AMY JACQUES GARVEY BEYOND MARCUS GARVEY TO FEMINISM

Feeling Rebloggy

Amy was a lot more than just Marcus Garvey's wife, especially after he was imprisoned.

“The Veiled Garvey: The Life and Times of Amy Jacques Garvey” is the first book-length biography of this important but unsung figure. 

Born in Jamaica in 1895 to an educated “brown” family, Amy Jacques suffered from bouts of malaria and, in order to live in a malaria-free area, moved in 1917 to Harlem. There she became involved in the UNIA, serving first as a traveling secretary and later as private secretary to its leader, to whom she was married in 1922. 

The following year, the government brought charges against Marcus Garvey — claiming fraudulent sale of shares in the UNIA’s black steamship line; over the next years he was imprisoned and eventually deported. (A number of factors — including the hostility of J. Edgar Hoover, Marcus Garvey’s lack of business acumen, and the antipathy of other black leaders — are said to have contributed to Garvey’s downfall.)

Thrust by these troubles, in her husband’s absence, into a prominent position in the UNIA, Amy campaigned for his release, kept his words and philosophy before the public, and developed a female Pan Africanist philosophy on the women’s pages of The Negro World.

“She blossomed,” says Taylor, “by honing her journalistic skills, writing commentary on the international situation, and refining her discourse on Jim Crow.” But it was after her husband’s death in 1940, she says, that Amy Jacques Garvey took flight as an independent thinker. While the UNIA lauded the promise of black capitalism, for example, Amy took note of its limitations. And she became less concerned with getting people to join the UNIA, says Taylor, than with getting Pan African ideas into existing organizations.

http://www.berkeley.edu/news/berkeleyan/2003/02/26_garvey.shtml

I've also read that Marcus did not hand off power over the UNIA to Amy while he was in prison. That may be one reason the organization did not survive and transform. But after reading Elaine Brown's book on how violent some black men got within the Black Panthers when they thought their [toxic] masculinity was being challenged, this decision/action of Marcus' may have protected her

...On the women’s page of the Negro World, black women activists articulated the position Sojourner Truth had emphasized so many years earlier: 

• The struggle for women’s rights cannot be divorced from the struggle for civil and human rights.

Following the ratification of the nineteenth amendment in August 1920, the Jamaican black nationalist Amy Jacques Garvey praised the amendment for expanding opportunities for women in the public sphere. She was not oblivious to its limitations especially as it pertained to black women in the United States. But, [Harvey] saw it as a source of inspiration and a step towards greater liberation for all women.

In [Harvey's] writings during this period, she often drew comparisons to white feminist movements in her efforts to encourage black women to push harder in the fight for their liberation and the liberation of other people of color. 

“White women are rallying all their forces,” she argued, “and [they are] uniting regardless of national boundaries to save their race from destruction and preserve its ideals for posterity.” “We see them in the law courts pleading as advocates; they preside as judges and administer laws; while in less numbers, yet they are to be seen in parliaments, congresses and council chambers legislating for their people.”

“Be not discouraged black women of the world,” she added, “but push forward, regardless of the lack of appreciation shown [to] you. A race must be saved, a country must be redeemed...” 

Read More:

http://www.aaihs.org/on-transnational-black-feminism/