For a decade after the birth of Marcus Garvey on August 17, 1887, organised cricket in Jamaica remained what it had always been - the exclusive pastime of the white elite. There was not one black face among the membership of the three major cricket clubs - Kingston, Kensington and Melbourne. There was no doubt that the game occupied pride of place in the cultural fabric of Victorian England.

British governors all held membership in the exclusive Kingston Cricket Club (KCC), were honorary chairmen of the Cricket Association and routinely saw off cricket teams. One governor, Augustus Hemming, captained the Jamaica cricket team.

By the time of George Headley's birth on May 30, 1909, Jamaican cricket had become multiracial. At the centre of this new social reality was a group of past students of Calabar Elementary School led by David Ellington, who established a cricket club for blacks. This club was registered in 1898 under the name Lucas in honour of their patron, R. Slade Lucas, the Middlesex batsman who had led the first English Goodwill team to Jamaica in 1895.

Headley would have been a toddler when the 23-year old Garvey came to Colon in 1911. Headley's parents, the Barbadian De Courcy Headley and his Jamaican wife, Irene Roberts, were among the thousands of West Indians who had gone to Panama to seek employment during the construction of the Canal and experienced the harsh racism imposed on the migrants in the Central American Republic. It would be 16 years before their paths converged again, for by the time Headley's mother brought him to Jamaica in 1918 to live with his aunt in Rae Town, Garvey was already in New York and well on his way to building the largest Pan-African organisation that the world had ever seen.

Garvey and the UNIA

Garvey had launched the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) in Jamaica in July 1914, with the assistance of a remarkable 17-year old girl, Amy Ashwood, who later became his wife. Up to 1916 when he left Jamaica for New York, the organisation had a small following. Garvey's first attempt to speak to the masses in Harlem was a dismal failure. Overcome by nerves, he fell off the stage. Four years later in 1920, an estimated crowd of 25,000 filed into Madison Square Garden where more than 200 dignitaries were already seated to hear the Hon Marcus Garvey, president general of the UNIA.

While Garvey was ascending to the height of his power, the nine-year old Headley was teaching himself the game of cricket, devoting every minute of his spare time to practising at the Kingston Race Course and at his own community playing field in Rae Town. His relentless pursuit of perfection and excellence in those critical years laid the basis for the cricketing genius who emerged after 1928.

Finally, in 1927 sports and politics brought both men to Kingston, Jamaica. Garvey returned to the island in December of that year to a hero's welcome, and Headley, who lived in Rae Town, played his first Senior Cup season for St Catherine. One can only speculate that he was among the thousands who witnessed Garvey's triumphant return.

Headley's rise

Headley then began his ascent to the pinnacle of the post-war cricketing world, in a manner no less spectacular than Garvey's rise to leadership to the Pan-African Movement. In 1928, on February 9, three months before his 19th birthday, Headley made his first appearance for Jamaica. His debut was as inauspicious as Garvey's had been in New York. Facing the first ball, the bat flew out of his hand and he had barely regained his composure before he was out for 16. At the end of the series, however, he was the leading run-getter, with 409 runs from five innings.

In the 1930 Test series against England, he made 705 runs in eight innings, scoring three centuries and a double-century. Against the Australians in 1931, he emerged the finest on-side batsman in the world. In 1932, he slaughtered an English attack brought by Lord Tennyson, to finish with a phenomenal average of 361.5.

By 1935, Headley had "ignited the Caribbean imagination. He was much more than a great batsman serving notice on his peers. The aspiring middle class found in him the reassurance which they needed. The white upper classes were willing to be proud. But it was to the black masses that Headley had the deepest significance". There are those who contend that he inspired Edna Manley's landmark carving 'Negro Aroused', which was unveiled that year, and which "epitomised the awakening of the negro ... and a vision of a New Jerusalem". At a time when the masses yearned for someone to symbolise their aspirations, Headley's significance went far 'beyond the boundary'.

Simultaneously, Garvey proceeded to build a political movement around his philosophy of Black nationalism and launched Jamaica's first political party - the People's Political Party (PPP) in 1930. He also acquired Edelweiss Park at 76 Slipe Pen Road to establish a centre for the performing arts, which nurtured creative artists and provided for the masses a range of cultural activities.

On Saturdays, the urban masses made their way to Lucas Oval to see Headley bat, and on Sundays to Edelweiss Park for cultural entertainment and to hear Garvey speak. Cricket, the performing arts and politics were integral components of the emerging national movement.

Economically, however, neither Garvey nor the UNIA was doing particularly well. By 1935 Garvey could no longer obtain credit and was forced to seek assistance from the more affluent sections of the membership. One of his letters expressed the urgency of the moment.

"I am about to lose my home and all I possess unless in the next 30 days at most I can pay off US$10,000.00 of liabilities incurred to help the cause."

It was in these circumstances that Garvey left Jamaica in 1935 for a self-imposed exile in England.

On September 1, 1936, the movement for Jamaica's independence reached a new stage with the formation of the Jamaica Progressive League in Harlem, where Garvey had achieved his most far-reaching successes. That same year Ken Hill launched the National Reform Movement in Jamaica, and A.G.S. Coombs organised Jamaica's first National Trade Union. Then came 1938, when for three spectacular weeks, beginning in May, an islandwide labour rebellion brought the colonial administration to its knees and laid the foundation for modern Jamaica.

Headley's travail

Headley was the star of the West Indies team which toured England in 1939, and his consecutive centuries in the Test match at Lord's confirmed his genius. Nearby, in a rented house in Kensington, Garvey was recovering from a stroke and in dire straits. He had confided to a Jamaican colleague in London that he "left Jamaica a broken man, broken in spirit, broken in health and broken pocket". A newspaper report of May 1940 erroneously carried his death notice. On his sick bed, he was overwhelmed as he read the slanders of his opponents which dominated the obituaries, and died three weeks later on, June 10, in relative obscurity.

Headley returned to Jamaica in 1940, resumed duties with his old club, Lucas, and made himself available, not only for Jamaica but for communities islandwide. Even as he continued to make every sacrifice for cricket, the stubborn refusal of local cricket authorities to pay him as a professional cricketer created serious economic difficulties for him, as he shouldered the responsibilities of a wife and growing family.

The final insult came on the eve of the 1950 West Indies tour to England, when the authorities offered him £5 per week for the tour. Despite the confidential nature of the negotiations, details were leaked to the press and one newspaper editor in an article captioned 'What price Headley?' accused the great man of wanting to capitalise on his cricketing skills. What saved Headley from a fate similar to Garvey's was a contract worth £500 from the English Cricket Club, Bacup, to play in the Lancashire League. As a consequence, in 1950, it became Headley's turn for an 'exile' to England.

In 1953, the Jamaican masses intervened on behalf of their hero by launching a fund in The Daily Gleaner (which realised £1,183) to bring George Headley home to participate in the trial match and make himself available for selection to the West Indies team for the Test series against England.

Headley arrived to an unforgettable scene of exuberance and jubilation as his fellow Jamaicans welcomed him home. On January 15, 1954, he padded up for his last Test match, and the following year, at 46 years of age, played his last Senior Cup season for Kensington. By then, the House of Representatives and the Jamaica Cricket Board had collaborated to make him Jamaica's national cricket coach.

The decade of the 1960s was marked by a resurgence of black nationalism. In the general elections of 1962, Millard Johnson revived Garvey's People's Political Party and in North America the leadership of Martin Luther King and Malcolm X and Stokely Carmichael energised the struggle for racial equality and civil rights. It was against this background that the Jamaica Government in 1964 took the decision to bring Marcus Garvey's body home for reinterment in National Heroes Park.

In 1969, Headley began to come in from the cold. That year, a sculpture of his bust, executed by Alvin Marriott, was unveiled. Two years later, Headley was Jamaica's official representative at the funeral for Sir Leary Constantine in London. In 1973, he was the recipient of Norman Manley Award for Excellence, and that year he also received the Order of Distinction. Then, in 1979, the George Headley Stand was built at Sabina Park.

An Assessment

For C.L.R. James, "Garvey placed Africa and people of African descent in the consciousness of the modern world and in such a manner that they can never be removed again."

Both men imbued the ordinary Jamaican with a new sense of their possibilities in the modern world and laid the foundations on which Adolphe Roberts, Wilfred Domingo, Ken Hill, Norman Manley and Alexander Bustamante established Jamaica's claim for independence between 1936 and 1962.

Unfortunately, neither Garvey nor Headley was among those recognised or accorded a place of prominence when the island celebrated its independence on August 6, 1962. Ironically, a guest of honour to the Independence celebrations was Lord Milverton who, as governor in 1938, had placed every obstacle in the path of the aspirations of the Jamaican people, and imprisoned Bustamante, Ken Hill and Richard Hart in the process.

Arnold Bertram is the author of 'Jamaica at the Wicket: A Study of Jamaican Cricket and its Role in Shaping the Jamaican Society'. Email: redev.atb@gmail.com.