A gifted writer, Bailey found a public platform from which to share her ideas in a range of black newspapers, including the Jamaica Standard and the Kingston Daily Gleaner. These opportunities helped to catapult Bailey’s political career, expanding her visibility and influence in Jamaica. Moreover, these newspapers linked Bailey and many others to black communities in other parts of the diaspora.62 Writing in Public Opinion in 1938, Bailey argued, “The problems of the labouring classes of this country are many, and must be solved; and we who claim to have the milk of human kindness in our breasts must spare no effort to show our dissatisfaction and to see about remedying these conditions. It ought to be done. It can be done.”63
Like other members of the black middle class in Jamaica, as elsewhere in the diaspora, Bailey advocated for racial uplift and sought to improve the social conditions of the less fortunate.64 In another article, entitled “Don’t Shoot: Educate,” Bailey criticized the black middle class and elite Jamaicans who dismissed the working poor and categorized them as uneducated “brutes.” Drawing a comparison between Jamaica and the United States, Bailey pointed out the shortcomings of Jamaican educators: “The [United States] can boast of hundreds of schools that have as their aim the educational advancement of the Negroes . . . and vocational schools turn out thousands every year who are fit to take their place in the machinery of the country; alas, no Booker T. Washington sprang up from amidst the people to lay the foundations of a Jamaica Tuskegee.”65 With these words, Bailey implored black educators to acknowledge their complicity in educational inequality and disparity in Jamaica.
Bailey’s comments also highlight her diasporic vision. She understood the ways in which the experiences of black Jamaicans were intertwined with those of other people of color across the globe. In 1944, Bailey openly condemned racial prejudice in Jamaica as in the United States: “The USA will not be the great country it is meant to be unless it resolves this [colour] question, and puts in practice the Four Freedoms, as it affects the Negro Race.” “Jamaica . . . will be a miserable tragedy,” she continued, “if it fails to realize that not only must black, brown, and white sit side by side in the same schools, but they must be given like opportunities when they leave to occupy the positions they deserve, irrespective of class, colour or creed.”66
Bailey’s statements closely mirrored the poetry of fellow Jamaican writer Una Marson. Born in 1905 in St. Elizabeth, Marson relocated to London during the early 1930s and later worked for the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). Similar to Bailey, Marson praised Garvey’s political strategies and tactics and credited the black nationalist leader for helping to expand her political vision and increase her race consciousness.67 During the mid-twentieth century, Marson used poetry as one of the literary forms to condemn racial inequality and imagine a better future for people of African descent. In Marson’s poem “For There Will Come a Time,” for example, she dreams of a world free of racial prejudice:
For their will come
A time when all races of the earth,
Grown weary of the inner urge for gain,
Grown sick of all the fatness of themselves
And their boasted prejudice and pride,
Will see this vision68
Marson’s poetry and Amy Bailey’s voluminous writings exemplify the ways in which black nationalist women creatively used the black press and various literary mediums to condemn the twentieth-century global color line. Importantly, these women’s writings also call attention to how black activists articulated the imagined linkages that form a diasporic consciousness—linkages that were not inevitable but carefully constructed.69
Like Marson, Bailey, and others, Amy Ashwood was actively engaged in “forging diaspora”—vigorously pursuing relationships with activists in other parts of the globe and creating spaces and mediums through which to engage in global political dialogue and collective political action.70 During the 1940s, London became one of the key sites from which Ashwood sought to do so. With the influx of black intellectuals and activists from various parts of the diaspora during the early twentieth century, Britain—despite its status as an “empire state”—had become the epicenter of Pan-Africanist movements.71
Black men and women from the United States, the Caribbean, and Africa—Paul Robeson, Claudia Jones, and Jomo Kenyatta, among them—found in Britain a crucial space in which to engage in critical dialogue and political organizing. The majority of these individuals relocated from Britain’s four West African colonies—Nigeria, the Gold Coast, Sierra Leone, and the Gambia.72 By relocating to Britain during this period, these men and women were in a unique position from which to challenge colonialism and lobby for the rights of colonized peoples in British territories.73 For similar reasons, many black activists from British colonies in the Caribbean relocated to Britain during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In 1900, for example, Trinidadian Henry Sylvester Williams and his colleagues convened the first Pan-African conference in London. In several other cities, including Liverpool and Edinburgh, black activists established various organizations that helped to heighten race consciousness and champion anticolonial and black radical politics.74
Like many of these individuals, Amy Ashwood Garvey found a political home in London, where she had relocated in 1922—three years after her marriage to Garvey ended. Shortly after her arrival, Ashwood had joined forces with Nigerian activist Ladipo Solanke to establish the Nigerian Progress Union (NPU) in 1924.75 Reflecting some of the same objectives of Garvey’s UNIA, including political self-determination and self-sufficiency, the NPU drew a modest following of mostly Nigerian students. During this period, Ashwood traveled to New York, where she produced several plays including Hey Hey, a musical comedy, which debuted at the Lafayette Theater in 1926. The play, which received widespread acclaim, featured a diverse cast of black performers, including Ashwood’s business partner, Trinidadian calypsonian Sam Manning, and well-known actress Alberta Pryme.76 Based on a catchphrase from the Harlem Renaissance, Hey Hey told the story of two African American men who traveled to Africa in search of their true soulmates after their wives evicted them out of their homes.77 A subsequent play entitled Brown Sugar, released one year later, told the story of a brown-skinned girl being pursued by an American mechanic and an Indian prince.78 While Ashwood left Britain for a short period during the mid-1920s, she returned in the mid-1930s, when she opened up the International Afro Restaurant and then the Florence Mills Social Parlour, which both provided significant spaces for black activists and intellectuals to socialize and forge political alliances in London.79 During this period, Ashwood worked closely with several black intellectuals, including Trinidadian journalists and activists George Padmore and C. L. R. James, in the International African Service Bureau (IASB), a revolutionary black organization that advocated for anticolonialism, political self-determination, and racial equality.80 In 1935, when Italy invaded Ethiopia, Ashwood joined other IASB leaders at London’s famous Trafalgar Square, where she delivered a rousing speech in support of Ethiopia.81 Articulating a commitment to anticolonialism, she boldly declared, “We will not tolerate the invasion of Abyssinia. . . . You said you brought us from Africa to Christianize us, but the only Christianity you gave us was three hundred and more years of enslavement.” Further critiquing white imperialists, Ashwood added, “You have talked of ‘The White Man’s Burden.’ . . . Now we are carrying yours and standing between you and fascism.”82 Her statements succinctly capture the black nationalist woman leader’s anticolonialist stance and her fearless commitment to advancing this cause.
FIGURE 14. Amy Ashwood and the Friends of Ethiopia organization at a demonstration in Trafalgar Square (London), to protest Italy’s Invasion of Ethiopia in 1935. Bettmann/Contributor via Getty Images.
This unwavering commitment to securing universal black liberation would continue to inform Ashwood’s political work during the 1940s. Though Ashwood spent much of her time in London during the 1940s, she also traveled extensive
ly to Africa, the United States, and the Caribbean. In April 1944, she attended the Africa—New Perspectives Conference by the Council of African Affairs (CAA) at the Institute for International Democracy in New York City. Established in 1937 by celebrity-activist Paul Robeson and Max Yergan, one-time secretary of the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) in South Africa, the CAA became one of the leading Pan-Africanist and anticolonial organizations of the twentieth century, providing a bridge between people of African descent in the United States and Africans on the continent. The organization’s 1944 conference on Africa underscores its leaders’ commitment to advancing black liberation in Africa and other parts of the globe. In her public remarks at the CAA’s 1944 conference, Ashwood emphasized the significance of Africa in struggles for universal black liberation and praised the council’s focus on the continent. “My thoughts go back . . . to 25 years ago and the difficulty of getting people in the United States to think of the word Africa,” she noted. “And when we gather here to endorse the program of this Council, I feel honored and privileged,” she admitted.
Endorsing black internationalism, Ashwood argued that black people needed to “broaden our vision and broaden our policy to include other groups of people who have been suffering as we have suffered.” Maintaining the belief that interracial political unity was a necessary step toward ending colonial rule, Ashwood added, “I see no ill in finding white allies.”83 Ashwood’s statements exemplify how the activist departed from Marcus Garvey’s “race first” political views and certainly marks a shift in her own ideological trajectory.84 Similar to Mittie Maude Lena Gordon, Ashwood championed Pan-Africanism and black nationalism as political strategies to combat racial oppression yet also adopted an interracialist perspective that allowed for greater collaboration with white allies.85 In her travels abroad, Ashwood continued to pursue new political alliances, often crossing racial, geographical, and gender lines. In 1944, she became president of Jamaica’s “Jag-Smith Party,” a progressive political party founded by J. A. G. Smith, a Jamaican attorney and planter.86 Describing the motivations behind her involvement in the party, Ashwood suggested that black women’s leadership in mainstream political parties was inevitable: “The rapid forward movement of the Negro woman in Jamaica was bound to bring her within the ambit of politics.”87
Ashwood’s statements underscore how she combined her interests in women’s rights with Pan-Africanism and black nationalism. In April 1944, she traveled to the United States, where she sought out new political alliances, attempted to organize black women workers, and publicly championed black labor rights. In a public statement during her visit, Ashwood demanded that Caribbean women working in the United States receive wages comparable to those of white men.88 Her unwavering commitment to advancing women’s rights and opportunities served as a driving force behind her decision to announce plans to launch an international women’s magazine in 1944. She envisioned the magazine as a means to “bring together the women, especially those of the darker races, so that they may work for the betterment of all.”89 Although Ashwood never managed to publish the women’s magazine, her plans reflected her continued efforts to advance women’s rights and black internationalist politics during the 1940s.
Ashwood’s diasporic political activities mirrored those of Maymie De Mena, who continued to champion black nationalist and internationalist politics on the local and national levels. After relocating to Jamaica from the United States during the early 1930s, De Mena married Percival Aiken, a Garveyite activist from Kingston, and quickly became involved in local and national politics. In a 1942 letter, De Mena pledged her unwavering commitment to black nationalist politics and reaffirmed her desire to help improve conditions for black men and women in Jamaica. “I shall always be a member of the [UNIA],” she assured a fellow Garveyite leader. “I am not as young as I used to be,” she explained, “but I am still doing my best to help Jamaica, the home of my adoption.”90 In February 1942, she launched a women’s column in the New Negro Voice—a Garveyite newspaper based in Kingston.91 Reminiscent of Amy Jacques Garvey’s earlier women’s page of the Negro World and similar to Ashwood’s plans for a women’s magazine, De Mena’s column in the New Negro Voice highlighted the writings of black nationalist women and showcased the significant contributions of black women across the globe.
In deciding to launch a women’s newspaper column in Jamaica, De Mena continued her efforts to advance proto-feminist politics. Indeed, during the duration of her political career, De Mena often challenged male chauvinism in black nationalist movements and called for more opportunities for women in the ranks of leadership. In September 1942, De Mena held the first of several “women’s nights” in Kingston, which drew a diverse group of black women intellectuals, including Jacques Garvey, writer Amy Bailey, and labor organizer Adina Spencer.92 These gatherings, held monthly from 1942 to 1943, drew both men and women and provided opportunities for black nationalist women leaders to address crucial issues of the day. Not surprisingly, they offered platforms for these women to articulate proto-feminism, calling for expanded opportunities for black women in black nationalist movements and in Jamaican society at large. In one meeting, held in December 1942, Jacques Garvey delivered a rousing speech entitled “Women’s Place in the World.” In another session, held in June 1943, Bailey passionately appealed to black men in the audience to respect and honor black women, arguing that “whatever a woman’s station is in life, she should be treated with respect.”93
Similar to Ashwood, De Mena also became active in Jamaica’s labor movement and worked closely with a number of black women activists in Jamaica entering the realm of formal politics. In the late 1940s, she ran for a position on the legislative council in East St. Andrew’s, Jamaica. Although she did not win the seat, De Mena’s run for office provides yet another example of the range of political strategies black nationalist women employed in their efforts to expand rights and opportunities for people of African descent during this period.94
Amy Jacques Garvey and the Greater Liberia Bill
As Maymie De Mena fought for black rights in Jamaica and Amy Ashwood engaged in black internationalist politics moving from locale to locale, Amy Jacques Garvey was at the forefront of an unprecedented diasporic movement for black self-determination. An influential and long-time proponent of black emigration, Jacques Garvey relocated to Jamaica with her husband, Marcus Garvey, in the aftermath of his 1927 deportation. Determined to reinvigorate the UNIA and thereby continue the fight for black liberation in Jamaica and across the globe, Garvey relocated to London in 1935. Meanwhile, Jacques Garvey chose to stay in Jamaica to raise their two sons: Marcus Garvey Jr., born in 1930, and Julius Garvey, born in 1933.95 When Garvey passed away in June 1940, Jacques Garvey played a key role in the continued dissemination of black nationalism throughout the African diaspora, writing for various newspapers in Jamaica and later completing the important text Garvey and Garveyism in 1958 (published in 1963).96
During World War II, Jacques Garvey amplified her efforts to improve the lives of black men and women in Jamaica and across the African diaspora. Social conditions in Jamaica had improved little since she left for the United States in 1917. Similar to other Anglophone Caribbean countries during this period—including Trinidad, Grenada, and Barbados—Jamaica remained under British colonial rule. Despite representing the majority of the population in Jamaica, the lives of black men and women were circumscribed by a racial hierarchy in which whites and nonblack ethnic groups—such as the Chinese and those classified as “colored”—controlled much of the island’s domestic economy. Within this context, black Jamaicans found limited job and educational opportunities in a repressive colonial system designed to “keep them in their place” at the bottom of the social and economic ladder. Against this backdrop, black men and women on the island were actively engaged in the struggle for labor rights in the face of violent opposition and state repression. While much of the labor unrest in Britain’s Caribbean colonies, w
hich erupted during the mid-1930s, had subsided by the start of World War II, circumstances in Jamaica were growing increasingly unstable. Tensions between Jamaican politicians Alexander Bustamante and Norman Manley, combined with interparty conflicts and the colonial authority’s divisive strategies, created a violent political atmosphere in Jamaica during the 1940s.97
Jacques Garvey was deeply concerned about these developments taking place in Jamaica. Yet, she understood that the national concerns were linked to global ones, and while she became increasingly involved in Jamaican politics, she was also engaged in a larger struggle for global black liberation. During the early 1940s, she turned her attention to the Greater Liberia Bill, which she envisioned as a vehicle for advancing the cause of “African redemption” and improving the future of black men and women across the African diaspora. In her view, the Greater Liberia Bill was a viable solution to the social and economic challenges facing people of African descent by making it possible to establish an autonomous black nation-state during a historical moment of political and economic uncertainty. Following U.S. Senator Theodore Bilbo’s unsuccessful presentation before Congress in April 1939 and the start of a war in Europe in December of that year, the bill had quickly become a nonissue. However, when Jacques Garvey learned of Senator Bilbo’s desire to reintroduce the bill in 1944, she launched an international pro-emigration campaign, calling on black men and women across the diaspora to support the bill.98
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