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A critical reconsideration of black nationalist origins in Malawian political assertiveness, focusing on the movement created by Jamaican populist Marcus Garvey. Though familiar with Garvey's ideas, the nation's first President--Hastings Kamuzu Banda--was not responsible for carrying them to Malawi. That distinction belongs to an earlier group of activists who--during the decades of Banda's absence from his homeland--stoked the fires of "Africa for the Africans" which Joseph Booth and John Chilembwe had first sparked a half-century before independence. Key among them was Isa Macdonald Lawrence who championed Garveyism, at first directly and later indirectly, planting black nationalist roots in Malawi's mid-twentieth century politics. Despite efforts to repress those Garveyist influences and replace them with a veneration of Banda's legacy, the echoes of Marcus Garvey and his vision of Africa for the Africans have reverberated through more than a century of Malawian history revealing the black nationalist influences embedded in its past. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]