By the time Ashwood met Marcus Garvey five years later, she had already developed a strong sense of race consciousness. However, her encounter with Garvey and subsequent relationship with him strengthened her interest in Pan-African politics. The two met in July 1914, when Garvey attended the weekly debate at the East Queen Street Baptist Church in Kingston. One of the featured speakers, Ashwood took the position that “morality does not increase with the march of civilization.” Garvey, who Ashwood later described as a “stocky figure with slightly drooping shoulders,” not only defended her point of view but also took the initiative to approach her afterward as she awaited her ride home. According to Ashwood, Garvey immediately expressed his love, declaring, “At last, I have found my star of destiny! I have found my Josephine!”16 By Garvey’s account, the encounter was far less dramatic. He only recalled being introduced to Ashwood by a colleague. Although the specific details of their initial encounter remain a mystery, what is certain is that the encounter between Garvey and Ashwood marked the beginning of a vibrant political relationship.
Together, Garvey and Ashwood worked in tandem to launch what would become the largest and most influential Pan-Africanist movement of the twentieth century. Drawing inspiration from Booker T. Washington, founder of the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, Garvey envisioned the UNIA as a benevolent organization committed to Washington’s ideals of racial uplift, self-help, and social activism. Washington’s Up from Slavery (1901), which emphasized the significance of black education, had a profound effect on Garvey, who upon reading it experienced an epiphany of his calling to become a “race leader.”17 Ashwood shared similar views to Garvey and credited their mutual interests in Pan-Africanism and racial uplift as the driving force behind the creation of the UNIA. Describing their collective political vision during these early years, Ashwood noted, “Our joint love for Africa and our concern for the welfare of our race urged us on to immediate action.” “Together we talked over the possibilities of forming an organisation to serve the needs of the peoples of African origin,” Ashwood explained, “[and] we spent many hours deliberating what exactly our aims should be and what means we should employ to achieve those aims.”18 Working closely together, Ashwood and Garvey began planning the first UNIA meeting.
Although historians have debated the extent of Ashwood’s formal role in establishing the organization, none deny the fundamental importance of her organizational skills and social networks to the UNIA’s success.19 The organization’s earliest meetings, for example, were held at the home of Ashwood’s parents, and Garvey secured some of his earliest financial supporters through these contacts.20 When the UNIA’s headquarters relocated to Harlem in 1917, Ashwood remained actively engaged in the organization’s affairs. In addition to serving as general secretary in the New York office, Ashwood played a fundamental role in popularizing the Negro World, the UNIA’s official newspaper. “From midnight until four in the morning,” she recalled, “Marcus and I would trudge around the streets of Harlem putting a slim copy of the Negro World under people’s doors.” By her own account, Ashwood also contributed to the financial growth of the UNIA, relying on her parents’ money to meet some of the organization’s growing expenses.21 During the UNIA’s early years, Ashwood helped to finance the Black Star Line Steamship Corporation (BSL), the UNIA’s transatlantic steamship enterprise and the organization’s largest and most significant business venture. In addition to helping raise the necessary funds for the BSL, she served as secretary and later as one of the directors.
FIGURE 1. Marcus Garvey on August 5, 1924. George Grantham Bain Collection, LC-USZ61-1854, Library of Congress.
In Harlem, Ashwood popularized black nationalist ideas on crowded street corners, using these public spaces as platforms to advance her political agenda.22 Joining Marcus Garvey and a diverse group of other black stepladder speakers in Harlem, Ashwood began delivering public speeches on street corners in 1918. On several occasions, Ashwood publicly recited poetry, including Paul Laurence Dunbar’s famous poem, “We Wear the Mask,” which shed light on the strategies black people employed to survive segregation, oppression, and daily degradation. In one public speech, Ashwood reminded Harlemites that the struggles facing black people in the United States were intertwined with the challenges facing people of African descent throughout the globe. Underscoring her Pan-African vision, Ashwood passionately argued, “The Negro question is no longer a local one, but of the Negroes of the world, joining hands and fighting for one common cause.” Reflecting her commitment to black political self-determination, Ashwood also reminded listeners that they “cannot attain Democracy unless they win it for themselves.”23 Ashwood’s public speeches on Harlem street corners popularized the black nationalist objectives of the UNIA, brought greater visibility to the organization, and certainly helped to boost its membership. By 1919, the UNIA attracted an estimated 35,000 members in Harlem alone.24
Among her various contributions, Ashwood’s early efforts to expand opportunities for women in the UNIA were perhaps the most significant. During its formative years, Ashwood maintained a vocal presence in the UNIA, encouraging the integration of women into the organization’s leadership structure. Through her efforts, Ashwood ensured that women would be well integrated into the UNIA’s constitution, and she also helped to create a system in which women would have opportunities to serve in both public and private roles. For example, each local UNIA division included a male and female president and vice president, and women actively participated in several auxiliaries that provided opportunities for them to develop leadership and organizing skills. Black women did not find equal opportunities to men in the UNIA, but the organization was, in some ways, one of the most progressive black political organizations of the period—when compared to other race organizations in which women were often confined to behind-the-scenes roles. Although Ashwood desired separate and equal roles for men and women, the UNIA adopted a hierarchal structure in which women had separate but unequal roles. Still, Ashwood must be credited for advocating the importance of women’s leadership in the UNIA’s early years, and her efforts certainly provided invaluable opportunities for many black women to participate in the rapidly expanding Pan-Africanist organization.25
While the UNIA experienced significant growth during these years, the personal relationship between Ashwood and Garvey became increasingly contentious. On December 25, 1919, the two were married in an extravagant ceremony at the UNIA’s Liberty Hall, initiating what became a brief and tumultuous union. Only three months later, the two were embroiled in a bitter public divorce. Garvey accused Ashwood of being unfaithful and drinking too much. Ashwood accused Garvey of abandoning the marriage and prioritizing the UNIA over his new wife. Ashwood vehemently denied Garvey’s accusations and Garvey denied hers. In the end, the rumors alone proved detrimental to Ashwood’s reputation—far more than Garvey’s. During a period in which ideas of “respectable” black womanhood dominated public discourse, the accusations of adultery and alcoholism, whether truthful or not, could easily taint a black woman’s public image.26 This was certainly true for Ashwood, who encountered scorn and resentment from some UNIA members in the aftermath of the divorce. Resilient in her efforts to advance Pan-Africanist politics and now motivated by a desire “to work in a more intimate fashion in order to help [black] women to find themselves and rise in life,” Ashwood set out to continue her political work—far away from her ex-husband and the public spectacle surrounding their divorce. In 1922, she left New York for London, where she joined a vibrant community of black activists and intellectuals from Nigeria, Ghana, Jamaica, and other British colonial territories.27 In 1924, she helped to establish the Nigerian Progress Union (NPU), an anticolonial organization, with Nigerian activist Ladipo Solanke. Years later, in 1935, she opened the International Afro Restaurant and then the Florence Mills Social Parlour, which both provided significant spaces for black activists and intellectuals in London to socialize and forge political alliances.28
Despite her departure from the UNIA, Amy Ashwood’s efforts left a lasting impact on the movement. In the United States, the organization witnessed rapid growth in its female membership with women serving in various capacities on national and international levels. Generally confined to the drudgery of domestic work, black women found a sense of empowerment in the UNIA, and the organization functioned as a political incubator in which many black women became politicized and trained for future leadership. Drawn to the UNIA by a series of factors, these women represent the widespread reach of Garveyism, which profoundly altered the lives of black men and women from a wide range of socioeconomic and educational backgrounds in various parts of the world. Indeed, the global reach of the organization cannot be overlooked. Whereas other race organizations of the period, including the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the National Urban League (NUL), maintained a membership base in the United States, UNIA chapters could be found in more than forty countries worldwide, including Costa Rica, South Africa, and Trinidad.29 The global organization captured the imagination of a wide range of Afro-descended people across the globe, crossing cultural, ethnic, and class lines.
Throughout the United States, Canada, and other parts of the African diaspora, the UNIA played a critical part in fueling the racial consciousness of black women from all walks of life. Audley “Queen Mother” Moore, who became active in the Garvey movement in Louisiana, was drawn to Garvey’s Pan-Africanist teachings during the early 1920s. Born in New Iberia, Louisiana, in 1898, Moore relocated to New Orleans with her younger sisters, Eloise and Lorita, where she worked as a hairdresser and later in domestic service.30 Recounting a story many years later, Moore vividly describes the first time she heard Garvey speak in New Orleans, sometime around 1920: “We heard that Garvey was coming to New Orleans, but the police would not allow him to speak. Garvey came and they arrested him. The people raised so much sand until they had to let him out the next night.” When local police officials tried to block Garvey from speaking during the second night, she and others pulled out guns in defense of Garvey’s right to speak.31 Moore’s first encounter with Garvey that evening marked the beginning of her political journey into black nationalist and radical politics. In Moore’s words, “Garvey brought something very beautiful to us—Africa for the Africans. He made us conscious of the fact that we belong to a big continent, with all of its gold and diamonds and riches. . . . That we were somebody . . . That we had a right to be restored to our proper selves.”32
Similar to Moore, other black women credited Garvey for awakening their political consciousness during this period. Violet Blackman, a resident of Toronto, Canada, praised Garvey for igniting her interest in race activism. Blackman, who had relocated to Toronto from the United States in 1920, joined the UNIA for the first time in Toronto, which provided one of the few public platforms available for Canadian black men and women during this period to challenge racism and discrimination. At the time she joined the movement, Blackman recalls a period of intense antiblack racism and racial segregation. “You couldn’t get any position,” Blackman said, “regardless [of] who you were and how educated you were, other than housework, because even if the employer would employ you, those that you had to work with would not work with you.” Like so many other black men and women in Canada during this period, Blackman turned to the Garvey movement as a step toward securing equal rights and opportunities. “The UNIA was my heart and my soul and my life,” Blackman admitted.33 As a member of the organization, Blackman found a vibrant community of activists and intellectuals who were committed to improving the lives of people of African descent. With the assistance of other Garveyite women in Toronto, Blackman ran a children’s program, hosted various community events, and assisted younger black women seeking jobs in the area.34
Lucy Lastrappe, a native of Georgia who resided in Chicago during this period, had similar memories of the UNIA. A gospel singer who went on to sing the lead in a quartet called the Universal Four during the 1930s, Lastrappe was drawn to the Pan-Africanist vision of Marcus Garvey. From 1922 to 1930, Lastrappe was an active member of the UNIA’s Division No. 23 in Chicago. Recalling her activities years later, Lastrappe expressed a sense of pride in her decision to become a Garveyite: “My work has not been easy and I’ve had my bitters and sweets, but I love my work and love the principles of the Universal Negro Improvement Association.” “I have had some good and bad times,” she added, “but I’m still working in the Cause of African Redemption, and . . . I want my work to be an inspiration to some girl or boy to take up the work and carry on until Africa is redeemed.”35 In black nationalist discourse of the period, African redemption meant the complete liberation of Africans and peoples of African descent from racism, European colonization, and global imperialism. Lastrappe’s comments underscore how this notion of African redemption was a central component of Garveyite philosophy.
In an era of strict gender roles, involvement in the UNIA enabled black women like Lastrappe to engage in political activities outside of the expected parameters of home and family.36 The ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920, which signaled an expansion of women’s political power, ultimately failed to live up to its promises for black women and other women of color; it took more than four decades before they experienced the full benefits of suffrage.37 Largely shut out of the formal political process, black women in the United States during the 1920s found opportunities to engage in political activity through predominantly black religious institutions and the black women’s club movement.38 In addition to these venues, women found some leadership opportunities in mainstream civil rights organizations such as the NAACP and the NUL. These opportunities, however, were limited in scope—often confined to behind-the-scenes roles.39 With few visible leadership positions available to black women during this period, the UNIA provided a unique opportunity for women to maintain public roles. For example, when the organization relocated to Harlem, three of the six directors listed on the certificate of incorporation were women: Carrie B. Mero, an activist from Massachusetts, and Harlemites Harriet Rogers and Irene M. Blackstone.40
Of these three women, Blackstone was the most well known in Harlem circles. A clubwoman and suffragist who previously served as president of the Negro Women’s Business League, Blackstone joined the UNIA in Harlem in 1917.41 Initially believing that it was unlikely for black men and women in the United States to obtain full citizenship rights, Blackstone embraced Garvey’s message and quickly became immersed in black nationalist politics. In addition to maintaining a position as one of the organization’s directors, she became president of the New York UNIA Ladies’ Division in 1917. During this period, Blackstone used her public platform in Harlem to advocate racial pride, boldly declaring in one speech, “I am American. I am black, and I am proud that I am black.”42 Reflecting her commitment to women’s rights and leadership opportunities, Blackstone encouraged black women to leave white women’s kitchens, urging them to build their own livelihoods by relying on their unique skills and creativity. In a passionate speech, delivered to a group of UNIA members in 1923, Blackstone advocated black economic empowerment and called on black men and women to boycott white-owned businesses.43 “Why,” she asked black Harlemites, “should all the white men come up here on your main streets—Fifth Avenue, Lenox Avenue, Seventh and Eighth Avenues [in Harlem] and have all of the business places?” “If you would boycott the white business man in Harlem,” Blackstone continued, “you would find black businesses on the avenue.”44 Her comments underscore her endorsement of black capitalism as a vehicle for bolstering black economic power—an idea that was consistent with the UNIA’s mission.
Several other black women in Harlem found similar visible leadership opportunities in the UNIA during the 1920s. This was certainly the case for Ethel Maud Collins. Born in Brown’s Town, Jamaica, near Garvey’s hometown of St. Ann’s Bay, in 1892, Collins migra
ted to the United States during the Great Migration.45 As thousands of black southerners abandoned life in the Jim Crow South, collectively resisting white supremacy and searching for better prospects in the urban North and West, Caribbean migrants also arrived in the United States in record numbers.46 From 1899 to 1927, more than 140,000 Caribbean migrants entered the United States.47 The period between 1922 and 1923 witnessed a sharp increase in Caribbean immigration before the restrictive Immigration Act of 1924 took effect.48 The vast majority of these immigrants relocated to New York City. By the onset of the Great Depression, almost 20 percent of blacks in Harlem were of Caribbean origin.49
When Collins arrived in Harlem in 1920, she joined a vibrant community of Afro-Caribbean men and women. While the organization’s base of support extended far beyond the city, the UNIA in Harlem became a significant political space for Afro-Caribbean men and women, as well as other peoples of African descent, to engage in the struggle to end global white supremacy. Though the specific circumstances surrounding her decision to join the UNIA are unclear, Collins became an active member of the Garvey movement within a year of arriving in the United States.50 During the organization’s heyday, Collins frequently attended UNIA meetings in Harlem, doing clerical work for the organization and investing in the Black Star Line.51 A single woman who resided with her siblings, Collins operated a beauty shop from her Fifth Avenue apartment to maintain a livelihood and likely used it as a space to disseminate Garveyism.52 By the late 1920s, she was appointed executive secretary of the Garvey Club in New York and acting secretary of the UNIA.53
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