can’t borrow any of the 25,000 books, and photography is now permitted (it wasn’t previously). Even so, it is still a marvel to see. You can even go on a twenty-minute tour there and there is currently a plan to completely transform the galleries and reading room.
The second highlight was the Enlightenment Gallery, formerly known as the King’s Library. It once held the British Library’s treasures when it was founded in 1753. Today it holds objects about the Age of Enlightenment, as Rick Steves notes. A display board, when you enter the room, says that it was developed in partnership with the House of Commons Library and the Natural History Museum. The current books on display are being loaned from the House of Commons Library. The aforementioned display notes that those who lent non-book artifacts to the gallery included the British King, the Science Museum in London, King’s College in London, Wellcome Collection, Society of Antiquities of London, Victor and Albert Museum, the Linnean Society of London, and the Royal Asiatic Society (also in London). Of these institutions, most have their own libraries. In fact, the D. Leonard Corgan Library at Kings College, the college’s main library, served as a location in Dan Brown’s controversial novel The Da Vinci Code. The building’s exterior appeared in the 2020 film Enola Holmes, a mystery film about Sherlock Holmes’ teenage sister.
The room itself was originally created, in 1823, to house King George II’s library, hence the original name. It was designed by architect Robert Smirke, known for the British Museum’s main facade and block, along with various clubs and houses within London. Of these, the Inner Temple, for which he did some work on, has a library, which continues to operate to this day, as did Bickley Hall. Smike also completed building restoration of the Bodleian Library’s Upper Reading room, which is part of the “old library.” As for the Enlightenment Gallery, it has a Greek Revival design, with neoclassical decoration. It’s said to be in keeping with the “styles of libraries in grand houses all over Britain” at the time, with claims it has echoes of “ancient wisdom and learning.” In 1998, the British Library moved to a new location across from the current St. Pancras station. The latter is not to be confused with pancreas or the Japanese anime film which centers on libraries and librarians, entitled I Want to Eat Your Pancreas. It is far too easy to call it “pancreas” by mistake, a name that almost stuck with me.
This gallery is where thousands of objects can be viewed and serves as an introduction to the British Museum’s collections. Even so, for me, I visited it at the end of my time at the overcrowded museum. I was inspired to visit this room by one particular scene in the December 2011 anime film, K-On! the Movie, a spinoff from the 2009-2010 anime series, K-On!. It features two episodes with libraries, including one about studying in the library and featuring a student librarian at an information desk. In fact, I rewatched this film before my trip to London, just for this scene. During the film, Yui Hirasawa, Ritsu Tainaka, Mio Akiyama, Azusa Nakano, and Tsumugi Kotobuki bop around London, visiting many sites, including walking through the strangely empty Great Court of the British Museum. They make their way into the gallery. During a short scene, Azusa points out that the Rosetta Stone (she put it on their itinerary) is also a replica. In fact, they used a replica in a school play as the death stone for a Romeo & Juliet play, because the fake tombstone they wanted to use had been misplaced.
My photograph on the left on August 3, 2024, of the Rosetta Stone replica in the Enlightenment Gallery, and image of the replica from K-On! the Movie on the right.The British Museum also has the actual Rosetta Stone in the Egyptian sculpture room, but like Yui, Ritsu, Mio, Azusa, and Tsumugi, I only looked at and touched the replica. The aforementioned gallery likely would have been overcrowded, as the gallery rooms I visited were extremely overcrowded and not suited for visitors. They had inadequate airflow and no overhead fans. As for the film, there were a few other short library scenes in the private all-girls school the protagonists attend, Sakuragaoka High School.
The same day I visited the British Museum, I visited the British Library. It sits across from St. Pancras station, and would be the last library I visited in the U.K. As Rick Steves put it, the British empire built its “greatest monuments out of paper.” The library holds every publication within the U.K. and Northern Ireland, with over 170 million items, such as sacred texts, maps, the Magna Carta, Leonardo Da Vinci’s notebook, plays by William Shakespeare, and lyrics of songs by the Beatles. This library, established by an act of Parliament in July 1972 and opened in July 1973, is one of the biggest in the world. It’s only rivaled by the Library of Congress, Russian State Library in Moscow, or Shanghai Library in China. Many such institutions are the legal deposit libraries for their respective countries. Anyone is open to explore the British Library reading rooms and peruse exhibits. You can get a readers registration pass if you are over 18, allowing you to enter the reading rooms.
When I visited, on August 3rd, the reading rooms for humanities, manuscripts, rare books, music, science, maps, and Asian and African studies, were not open. I even saw rooms reserved for the sole purpose of prayer, and went through the “Treasures of the British Library” exhibit in the St. John Ritblat Gallery. It contained many of the artifacts I noted in the previous paragraph. Perhaps because they have the space, the British Library holds the library collections of the British Museum. Rare books fill the middle of the library in a massive climate-controlled column, allowing the upper floors to only be accessed by stairs or elevators, and affecting the structure of each floor. There was also a fascinating collection of foreign currency, stamps, and other postage from former British colonies, called the Philatelic Collection. It could be easily overlooked, but was fun to look through, especially in the way it was displayed.
Like the British museums I visited during my travels, they asked for a donation, but they were free to enter, without payment or restriction. The number of visitors using the study area made clear that they were open to all, in line with library ethical principles, as did the books in their bookshop, some of which would likely be on banned books lists of in U.S. libraries. In the next part of this series, I’ll talk briefly about the university library I visited in Belgium.
© 2025-2026 Burkely Hermann. All rights reserved.
Sources used
- “About this Reading Room,” Library of Congress, 2025.
- “About Us,” British Library, 2025.
- “About us,” House of Commons Library, 2025.
- “About us,” Royal Asiatic Society, 2025.
- “About us,” Wellcome Collection, 2025.
- “Archives,” London Library, 2025.
- Barker, Sam. “The British Museum’s Secretive Round Reading Room Has Reopened To The Public,” Secret London, 4 Jul. 2024.
- “Bickley,” Wikishire, 13 Jul. 2025.
- “D. Leonard Corgan Library,” Kings College, 2025.
- “Dana Research Centre and Library,” Science Museum, 2025.
- “Everything you ever wanted to know about the Rosetta Stone,” British Museum, 2025.
- Fox, Caroline. “Every Enola Holmes Filming Location (And What Every Place Looks Like Now),” ScreenRant, 26 Oct. 2020.
- Funk, Alex. “The British Museum’s mysterious domed Reading Room has officially reopened to the public,” TimeOut, 3 Jul. 2024.
- Hermann, Burkely. “Librarians and libraries in anime,” Pop Culture Library Review, 2025 (orig. 25 Jul. 2020).
- Hermann, Burkely. “More than a coming-of-age drama: The value of libraries and librarians in “I Want To Eat Your Pancreas”,” Pop Culture Library Review, 8 Jan. 2024.
- Hermann, Burkely. “Recently added titles (March 2025),” Pop Culture Library Review, 2 Apr. 2025.
- Hermann, Burkely. “The fictional library and the value of studying redux,” Pop Culture Library Review, 30 Jul. 2024.
- Hickley, Catherine. “British Museum’s historic Reading Room opens to the public after 11 years,” The Art Newspaper, 3 Jul. 2024.
- “History of The London Library,” London Library, 2025.
- “Library,” Linnean Society of London, 2025.
- “Library & Collections,” Society of Antiquities of London, 2024.
- Mathur, Rhea. “The British Museum’s Reading Room: Past and Present,” gowithyamo, 2 Sept. 2024.
- Moran, Sarah. “The British Museum’s Stunning Domed Reading Room Reopens to Public,” Home Journal, 27 Sept. 2024.
- “National Art Library,” Victor and Albert Museum, 2025.
- “Philatelic Collections: Introduction,” British Library, 29 Mar. 2010.
- Hermann, Burkely. “Remembering “Bibliophile Princess” and its significant fictional depiction of libraries,” Pop Culture Library Review, 14 May 2024.
- “Spaces at the Bodleian Old Library,” Bodleian Library, 2025.
- “Spotlight: the Reading Room,” British Museum, 2025.
- Steves, Rick and Openshaw, Gene. London (24th Edition, US: Avalon Travel, Sept. 2022): 212, 214-215, 236, 238, 240, 244-247, 249.
- “Strand Campus: Self-guided tour,” King’s College, 5 Oct. 2014, p. 8.
- “The British Library Philatelic Collection,” The Royal Philatelic Society London, Nov. 2005.
- “The Present Buildings,” Inner Temple Library, 2025.
- “Treasures of the British Library,” British Library, 2025.
- “Update on progress with the Masterplan,” British Museum, 19 Dec. 2024.
#AncientEgypt #archives #ArthurConanDoyle #artifacts #BeatrixPotter #Belgium #BibliophilePrincess #BlackPatrons #BlackPeople #BramStoker #BritishLibrary #BritishMuseum #China #ChinesePatrons #colonialism #communism #electricity #EnolaHolmes #HouseOfCommonsLibrary #JapanesePatrons #JenniferSnoekBrown #KOn #KOnTheMovie #KarlMarx #LibraryOfCongress #libraryStereotypes #libraryTourism #LondonLibrary #MarcusGarvey #MohandasKGandhi #quiet #railroads #reading #ReelLibrarians #restrictions #RickSteves #RosettaStone #royalLibraries #royalty #Russia #RussianStateLibrary #ShanghaiLibrary #SherlockHolmes #SunYatSen #SylviaPankhurst #TheBeatles #TheDaVinciCode #TheIllustriousClient #trains #VirginiaWoolf #WhiteLibrarians #WhiteMen #WhitePatrons
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"Among some of the organized methods used to control the world is the thing known and called propaganda. Propaganda has done more to defeat the good intentions of races and nations than even open warfare. Propaganda is a method or medium used by organized peoples to convert others against their will. We of the Negro race are suffering more than any other race in the world from propaganda... propaganda to destroy our hopes, our ambitions and our confidence in self." — #MarcusGarvey #BlackHistory
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Nice historical summary about Garvey’s career and controversy with links.
#MarcusGarvey #JustinHanford -
A history lesson about #MarcusGarvey who has been posthumously pardoned. He paved the way for #MalcolmX, #DrKing and the whole #BlackPower movement in the #US and globally, to #resist #colonialism and #racist #genocide. We can all learn valuable lessons from his efforts and mistakes as we are all facing the same problems now.
#RestInPower my brother. May #peace and #love be with you.
#press #BreakingNews
https://youtu.be/pja7nb2ZXlg?si=DejkjIw0SKWUXPxB -
WOW! I want to hug Joe Biden for everything he has done to try and right wrongs. Commuting Leonard Peltier's sentence and pardoning Marcus Garvey -- just WOW.
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Biden Pardons Marcus Garvey, Immigration Activist Ravi Ragbir
#DemocracyNow, Jan 20, 2025
"On Sunday, Biden issued five other pardons, including one for the late Pan-Africanist and Black nationalist leader #MarcusGarvey, who was convicted of mail fraud in the 1920s. Biden also pardoned the New York-based immigrant rights leader #Rav Ragbir, who spoke to Democracy Now! on Sunday night.
Ravi Ragbir: “This has meant a lot for my family and myself, because it stops the continued punishment that I have faced throughout the last two decades, where I every day was uncertain because I faced the possibility of deportation. In fact, in 2018, ICE made a concerted effort to kidnap me and with the intention to deport me. And it’s only because of community support that I’m still standing.”
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"A people without the knowledge of their past history, origin and culture is like a tree without roots." — #MarcusGarvey #BlackHistory
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Biden posthumously pardons civil rights leader Marcus Garvey | Joe Biden | The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jan/19/biden-pardons-marcus-garvey?CMP=aus_bsky
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With hours left in office, Joe Biden has pardoned Marcus Garvey: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jan/19/biden-pardons-marcus-garvey
#joebiden #biden #marcusgarvey #theguardian #guardian #racism #racialreconciliation
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#POTUS #Biden #pardoned 5 #activists & #PublicServants on Sunday, including a posthumous grant of #clemency to the #CivilRights leader #MarcusGarvey, who mobilized the #Black nationalist movement & was convicted of mail fraud in 1923.
Garvey’s posthumous pardon is among the most high profile in the latest round. #CivilRights leaders & lawmakers have long called his criminal conviction unjust & argued that he was targeted for his civil rights leadership.
#law #justice
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/19/us/politics/biden-pardons-marcus-garvey.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare -
"We are going to emancipate ourselves from mental slavery because whilst others might free the body, none but ourselves can free the mind. Mind is your only ruler, sovereign. The man who is not able to develop and use his mind is bound to be the slave of the other man who uses his mind." — #MarcusGarvey #BlackHistory
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A 2022 public post I put on Facebook explaining Mastodon and the Fediverse gained a new comment this evening from this absolutely genuine gentleman who definitely exists. I laughed a lot. I mean, the only part that was remotely believable was that he might really prefer to live in Syria rather than Texas.
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"Redemption Song" is a song by Jamaican singer Bob Marley. It is the final track on #BobMarleyAndTheWailers' twelfth album, #Uprising, produced by #ChrisBlackwell and released by #IslandRecords. The song is considered one of Marley's greatest works. Some key lyrics derived from a speech given by the #PanAfricanist orator #MarcusGarvey titled "The Work That Has Been Done", which Marley publicly recited as early as July 1979 during his appearance at the #AmandlaFestival.
https://youtu.be/kbyUPJooBfU -
DO. NOT. SLEEP ON. THIS. 🖤
(From the book: “Selected Writings And Speeches Of Marcus Garvey”)
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[This guest post was written by mega-contributor platenworm about number 624 on The List; the album was submitted by buffyleigh.]
One of the milestones from the golden age of reggae. Dark lyrical matters on a ultra heavy bass background. With a deep deep production from Errol Thompson & Jack Ruby, this album has it all.
It came out in 1975 and on the bass we hear the recently passed away Aston “Family Man” Barrett alongside the also gone but not forgotten Robbie Shakespeare. But the man of the hour is of course Winston Rodney a.k.a. Burning Spear with his soulful voice. And lyrical wise, his uncompromising conscious Rastafarian views and the suffering due to the African diaspora by slavery. Deep Soul Blues music from Jamaica……..
And don’t forget to play the dub version “Garvey’s Ghost” right after this Roots Rock Reggae Masterpiece.
- Songwhip: Burning Spear – Marcus Garvey
- Songwhip: Burning Spear – Garvey’s Ghost
- Discogs: Burning Spear – Marcus Garvey
- Wikipedia: Burning Spear – Marcus Garvey
[Alt text for accompanying image: The album cover of “Marcus Garvey” by Burning Spear. The band name is printed at an angle in red font in the top-right corner, and the album name is along the bottom edge in grey font, with chainlinks printed on each side. The artwork is in black and negative of two people holding spears, with a round photo of Marcus Garvey in the bottom left corner.]
https://1001otheralbums.com/2024/02/23/burning-spear-marcus-garvey-1975-jamaica/
#1001OtherAlbums #1970s #AstonBarrett #BurningSpear #Jamaica #MarcusGarvey #reggae #RobbieShakespeare #WinstonRodney
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Fool Me Once review: another Harlan Coben mystery series https://oldaintdead.com/fool-me-once-review-another-harlan-coben-mystery-series/ #AdeelAkhtar, #DinoFetscher, #FoolMeOnce, #HarlanCoben, #JoannaLumley, #LaurieKynaston, #MarcusGarvey, #MichelleKeegan, #NatalieAnderson, #RichardArmitage #Television #Review
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"Redemption Song" is a song by Jamaican singer Bob Marley. It is the final track on #BobMarleyAndTheWailers' twelfth album, #Uprising, produced by #ChrisBlackwell and released by #IslandRecords. The song is considered one of Marley's greatest works. Some key lyrics derived from a speech given by the #PanAfricanist orator #MarcusGarvey titled "The Work That Has Been Done."At the time he wrote the song, circa 1979.
https://youtu.be/kOFu6b3w6c0
