Amy Jacques Garvey

As you read…….

           

           Amy Jacques Garvey is most known in for her contributions to her husband’s movement and legacy. As you read, think about how the prejudice of racism and sexism of the time played a role in the narrative written about Amy’s contributions to the historical roots of feminism. Also, even though Amy was a contributor to and editor of texts related to her husband, Marcus Garvey, and Garveyism, her contributions remain largely absent from the “essential” feminists texts regarding the roots of feminism.

Biographical Details

Amy Jacques Garvey was born in 1836 in Jamaica as the oldest child in a middle class family. Sharing in her father’s “deep interest in political issues” and “racial progress,” she spent her school age years reading “foreign newspapers and periodicals” and completing a high school education. (Adler 349)

When her father died during her young adult years, Amy became a clerk in overseeing “her father’s estate.” (Adler 351) Within four years of embarking on this endeavor, she learned and mastered “law to the point that she could” manage “every legal aspect of the estate.” (Alder 351) In 1918, Amy set out for the United States wanting “to see the “land of opportunity and limitations” according to her “father’s description.” (Adler 351) “By defying her family’s wishes and going to a foreign country alone…Amy demonstrated independence of mind, courage, and thirst for knowledge-all of which characterized…the rest of her life.” (Adler 351)

               In 1919, Ms. Garvey became “affiliated with the” United Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) and married Marcus Garvey, the leader of the association, soon thereafter. (Taylor 107) The marriage would produce two sons in 1930 and 1933. (Adler 366) Amy would endure motherhood without extensive support from her husband. In her words, “Marcus continually sacrificed his family for the movement.” (Adler 366) Amy wrote many editorials expressing the need for woman to rise up and take the lead if men were unwilling or unable to do for the sake of race. Marcus Garvey would move to London in 1935, leaving Amy and the children behind in the states. Amy and the children would join him two years later. (Adler 367) The marriage would end in 1937 when Amy returned to Jamaica at the advice of her son’s doctor without notifying Marcus, who was away in Canada. (Adler 367)

               When Marcus died suddenly of a stroke, Amy, still dedicated to the beliefs and principles of Black Nationalism and the liberation, continued to edit and publish the works of her late husband. She contributed through her intellectual, oratory, literary, activist and leadership abilities. (Adler 346) Garvey’s work and efforts have often been buried beneath her husband’s accomplishments and work in the Black Nationalist movement.  As one scholar stated, "the life and works of Amy Jacques Garvey…deserve  attention  from  students of  both  women's  liberation  and Black  nationalism" few  scholars have  heeded  this  claim.” (Adler 346)

Contributions to Feminism

               Amy Jacques Garvey was the “unofficial leader of the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), the largest Pan-African movement in the twentieth century.”  (Taylor 104) In her editorials written in the UNIA’s newspaper editorials and the editing and publishing of her husband’s work that she herself contributed greatly to, Amy created what Ula Taylor terms “community feminism.” As Taylor states,

“Community feminism allowed black women to function within their communities as both helpmates and leaders. An examination of Jacques-Garvey’s editorials published in the Negro World, the propaganda newspaper for the UNIA, reveals her brand of community feminism and how her choices were political—transforming her from a personal secretary, editor, and wife into an indispensable UNIA leader during the 1920s.” (Taylor 104)

Absent from many narratives about Amy’s contribution to feminism and the Black Nationalist movement is the fact that Amy would skim newspapers and magazines “for important articles and then explain their content and significance to” her husband, the public leader of the movement. (Adler 353) This undoubtedly places Amy as “a cocreator” of the philosophy of Black Nationalism, aka Garveyism. (Adler 354)

Amy was an editor and contributor to the UNIA publication, the “Negro World.” Her editorial section entitled, “Our Woman and What They Think” ran from 1924-1927. (Guy-Sheftall 12) It is important to note for historical context in the roots of feminism, that white feminist were “in hibernation after winning the right to vote” beginning in 1920 and lasting until the second wave of feminism in the 1960s. (Adler 346) During the “hibernation” of white feminist, Amy successfully printed, distributed, and spoke publicly about “a distinctive theory and program for social change” in Black Nationalism. (Adler 347) Amy’s dedication, work, and priceless contributions, “sparked and sustained “the most powerful Black nationalist movement ever established in the United States” while supporting sustaining “sustain “the largest Black organization ever developed in the United States.” (Adler 346,348)).  Black Nationalism would be the basis for the black power movement throughout the 1960s and beyond. Amy Jacques Garvey’s contributions to Black Nationalism with a “community” feminist perspective and philosophy gave indispensable knowledge and “self-help” strategies to the diaspora of African people in the United States and across the world. Her contributions are very “essential” in the narrative of the historical roots of feminism and her story and her contributions need to be included in current feminist academic study.

Commentary on Amy Jacque Garvey’s editorial works in Words of Fire

In these editorials, Amy speaks to how America had further advancement on the equality of the sexes than any other country, but she also points out the added inequality present in being an African American woman versus a white woman in America. Race carried an extra burden of oppression in addition to the oppression of race. As Garvey points out, the unique strength of African American women surviving and overcoming the oppression of race and sex, "who is more deserving of admiration than the black woman, she who has borne the rigors of slavery, the deprivations consequent on a pauperized race? Yet she has suffered all with fortitude, and stand ever ready to help in the onward march to freedom and power" (Guy-Sheftall 94). This statement recognizes that America has made progress on issues of inequality, but there are still more to be addressed. Living in America was still a greater privilege to those with white skin, male and female. Garvey pointed out the greater burden of oppression experienced by African American women when she stated that "white women have greater opportunities to display their abilities because of the standing of both races" (Guy-Sheftall 94). She understood that the systemic and societal oppression African American women endured had additional chains to be broken than the chains of oppression on white women

Historical Context “Essential” to Black Feminism of Amy Jacques Garvey

            In her contributions to feminism and racial upliftment, Garvey supports Pan-Africanism and Black Nationalism, an ideology and context largely absent from the historical context of the roots of feminism, yet integral to understanding African American women’s voice in feminism. As Garvey stated, “it was essential for black women to develop a political consciousness to ‘uplift’ the race.” (Guy-Sheftall 89) It was necessary to “focus” on the needs of the race, as Garvey asserts, because of the greater and further systemic oppression and exploitation of a capitalistic society promoting consumerism and individual success through mass production that disproportionately affects African American men and women.

When Garvey states, “Ethiopia’s queens will reign again,” I feel it beckons the return to the equal existence of men and women present in civilizations past, before Europeans came into contact with African cultures and societies. The world individual or any word expressing the concept of individual did not exist in African societies whose culture understood the importance of the preserving the collective good of the whole – both human and nature.

            With this added historical context absent from the “essential” texts referenced in this blog, Garvey called African American women to remember the strength of the race before the diaspora of the black race. In ancient African civilizations women ruled alongside men, they were not intellectually or politically inferior to men. As Garvey instructs African American women, if men are unwilling to lead the way to a better existential condition for the black race and for humanity, then African American women will take the lead to ensure “victory” and “glory.” (Guy-Sheftall 94)  Drawing further on the history of the black race, Garvey teaches African American women in her writings to not be satisfied with liberation from the white male ruling class in America, but to “establish a civilization according to their own standards, and strive for world leadership. (Guy-Sheftall 93)

Discussion Question(s)

1.      Why was Amy Jacques Garvey’s contribution to feminism and racial freedom absent from “essential” feminist text?

2.      How did Amy’s work extend beyond a supportive role to her husband? Is this noteworthy to the historical roots of feminism?

References

Adler, Karen S. ""Always Leading Our Men in Service and Sacrifice": Amy Jacques Garvey, Feminist Black." Gender and Society 6.2 (1992): 346-375. November 2014. <http://www.jstor.org/stable/189992>.

Guy-Sheftall, Beverly. Words of Fire: An Anthology of African American Feminist Thought. New York: The New Press, 1995.

Taylor, Ula Y. ""Negro women are great thinkers as well as doers:" Amy Jacques-Garvey and Community Feminism 1924-1927." Journal of Women's History 12.2 (2000): 104-126.