| Line | When Jamaican-born social activist Marcus |
| Garvey came to the United States in 1916, he | |
| arrived at precisely the right historical moment. | |
| What made the moment right was the return of | |
| (5) | African American soldiers from the First World War |
| in 1918, which created an ideal constituency for | |
| someone with Garvey’s message of unity, pride, | |
| and improved conditions for African American | |
| communities. | |
| (10) | Hoping to participate in the traditional American |
| ethos of individual success, many African American | |
| people entered the armed forces with enthusiasm, | |
| only to find themselves segregated from white | |
| troops and subjected to numerous indignities. They | |
| (15) | returned to a United States that was as segregated |
| as it had been before the war. Considering similar | |
| experiences, anthropologist Anthony F. C. Wallace | |
| has argued that when a perceptible gap arises | |
| between a culture’s expectations and the reality of | |
| (20) | that culture, the resulting tension can inspire a |
| revitalization movement: an organized, conscious | |
| effort to construct a culture that fulfills longstanding | |
| expectations. | |
| Some scholars have argued that Garvey created | |
| (25) | the consciousness from which he built, in the 1920s, |
| the largest revitalization movement in | |
| African American history. But such an argument only | |
| tends to obscure the consciousness of | |
| identity, strength, and sense of history that already | |
| (30) | existed in the African American community. Garvey |
| did not create this consciousness; rather, he gave | |
| this consciousness its political expression. |
