Abakosem Sunsum 2018

Queen Mother Moore: What's the Hour of the Night?

“What’s the Hour of the Night?”

After four score years of freedom

Our so-called leaders say

That the Race has made great progress

And we face the dawn of day

But the day is not quite dawning

Millions of my peoples stand

Pleading at the bars of justice

For reparations and land

We’re not free in this country

And the truth is the light

So I turn to ask my watchman

“What’s the hour of the night?”

We died fighting for democracy

I admit this to be true

Yet countless Afrikan men and women

Have no homes or work to do

If we wish to see the daylight

Or the rising of the sun

We need our self-determination

Our own affair to run

Since only reparations will

Put freedom in our sight

Let us turn to ask the watchman

“What’s the hour of the night?”

Civil rights laws just for us

Is proof that we’re not free

How could we be fooled to think

We had a share in this democracy

When foreigners come here

They’re made citizens by choice

Citizenship was imposed upon us

We never had a voice

The passage of the 14^th amendment

Took away the right

So you’d better ask your watchman

“What’s the hour of the night?”

Marcus Garvey Quotes

  “All of us may not live to see the higher accomplishments of an Afrikan Empire, so strong and powerful as to compel the respect of mankind, but we in our lifetime, can so work and act as to make the dream a possibility in the next generation.”

“This is the day of racial activity, when each and every group of this great human family must exercise its own initiative and influence in its own protection, therefore, African people should be more determined today than they have ever been, because the mighty forces of the world are operating against non-organized groups of peoples, who are not ambitious enough to protect their own interests.”-       Marcus Garvey

“NATIONHOOD is the only means by which modern civilization can completely protect itself.Independence of nationality, independence of government, is the means of protecting not only the individual, but the group.Nationhood is the highest ideal of all peoples.”-       Marcus Garvey 

“The world does not count races and nations that have nothing. Point me to a weak nation and I will show you a people oppressed, abused, taken advantage of by others.Show me a weak race and I will show you a people reduced to serfdom, peonage and slavery.Show me a well organized nation, and I will show you a people and a nation respected by the world.”-       Marcus Garvey

  

Excerpted from The Philosophy And Opinions of Marcus Garvey(1968)(Ed.)Amy Jacques Garvey

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