Mason Alexander Hargrave (March 20, 1923 – December 12, 1988) was an organizer in the African-American community. He spent his later years in

Cleveland Cleveland is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Cuyahoga County. Located along the southern shore of Lake Erie, it is situated across the Canada–U.S. maritime border and approximately west of the Ohio-Pennsylvania st ...

Ohio Ohio ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern region of the United States. It borders Lake Erie to the north, Pennsylvania to the east, West Virginia to the southeast, Kentucky to the southwest, Indiana to the ...

, in a leadership role at the

United Negro Improvement Association The Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League (UNIA-ACL) is a black nationalist fraternal organization founded by Marcus Garvey, a Jamaican immigrant to the United States, and his then-wife Amy Ashwood Garvey. ...

(UNIA). He was involved in promoting use of the red, black, and green

Pan-African flag The pan-African flag (also known as the Afro-American flag, Black Liberation flag, UNIA flag, and various other names) is an ethnic flag representing pan-Africanism, the African diaspora, and/or black nationalism. A tri-color flag, it consist ...

and had it flown over

Cleveland City Hall Cleveland City Hall is the seat of government for the City of Cleveland, Ohio, and the home of Cleveland City Council and the office of the Mayor of Cleveland. It opened in 1916 and is located at 601 Lakeside Avenue in the Civic Center area of ...

in 1974. He was an acolyte of

Marcus Garvey Marcus Mosiah Garvey Jr. (17 August 188710 June 1940) was a Jamaican political activist. He was the founder and first President-General of the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League (UNIA-ACL) (commonly known a ...

and wrote a letter of "testimony" to U.S. Representative

John Conyers John James Conyers Jr. (May 16, 1929October 27, 2019) was an American politician of the Democratic Party who served as a U.S. representative from Michigan from 1965 to 2017. Conyers was the sixth-longest serving member of Congress and the lo ...

in 1987 objecting to mail fraud charges against Garvey. He succeeded Vernon Wilson as President-General of the UNIA.

Cleo Miller Cleophus Miller (born September 5, 1951)"Cleo Miller."
''www.nfl.com.'' Retrieved October 18, 2013.< ...

succeeded him as head of the UNIA in 1988. Some of Hargrave's UNIA related papers are part of the Robert A. Hill collection at

Duke University Duke University is a Private university, private research university in Durham, North Carolina, United States. Founded by Methodists and Quakers in the present-day city of Trinity, North Carolina, Trinity in 1838, the school moved to Durham in 1 ...

. A book of Marcus Garvey and UNIA papers is dedicated to Hargrave and notes his work preserving documents at the organization.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Hargrave, Mason Alexander 1923 births 1988 deaths African-American activists Activists from Cleveland 20th-century African-American people