Hidden Figures: Amy Ashwood Garvey

Amy Ashwood Garvey was a Jamaican Pan-African activist and artist. The first wife of Marcus Garvey, she made significant contributions to the Pan Africanist movement; as well as feminism and community development in Britain, the Caribbean and West Africa.
Amy Ashwood was born in Port Antonio, Jamaica, on January 10, 1897. Taken to Panama as an infant, she returned in 1904 to Jamaica, where she met Marcus Garvey and co-founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) with him 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 City branch.
In 1918, they founded the Negro World newspaper together, and one year later, Garvey named her a director of the Black Star Line Steamship Corporation. The purpose of both Negro World and the Black Star Line was to connect African people across continents, with the Black Star Line specifically created to facilitate the transportation of goods and eventually African Americans throughout the African global economy.
Between 1932 and 1944, Ashwood Garvey bounced between New York and London, where she co-founded the Nigerian Progress Union (NPU), produced comedies with her companion, Sam Manning, opened the Florence Mills Social Club (a jazz club which became a gathering spot for supporters of Pan-Africanism), and helped to establish the International African Friends of Abyssinia, the International African Service Bureau, and the London Afro-Women's Centre. In 1944 she joined the West Indies National Council and the Council on African Affairs, and also campaigned for Adam Clayton Powell Jr.
During World War II, Ashwood Garvey returned to Jamaica, where she became active in politics in her home country. She founded a domestic science institute for girls in Jamaica, became eligible for a candidacy for legislature, and was actively engaged in the movement for self-government.
In 1946, Ashwood Garvey moved to Liberia for three years. Whilst there she researched the conditions for women in Nigeria and she gave talks to women's groups there. She then returned to London, helping to set up the "Afro Peoples Centre" in Ladbroke Grove in 1953. In the wake of the Notting Hill riots in 1958, she co-founded the Association for the Advancement of Coloured People. In 1959, she chaired an enquiry into race relations following the murder of Kelso Cochrane in London.
She died in Kingston, on May 3, 1969, and was buried in Kingston's Calvary cemetery.
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Links:
Amy Ashwood Garvey: Pan-Africanist, Feminist and Mrs. Marcus Garvey No. 1 or a Tale of Two Amies (Amazon):
www.amazon.com...
Amy Ashwood Garvey - 'Hidden Herstories' (KZbin):
• Video
Amy Ashwood Garvey - You Are A Man, Like Any Other Man (KZbin):
• Amy Ashwood Garvey Y...
Amy Garvey - Global Social Theory:
globalsocialth...
'The First Mrs Garvey: Pan-Africanism and feminism in the early 20th century British colonial Caribbean:'
agi.ac.za/sites...
'Amy Ashwood Garvey: A Forerunner in Pan-Africanist Feminism of the 20th Century:'
www.globalrese...
'Amy Ashwood Garvey: A Bibliographic Essay:'
gcadvocate.com/...
'Amy Ashwood Garvey: The Woman Behind Jamaican Pan-Africanism:'
digjamaica.com/...
Garvey, Amy Ashwood:
www.anb.org/vie...
Garvey, Amy Ashwood (1897-1969):
www.blackpast.o...
Amy Ashwood Garvey (Wikipedia):
en.wikipedia.o...