http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amy_Ashwood_Garvey
Amy Ashwood Garvey
Amy Ashwood Garvey (10 January 1897 – 11 May 1969) was a Jamaican Pan-Africanist activist and the first wife of Marcus Garvey.[1]
Born in Port Antonio, Jamaica as Amy Ashwood, she spent some years living in Panama, but returned to Jamaica to found the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) alongside Marcus Garvey in 1914. She organised a women’s section of the UNIA, and in 1918, she moved to the United States, where she worked as Garvey’s aide and as Secretary of the UNIA’s New York branch.[2]
Ashwood became a director of the Black Star Line Steamship Corporation, and founded the Negro World newspaper[2] before divorcing Marcus in 1922.[3] She then moved to Britain, where she struck up a friendship with Ladipo Solanke. Together, they founded the Nigerian Progress Union, and she later supported Solanke’s West African Students’ Union,[4] but in 1924 she returned to New York. There, she produced comedies with musician Sam Manning. Among these was “Brown Sugar,” a jazz musical production at the Lafayette Theater, which featured Manning and Fats Waller and his band.[5]
In 1934, she returned to London, and with Manning, she opened the Florence Mills Social Club in Carnaby Street,[6] a jazz club which became a gathering spot for supporters of Pan-Africanism.[2] She was also involved with establishing the International African Service Bureau and the London Afro-Women’s Centre. She returned to New York and then Jamaica, where she organised the J. A. G. Smith Political Party.[3]
In 1944, Ashwood again returned to New York, where she joined the West Indies National Council and the Council on African Affairs, and also campaigned for Adam Clayton Powell Jr. She moved back to Britain to organise the 1945 Manchester Pan-African Congress.[3]
In 1946, Ashwood moved to Liberia for three years, where she began a relationship with the country’s president, William Tubman. She then returned to London, where she founded the Association for the Advancement of Coloured People.[3] In 1959, she chaired an enquiry into race relations following the murder of Kelso Cochrane,[2] before returning to Africa in 1960, then touring the Americas and finally returning to Jamaica.[3]
- ^ Her date of birth is also given as 18 January in the African American National Biography, Volume 3, and as 28 January at //www.aaregistry.com/african_american_history/1954/Amy_Garvey_ and_frontline_activist.
- ^ a b c d Black History in Westminster, City of Westminster
- ^ a b c d e Garvey, Amy Ashwood, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
- ^ Hakim Adi, West Africans in Britain: 1900-1960
- ^ Eugene Chadbourne, Amy Ashwood
- ^ Garvey, Amy Ashwood (1897-1969), BlackPast.org
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amy_Jacques_Garvey
Amy Jacques Garvey
Amy Euphemia Jacques Garvey (December 31, 1895–July 25, 1973), born to George Samuel and Charlotte Henrietta (South) Jacques, in Kingston, Jamaica. According to the African American National Biography, Volume 3, and PBS, her birth year is 1896.
Amy Jacques Garvey was one of the pioneer Black women journalists and publishers of the 20th century, a fact that is often overlooked by historians. She came to New York in 1917 and soon after became involved with publishing of The Negro World newspaper in Harlem from its inception in August 1918. She became the second wife of Negro World publisher, Pan-Africanist and UNIA-ACL President General Marcus Garvey when they married on July 27, 1922, having been Amy Ashwood‘s bridesmaid at Marcus’ first wedding. During her tenure from 1924 to 1927 as a Negro World Associate Editor, Amy Jacques Garvey added a page called “Our Women and What They Think”. She is mother to Garvey’s two sons, Marcus Jr. and Julius.
Amy Jacques was primarily responsible for the publication in the 1920s of both volumes of the Philosophy & Opinions of Marcus Garvey. After her husband’s death in 1940, she became a contributing editor to a journal, the African, published in Harlem in the 1940s. Even after Garvey’s death, Amy Jacques persevered and remained true to the on-going quest for African liberation championed by her husband, writing countless articles and letters.
In November 1963 Amy Jacques Garvey visited Nigeria as a guest of Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe who was being installed as that nation’s first Governor-General. She published her own book, Garvey and Garveyism in 1963, as well as a booklet, Black Power in America: The Power of the Human Spirit in 1968. Her final work was the Philosophy and Opinions of Marcus Garvey volume III, written in conjunction with E.U. Essien-Udom.
Amy Jacques Garvey died on July 25, 1973, in the city of her birth, Kingston and is buried in Saint Andrew Parish Church.
External links
- Amy Jacques Garvey at UNIA-ACL.org
- Chapter 1 of biography, The Veiled Garvey: The Life and Times of Amy Jacques Garvey
- Amy Jacques Garvey at Find-A-Grave
Categories: 1895 births | 1973 deaths | UNIA members | Negro World contributors | Pan-Africanism | African American writers | Jamaican journalists | Jamaican women writers
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