Marcus Garvey [LoC George Grantham Bain Collection]

• YOU published details of the life of Marcus Garvey, a campaigner for black rights in the US, who advocated a return to Africa for Afro-Americans, (Black History Month: The making of Marcus Garvey, October 21).

He is said to have came from a humble background because his father was a stone mason and his mother was a seamstress. Why does the description humble always apply to the working class?

Stone masonry is a highly-skilled trade that has built cathedrals that still stand after many centuries. A seamstress is also a highly-skilled person. There is nothing humble about that.

The return-to-Africa-movement was a disaster for the people of the artificially created Liberia and Sierra Leone, which had former slaves living in London being carted there.

The newly-arrived Afro-Americans in Liberia, many of them former slaves and many of them now of mixed-race, became the colonialists; and like the white colonialists had the native people carry them in litters (chairs usually carried by four people).

The two countries have been racked by coup and counter-coups ever since, over this division.

WILSON JOHN HAIRE, N19