ENDURING LEGACIES OF MRS. GARVEY NO. 1:

A Review Essay of Tony Martin’s Amy Ashwood Garvey. Pan-Africanist, Feminist and Mrs. Marcus Garvey Number 1 (or, A Tale of Two Amies): Dover, MA: The Majority Press, 2007

I. Introduction

I have been doing some recent thinking about black women and leadership and want to put this discussion in this light. Those who know my earlier essay on Condoleezza Rice would already know of this interest. Here I want to focus on this question of black women and leadership by evaluating some of the enduring legacies, both positive and negative of a Pan-Africanist/feminist.1

Tony Martin ends his essay, “Amy Ashwood Garvey. Wife No. 1 (Jamaica Journal v. 20, no. 3, 1987: 32-36) as follows:

Still, in retrospect, it is worth examining the record for the mistakes as well as the examples worth emulating. I thought that I would begin then, using contemporary lenses, with a light-hearted, summary of these achievements and mistakes in the spirit of the notes on what a revolutionary woman should be doing, or not doing, circulated by Assata Shakur from Cuba a few years ago. I have divided these into 9 or 10 mistakes that we can learn from via Amy; and 9 or 10 features worth emulating.

Mistakes of an Activist Woman Not to Be Repeated

1. Never allow your new husband to bring your best friend, and maid of honor, especially if she is also called “Amy,” as his private secretary on your honeymoon (43). There is no such thing as a working honeymoon that would necessitate a private secretary, particularly when you have also fulfilled that role in the past. Listen to your sister-in-law, Indiana, Marcus’s sister, who thought this a bit too much. She remarked that she had never heard of a “chief bridesmaid going along on the honeymoon with the bride” (62).

2. If a short and “stocky figure with slightly drooping shoulders” (20), destined to be the world’s most well known Pan-African activist chases you down at the tramcar stop in Kingston, with adoration and desire, “with an intense light shining from his eyes,” this is not necessarily for a romantic future. It may be because he recognizes the skills you have to make him and his movement come alive. This is particularly true if you were already, at seventeen, the well-admired, principal speaker in the weekly literary debate in Kingston, already well-recognized by all for those skills of persuasion (20).

3. In spite of all your early work, to get the movement of the ground, i.e. from idea to reality, you may have to spend a life time trying to convince the world that you were indeed a co-founder of said movement. [Many groups or organizations including some portions of the UNIA would give her that credit (147, 161, 222, 243, 247, 250, 303, 305, 317-318].

4. If you had a lover in Panama that you continue to correspond with, do not leave the letters lying around, even if it is ten years since you all last saw each other and there is no easy airplane travel to jet you and him to each other’s amorous encounters (49-50, 55). Those letters will not provoke jealousy and lead your husband back to you. Indeed, they will be used as evidence of unfaithfulness later on in his attempt to divorce you, after he has already married a second woman and your best friend to whom you introduced him. Be careful what you put in letters, period. They may be used against you even by those who you thought were friends, like Hubert Harrison (98).

5. Keep in mind that polygamy for Black men is as natural as breathing and so it is not bigamy (a Western construct), but old-fashioned African polygamy, especially if all three of you at one point are sharing the same apartment and particularly if he is a world-class activist (90, 227). Instead of being jealous, either settle down to a happy three-some (three months after the marriage) or forget him. If he ordered $5000 worth of furniture for you, he and Wife No. 2 may fight to retain it after you break up, put it in storage and otherwise withhold furniture you thought was yours.

6. If it is prior to the sexual revolution of the ’60s, your normal sexual desires may be seen as perversions and not the contemporary women’s assumption of sexual pleasure. In fact, he may attempt to put you down as a prostitute, claim he rescued you from a life of debauchery (Ch. 4: 46-55, 95-102).

7. If you are separated and you have a lover on the side, this only makes matters worst. Remember he as a man will always attempt to retain the upper hand of virtue and even the law may be on his side. Make sure that your security system is working or else he may have someone break in; and if you get caught in bed naked, that is also going to go down in history (p.95).

8. Keep in mind your husband, in addition to having the best lawyers to defend him, will have years later a young, legally minded Pan-Africanist with well-documented, massive works like Race First and the ability to develop the New Marcus Garvey Library. In fact, an entire political/social movement may claim him as their prophet and he would be in fact named Jamaica’s first national hero

9. Make sure you finish and publish your work . . . doing numerous drafts, having many proposals and incomplete projects or beginning projects you never finish will not allow you to fully document your life yourself since more than likely you will, in Zora Hurston’s words, get twice the blame.

II. Overview

Yes, Amy’s life was in many ways Pan-Africanism made manifest, as Tony Martin concludes. Amy Ashwood Garvey. Pan-Africanist, Feminist and Mrs. Marcus Garvey Number 1 (or A Tale of Two Amies) is a welcome addition to his other diligent work in assembling The New Marcus Garvey Library. Identified as No. 4 in the series, this work’s appearance out of sequence is explained by Dr. Martin in his preface. He identifies this work as twenty-seven years in the making, delayed in part by the rather generous desire to see Lionel Yard’s Biography of Amy Ashwood Garvey, 1897-1969. Co-founder of the Universal Negro Improvement Association (Associated Publishers, 1988) published first. Indeed, the earlier essay to which I referred had identified itself as an excerpt from this then forthcoming work with a 1988 publication date. Martin indicates that this delay was a blessing in disguise as it allowed him to do additional research such as the Ghana piece; and subsequent collections became available as late as 2006, thereby giving him the kind of scopic project that we have now in this contribution. One has to unreservedly complement Dr. Martin for another major contribution to knowledge production of the African Diaspora. It reveals the historian at his best – numerous archives consulted, well-documented interviews, wide ranging analyses and a treasure trove of appendices for the future scholar.

By these means, Tony Martin reveals, in Amy Ashwood Garvey’s itinerant life, that she had already claimed what I have called elsewhere her “African Diaspora Citizenship” (McKittrick and Woods, Black Geographies, South End Press, 2007). Way ahead of contemporary mechanisms of swifter airline travel, Amy Ashwood had therefore lived out one aspect of the logic of pan-Africanist connections. Additionally she “saw herself as an equal participant in the movement and was not satisfied merely to be a supporter” (Reddock, 15). Ula Taylor in The Veiled Garvey identified for the 2nd Mrs. Garvey a concept of ‘community feminism’ to describe a woman who makes that choice of helpmate to her husband’s career, rather than actor in her own right. Still, as we shall see, Amy No. 2 would return to a single mother/extended family life choice, once her children’s health and well-being were in jeopardy.

By the end of her life, Amy Ashwood is reported to have traveled to “forty-two states of the U.S.A.; all the islands of the Caribbean, South and Central America; Europe as far north as Turkey and the British Isles, and in the West of Africa, she has made a detailed tour of Sierra Leone, Liberia, Nigeria, Gold Coast, French West Africa, French Equatorial Africa, British and French Cameroons, Spanish Guinea and the Belgian Congo” (Hillal H. Nadji, “A Garvey Comes Home to Africa,” Chicago Defender Magazine, August 6, 1949: p. 230). It is significant that many of these locations were visited more than once and that she traveled in the days when “by sea” was the normal mode of transportation to distant lands. What’s more, while in Africa, she traveled by road to remote locations for research and other purposes of family reconnection.

If dismemberment is a feature of diaspora, as is the process of re-creation, then Amy Ashwood Garvey’s life is a testament to that remembering. Ahead of Alex Haley’s Roots, she executed the identical feat, leading us to conclude that Haley, who was accused of plagiarizing Margaret Walker, may have been heavily influenced by Mrs. Ashwood Garvey’s journey . . . The details are too similar, down to the griot connecting the history (See Chapter 7, “African Roots,” pp. 196-235, esp. pp. 216-220).

Whereas the Haley story is the world-renowned iconic text in this area, though it has been suspected to be part fictional presentation, Amy Ashwood’s ancestry is verified and corroborated. And, she indeed was welcomed with all the pomp and circumstance befitting a royal return that this became, living for a while in the Asantehene’s palace, being given back her name Yaa Boahaimaa (pp. 220-221) and a piece of land if she wanted to stay there and build a life.

African re-connection is one of the major themes that runs through the Amy Ashwood story. And because she actually made the journeys back, another related theme is the challenge to the more idealistic aspects of Garvey’s ‘return to Africa,’ though living out its intentionality, becoming also a Liberian citizen. Thus at one point she correctly concludes that Africans in the diaspora cannot return to Africa in a colonizing project, without displacing others (as say the Israelis did the Palestinians). The subsequent experiences of diaspora/creole communities returning to Sierra Leone and Liberia are testament to that. It may have also explained one reason why Amy did not accept President Tubman’s offer of marriage. The mode of Tubman’s demise is a testament to this as well.

Yaa Boahaimaa’s Pan-Africanism then has purer and self-generating roots in her Granny Dabas story and references that aspect of Pan-Africanism that Martin documents in his The Pan African Connection. These often reside in the ‘flying home” stories and other stories of Pan-African connection. This also explains why this philosophy comes out of the Americas (especially the Caribbean), as they remained in the natural, emotive desires for reconnection of those separated forcibly from homeland. One also sees the cultural and spiritual connections of orisha, candomble, Santeria, and many other forms as playing out some of these African reconnections deliberately.

III. Chapter Dramas

Amy Ashwood Garvey. Pan-Africanist, Feminist and Mrs. Garvey No. 1 is divided into twelve well documented chapters. It also contains fourteen (14) appendices, an extensive bibliography with a helpful list of manuscript and archival collections, official court records, and an extensive list of interviews conducted by the author, with about forty-four (44) newspapers consulted. This adds up to being the kind of amazing archival research that historians spend years training their students to become adept at executing. Examining the textual body, we have a few short chapters at the start and at the end with the largest archival weight in the middle chapters.

“The Beginning” (16-19) includes a bit of an autobiographical fragment identifying her birth in 1897 in Jamaica, her working class African background, her schooling and her Granny Dabas story of Ashanti origins which would be corroborated by Amy herself later in her life as the source of the “passion in her heart for Africa” (p.18). Her “I dreamt dreams” (18) prepares her then for Marcus’s own dreams of an organizational structure to realize those dreams. In other words, dream meets dream, and they turned out to be pretty much interrelated if not always identical.

Chapter 2 is “Napoleon Meets His Josephine” (20-31), which describes the meeting between Marcus and this Amy, following her successful lead debate speech in Kingston. Already a brilliant orator, at seventeen, in July 1914, this oratorical genius would help Marcus move the dream of an organization to reality. It would also serve Amy well throughout her life and had reached a fine art according to all commentators who heard her speak. It is this first meeting and subsequent organizational work that allowed her to claim that she was a co-founder of the UNIA, its first member and its first secretary. In my estimation, and that of a variety of scholars (e.g., Reddock, Taylor, Bair, Yard), this is what qualifies her for her continuous claim for co-founder status which was being denied her by Marcus and Amy No. 2. All the commensurate rewards (intellectual and material) that she ended up fighting for throughout her life were linked to this denied status. So, while Garvey had in Martin’s words “conceived and planned” the Universal Negro Improvement Association and the African Communities League (22), founding an organization as we all know requires more than a dream. Thus, Amy was tasked with membership and the laying out and documenting of its initial objectives, published in October 1914, under the hand of the secretary, Amy Ashwood clearly.

One of those objectives as it pertains to Black women would remain a main element in her own life’s path and institutes what scholars like Rhoda Reddock identifies as the initial feminist aspect of the UNIA. Reddock in an unpublished paper “The First Mrs. Garvey and Others: Pan-Africanism and Feminism in the Early 20th Century British Colonial Caribbean,” which she graciously made available to me, argues that “the deliberate structuring of women’s involvement in the organization is usually credited to the early influence of Amy Ashwood Garvey, Garvey’s first wife” (11). According to Reddock, while Martin and the Garvey sons reject that claim, suggesting that she had exaggerated her role, Amy Ashwood continues to be referred to as a co-founder and research done for this work itself allows one to support that assertion well.

For one thing, it is well documented that most of the men of that period and the major nationalist movements had wives/women who did the hard organizational work, often without credit. This tendency feminist historians have had to subsequently reconfigure, once they got us past the great man understanding of the world, without reinstating a great woman equivalent per se. The two Mrs. Garveys, if we are able to bring them together for a moment, did a lot of the organizational work – one in the initial co-founding/structuring; the other as helpmate and life partner who kept alive through publishing and other means (often at great cost to herself) the ‘philosophy and opinions’ of Marcus Garvey. And there were several other women and men active in developing the UNIA/ACL.

Clearly, the woman who is not willing to subordinate her own desires and dreams to that of her man’s often is the one to opt out of the relationship. As was the case here also, this works in favor of the woman/women ready to invest strategically. Still, as Ula Taylor documents, once her children’s well being was at risk, Mrs. Garvey No. 2 made radically different moves. The recent research on the status and meaning of “wife” in African feminist terms has been able to clarify this point very well. A wife for example loses her power in her lineage once she goes over to the husband’s domicile and gets back some of that power to the extent that she produces children, especially boys. The second Mrs. Garvey then acquires some of this kind of power in addition. The first Mrs. Garvey attains that power in her lineage once she returns to Africa but of course does not stay to receive all its benefits.

In that important second chapter as well, Tony Martin documents that many of the debates of the early UNIA were on the topic of women, concerns which seemed to have been imbedded at its origins (women’s intellect, women’s influence). As we move through the text though, it is clear that Martin’s subject location and political positioning in the defense of Marcus Garvey’s “race first” pan-Africanist politics has him lean more towards the 2nd Mrs. Garvey. In his assessment, he often doubts the veracity of the first Mrs. Garvey in numerous ways: “Amy’s claims are probably fictional” (22), “if Amy can be believed” (27), “according to one version of the story” (27); “although she contradictorily claimed” (28); “unreliable testimony” (29), “fanciful and erratic later recollections” (29); “there may be some truth embedded somewhere in this account” (p. 29, emphases mine). These are explainable given Martin’s larger project of redemption through scholarship of the important contributions of Marcus Garvey and the UNIA.

The elusive first sexual adventures of Amy who travels to Panama with her parent and there meets Allen Cumberbatch is the subject of Chapter 3, titled “Panama Love and New York Marriage” (32-45). Allen, who was about ten years older than Amy Garvey and from all accounts a suave and well-dressed bachelor, clearly set a high bar as far as romance was concerned. Marcus Garvey had much larger preoccupations at this time, much to the chagrin of Amy who obviously wanted more. Amy’s letters to Marcus leading up to her departure for New York (the one cited would be embarrassing to anyone with a feminist streak, as she too wanted more than romance – to leave Panama, to be part of a world movement, better clothing, care and the realization of dreams initially shared). In Martin’s words: “As the fall of 1919 wore on Amy and Marcus seemed poised on the brink of spectacular success. The dream that they had dared to dream in those Kingston days of 1914 was now all but reality” (41).

The elaborate UNIA wedding between Marcus and Amy Ashwood in December, 1919 becomes in some ways both the realization of that dream but also the ending as we will see. The choice of maid of honor and the “working honeymoon” (43) – i.e., the logic of the installed end – is also operational. In this section as well is the famous story of the women blocking the bullets from killing Marcus (pp. 38-39). Martin reveals that despite Garvey’s undermining of the story, under oath Marcus’s testimony during the mail fraud trial comes “closer to Amy’s accounts” (40).

Messy divorces, and this was one in the public eye of that time, are filled with rancorous and exaggerated claims and complaints and those are much in evidence here. So in fairness one has to come to the truth without taking either side. When it is a world class activist as Garvey was, with a historical legacy to be cherished, the task is even more complicated . . . which is the caution that we embark with as we examine the legacies of Mrs. Garvey No. 1.

The “eternal triangle,” a major theme of this book, begins in Chapter 4, “Eternal Triangles or ‘Amy, I Will Marry You if the Baby is not Even Mine.’” I think the secondary title is unfortunate though it carries Trini picong and tabloid-style gossip. The latter seems to be a charge leveled by Marcus in order to assuage his own actions. Clearly an affair with Amy No. 2 had already been embarked upon and, subsequently, an illegal marriage without the benefit of a completed divorce. Amy’s extensive legal deposition appears as Appendix 3, “Deponent Denies Most Emphatically Having Extramarital Sex” (330-339), an affidavit dated August 30, 1920, for the Supreme Court of New York. For me, this has to stand up over gossip. The evidence Marcus uses at this point for his counter charge are letters to and from Allen Cumberbatch. Here Amy Ashwood also denies an excessive drinking charge (336) as another attempt to defame her and as part of the abuse pattern which she identifies. This aspect of the Garvey story is in the “too much information” category, for here one sees the human foibles at their worst on both sides.

Chapter 5 sustains this argument under the title “A Woman’s Scorn” (pp. 80-135) but is more significant for its documentation of the very positive decades long relationship with the Caribbean entertainer, calypsonian and cultural activist from Trinidad, Sam Manning. The “eternal triangle” argument, begun in prior chapters, remains consistent given that, even beyond the death of all parties, as can be seen from this book, the interest remains. As popular psychology now tells us, emotional connections remain in relationships even after they are over, and often manifest themselves in anger. Here is a relationship that could not be severed even by divorce or death.

Financial remunerations sought by an indigent first wife, the documentation of the legacy, the maintenance and use of the name, and Amy Ashwood’s involvement with the Garvey remains become the downside then of the more significant contributions to Pan-Africanism of all concerned. But rather than demonizing Amy Ashwood, there is another argument. As Reddock shows for similar activist women:

For here as well is the beginning of Amy’s third leg of activism. This time in London via the work with the Nigerian Progress Union “conceived, born, and mothered by Amy,” according to Ladipo Solanke, who honors her with the honorable Yoruba title “Iyalode” (87). In this way, the subsequent African decolonization and independence activity bears some of her stamp. According to Martin: “At this point Amy seems to have seen her success with the Nigerian Progress Union as a repudiation of Garvey’s Pan-Africanism, which she thought tended to view Africans worldwide as essentially one people, whatever their local peculiarities” (88). Amy was clearly ahead of the more contemporary argument against essentialism.

But more interestingly in line with her growing feminist sensibilities Amy at one point indicated that she was “responsible neither to Garvey not to anybody else for her moral conduct” and, further, that “she could not understand an American value system that would brand her behavior immoral” (95). When accused of tastelessness and backstabbing by Garvey’s second wife, Amy Ashwood is on fair game when she can respond, “Someday, I will tell the world how a wife really feels when she has been stabbed in the back, for I was that wife” (161). Amy was hard-pressed to understand a value system which allowed men one mode of conduct, as testified by Garvey’s already polygamous or bigamous actions, and women another. And in Martin’s view at his most generous:

So in this chapter, Martin also documents well the burlesques which Amy creates with Sam Manning, one of them lampooning Garvey. Indeed this chapter serves as very important documentation of the creative contributions of Manning and of Mrs. Garvey’s involvement with the arts.

Further activism with London left intellectuals is tagged under the Chapter 6, “Following the Communist Line” (136-195), though there is no evidence that she “followed the communist positions” even though she would be influenced by their arguments, supported and defended them and would maintain friendships with people like Claudia Jones, C.L.R. James, and of course George Padmore. Still most of these people who would be identified hysterically as communists by both the British and U.S. state apparatuses never maintained straight communist positions, often tempered by Pan-Africanism as in the case of Padmore and James and to a certain extent Jones as well. The opening of her restaurant/salon in London’s west end provided the kind of space where activists of Pan-Africanist orientation could meet without interference. Thus Martin documents that “she became a pivotal figure around who revolved a brilliant coterie of young African and Caribbean activists . . . These were young men who before long would see that struggle through to political independence in the Pan-African world” (139-140).

Added to that Amy’s role and presence in London Pan-Africanism is well documented: 1) The formation of the African Friends of Abyssinia (IAFA) in 1935, which led the struggle against the fascist invasion of Ethiopia; 2) her famous speech in Trafalgar Square; 3) the relationships with Paul Robeson and the Council of African Affairs (1944 conference in London on “Africa – New Perspectives”; and 4) her role in the convening of the Manchester 5th Pan African Congress of 1945.

Amy Ashwood ended up being present at most of the 20th century’s Pan-Africanist organizing ranging from the UNIA through the pre- and post-independence activities of Africa and Caribbean countries, early African diaspora feminist activism (as Beverly Guy-Sheftall documents it in “Black Women and Feminism in the African Diaspora” in Decolonzing the Academy) coming up to and even touching the Black Power period when she was already an eighty-year old on her last legs, still desiring to be buried like DuBois in Africa.

Amy, in many ways, became the major conduit for the operationalizing of some of the early UNIA’s projections for an independent Africa and for Black community activism. Controversially then, it may be fair to say that Garveyism is not only the “philosophy and opinions of Marcus Garvey,” as wife no. 2 suggests, but the entire package of Marcus Garvey and his wives’ contributions.

Thus, when she sees Marcus for the final time alive in London, Amy generously reflects on their dreams. She is touched, she says, as she witnesses the chasm between them and felt sadness and sympathy; in her words: “not as wife that my heart went out to him; it was as Co-founder and Collaborator in the earliest and most momentous stages of the building of the most far-flung Racial Spiritual Revolutionary Movement . . . ” (147, emphasis mine). Garvey reciprocates in verse and she sees him from a distance in Hyde Park, still with his tiger-like oratorical skill. Thus, she concludes, “he was a great symbol, the inimitable propagandist, the virtuous champion of human rights, the nemesis of white supremacy the world over” (148). And so she leaves him to the “eternal substances of his greatness” (148).

Amy Ashwood knew that she was dealing with an internationally-known phenomenon, but she also knew that as a woman confronting such a legacy she had to invent her self along the way – as women like Zora Neale Hurston or Ida B. Wells Barnett did in that period. She had to reclaim her own past and her own rights and fight for those consistently. This it seems to me is what drove her rather than pure spitefulness in wanting to tear down the Garvey legacy in which she no doubt shared. There is ample evidence of this throughout the book, though one can (as with all readings) make a case for its opposite in terms of interpretation. These were after all activist/intellectuals without family resources or institutional affiliations. These were also strong-willed independent women looking for the same kind of consistent mate support that the men were looking for in their wives.

Amy would have studied enough (or intuitively known from Caribbean patterns) of African polygamy that there is something that remains – regardless of whatever else happens and however many subsequent wives are taken – and that is “first wife privilege.” Amy Ashwood never gave up the fact that she was the wronged party in the whole sequence of events and therefore also never gave up the fact that she was the true and legitimate Mrs. Garvey. This can also explain why she never subsequently married even when she had opportunities to do so at the highest levels and to assure her that much-needed economic security. This African diaspora polygamy reading is the conclusion that all sane African assessments came too independently of each other...that, under African polygamy, this struggle would be non-existent if Garvey had handled it as such. Azikiwe‘s paper says as much in the West African Pilot (205). Amy for her part indicates concerning the Tubman proposal that “marrying him would bring plenty glory to us all but my first life would change, I would no longer be free.” So in my view it is not so much the fear of being pushed aside once more as Martin concludes (208). For while she is naturally wary of the Jacques example of betrayal, paramount also is her desire not to be bound by those protocols which she would have been subjected to as first lady. And above all she was Marcus Garvey’s No. 1 wife.

The Garveys’ generation were, after all, the first generation of international activists, in a sense, and their mistakes were writ large, as large as they themselves were. A more recent case may perhaps be that of Winnie and Nelson Mandela. There was a similar response from Coretta Scott King when Nelson Mandela tried to coax her into being his second wife. In Coretta’s case, she could see an independent life and the benefits of being Mrs. Martin Luther King far outweighed emotionally whatever the economic well-being that would accrue from being first lady somewhere in Africa.

So the aspects of this book that I find most enduring, while of course the earlier sections are perhaps more titillating, were the chapters in the dead center of the book which deal with “African Roots” (196-235) especially Chapter 7 and Chapter 9, “Back to Africa” (262-284). In the first of these is where is documented Amy Ashwood’s bold reclaiming of her African ancestry ahead of Alex Haley and actually prefiguring the kind of DNA scientific placements that are now possible as reported by Henry Louis Gates in terms of matching new world DNA samples with those collected on the continent to striking results.

In Africa, Amy’s pan-Africanism comes together conceptually with her feminism. She sees struggling African women but also meets queen mothers holding the reigns of power like paramount chief Woki Massaquoi who tells her, “Daughter of Africa welcome home!” (212). She joins an African women’s secret society and also gains access to the Asantehene’s royal palace through King Prempeh. She attended the most spectacular of African events like a Royal Durbar with all the African gold from head to toe which a friend of mind calls ‘African bling.’

Her pre-Haley “Roots” experience is documented from page 216 and is worth the journey past the other new world dramas. It is also aided by earlier Pan-African connections she had made in London with people like J.B. Danquah. As it turned out, Amy was related to one wing of the Ashanti royal family, the Darmanhene or king of Darman himself. It makes sense therefore that such a family in the new world would have propelled its daughter to make those connections and thus bring practical reality to the aspect of Garvey that is linked to “Back to Africa.” And the level of welcome she received there was both befitting the first wife of the world’s most well-known Pan-Africanist as well as a returning home “daughter of Africa.” The truth is that many of the elders in the last generation had enough information to make those connections, if not the means. Today it is not unusual for Africans to identify physiognomy and body typologies from observing features of new world Africans. The author of this Garvey book was thankfully able to similarly retrace Mrs. Garvey’s discovery in the Kumasi and Darman area.

Amy deliberately navigated both the royal aspects of African culture as well as the day to day struggle of regular folk. Her proposal to write a book on Mother Africa and her subsequent outlines foreshadow African feminist work on the order of scholars like Philomena Steady, ’Molara Ogundipe Leslie, Ifi Adadiume, Ronke Oyewumi and so on who either as anthropologists or sociologists have examined African gender systems. Prior to that, Toni Cade Bambara who would edit The Black Woman (1970) and Margaret Busby subsequently Daughters of Africa (1995).

The outline of the book on the Black woman (p. 228) and an appendix (377-378) indicate that this was a work well within her capability but needing as we know the kind of institutional support that scholars today assume. It includes for example sections on “African women’s role in the family,” covering issues like her role as wife, the issue of polygamy, and sexual life within those systems. But it also addresses initiation issues, health hazards, restrictions on girls’ lives via taboos, and an interesting section on issues of self-realization such as leadership, economic opportunities and the like. The recently passed “African Protocol on Women” (2005) – which comes together well as Reddock demonstrates in her introduction to Feminist Africa 7 (Issue 7: December, 2006) – with the recent decisions to make the African Diaspora the 6th Region of the African Union can similarly be seen as a development from that early ground work. In many ways, what Amy Ashwood did was sketch out a research agenda, much of which is being filled in now by a variety of African women themselves across the continent. For in her person she brought together these two streams.

Amy Ashwood’s work as an organizer is demonstrated well finally through her work in the Caribbean. In what is now defined as Caribbean feminism, one would have to re-locate Garvey solidly along with people like Claudia Jones, as I have argued elsewhere, and other women of that generation like Audrey Jeffers, Una Marson and so on. Veronica Gregg’s recent edited collection, Caribbean Women, provides us with a nice range of writings by these women. The “Caribbean Summer,” Chapter 8 (236-261), reveals a kind of organizational travel similar to what Marcus did pre-UNIA, this time with a focus on organizing women in various Caribbean islands.

In this period, though, Amy reconnected with friends, gave numerous speeches, and charged the Barbados Women’s Alliance. By then she would have been already in her mid sixties, still maintaining an active traveling schedule. Throughout this period as well, there are numerous references to her being co-founder of the UNIA from various avenues such as a full of praise editorial from the Barbados Observer, which described her visit as commensurate with a “towering greatness in her own right” (249-251). The timing of her lectures in Trinidad in places like the Himalaya Club indicates to me that these were lectures that people like my mother and aunt (who were both active in women’s associations at the time) would have no doubt attended.

Bearing all the hallmarks of an organizational style, which we tend not to see any more but which was also evident in someone like Ella Baker, who was called the godmother of SNCC, the technique is being able to put organizations together and leave them for those on the ground to grow. This group centered leadership approach attempted to move beyond messianic leadership; it recognized leadership as shared and shared leadership as the best approach for longevity of a movement. Perhaps this was the same pattern that we see developed in her early days with Marcus Garvey and which of course generated that initial impasse.

Amy Ashwood was in many ways a precursor of current organizational structures that now seem normal. In London, her Afro-Woman’s Center in the Ladbroke Grove area provided services to the developing Afro-Caribbean community in London, and foreshadowed contemporary organizations and agencies that receive state and city funding as they provide needed services to the London Black communities.

She also tried to create an African Literary Agency (257), which I hasten to say we still need. Her friendship and collaboration with Claudia Jones allowed there to be two other important bridging institutions – the West Indian Gazette and the London Carnival, both of which she is identified as supporting.

In terms of intellectual work, as an African diaspora activist/intellectual, she outlined the Mother Africa series (238) which was to include several volumes, a phenomenal work which perhaps could not have been realizable under her conditions. Indeed one project like Women Writing Africa of the Feminist Press has required close to twenty years, a team that comes from all those regions and numerous journeys in addition to conferences and collection efforts on behalf of the general editors. The UNESCO volume, General History of Africa, spanned a similar 20 year period and a variety of editors and scholars. Perhaps the latter is the closest to what Amy Ashwood Garvey had in mind.

As she comes to the end of her life, Amy sees the losses of friends and family but nevertheless continues. A final chapter, “Marcus Garvey Again” (Chapter 10, pp. 285-309) becomes anti-climatic as she presided in what can be seen as a final pyrrhic victory as Wife No. 1, overseeing the London end of the return home of the Garvey remains for interment in Jamaica as a national hero. She creates her last will and testament in which she identifies herself as a Liberian citizen; and she meets briefly with some of the new U.S. Black Power groups, although she was clearly out of touch with the full range of the various ideological positions.

In the end, she was without resources, something which became almost a staple of that group of activists. She petitioned Tubman who responded to her but by then it was too late. In the end, Martin tries to bring us back to the big picture – this woman’s contribution to Pan-Africanism in her own right, beginning with her quote concerning her understanding of her relationship with Garvey not as husband but as collaborator in the “greatest social uplift movement.” In the end Martin concludes, “the most consistent ideological current running through her life was her Pan-African interest in the freedom of Africa and the upliftment of Africa’s sons and daughters in whichever continent they might be found. In some ways Amy may even be seen as a more typical Pan-Africanist than Garvey” (319).

IV. Conclusion

In many ways, Tony Martin’s Amy Ashwood Garvey, Pan-Africanist, Feminist and Mrs. Garvey Number 1 (or A Tale of Two Amies) provides a major service in the ongoing intellectual process of “completing the picture.” Beyond the now near mythological or mytho-legendary status of Marcus Garvey, Martin’s contribution has to be seen as filling in the more human dimensions of Garvey and the mistakes both he and his wives made in the end. In other words, the contribution of this work and its importance has to be seen in relation to his earlier and ongoing work in developing the New Marcus Garvey Library but also his work on Pan-Africanism in general.

Martin himself had already in the 1980’s contributed to the 1987 international conference on Marcus Garvey, now published as Garvey: His Work and Impact, edited by Rupert Lewis and Patrick Bryan (Africa World Press, 1991), an essay on “Women in the Garvey Movement” (67-73), in which he identifies that some of the highest positions in the UNIA were held by women like Henrietta Vinton Davis.

The example of Tony Martin’s relentless scopic research over 27 years which has unearthed all kinds of important materials is not easy to replicate. This is work which can be taken in wonderful directions, some of which I have already signaled. With Lionel Yard’s work, Biography of Amy Ashwood Garvey, 1897-1969: Co-Founder of the Universal Negro Improvement Association (1988); Ula Taylor’s work on Mrs. Garvey No. 2, The Veiled Garvey, The Life and Times of Amy Jacques Garvey (University of North Carolina Press, 2002); and Lewis and Bryan’s collection, Garvey: His Work and Impact (Africa World Press, 1991), we have the means to do this kind of analysis. Perhaps a forum, symposium or conference on Pan-Africanism and Feminism is worth pursuing. And with this I would suggest there is enough, with my own forthcoming work on Claudia Jones, to teach a course on the subject.

This year, Amy Ashwood Garvey would have been 110 years old. Above all, Martin’s contribution is a fitting testament to this important Pan-Africanist/feminist. Laid out as it is, Martin’s work lets us see the strengths and weaknesses, mistakes and successes of some of our most significant actors in last century – in the interest of the advancement of African and African diaspora peoples worldwide.

Successful Examples for Future Generations of Activist Women

Notes and References

1 The review was presented at the National Library of Trindad and Tobago Port of Spain, Trinidad, July 24, 2007 during her tenure as Visiting Professor, Liberal Arts at the University of the West Indies, St. Augustine.

Carole Boyce Davies. “Enduring Legacies of Mrs. Garvey No. 1:,” PROUDFLESH: A New Afrikan Journal of Culture, Politics & Consciousness: Issue 6, 2007.