The Veiled GARVEY gender & american culture Coeditors Thadious M. Davis Linda K. Kerber Editorial Advisory Board Nancy Cott Annette Kolodny Cathy N. Davidson Wendy Martin Jane Sherron De Hart Nell Irvin Painter Sara Evans Janice Radway Mary Kelley Barbara Sicherman The Veiled GARVEY The Life & Times of AMY JACQUES GARVEY ula yvette taylor The University of North Carolina Press Chapel Hill and London ∫ 2002 The University of North Carolina Press All rights reserved Manufactured in the United States of America Set in Adobe Garamond and Trajan types by Keystone Typesetting Inc. The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council on Library Resources. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Taylor, Ula Y. The veiled Garvey : the life and times of Amy Jacques Garvey / Ula Yvette Taylor. p. cm. — (Gender and American culture) Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn 0-8078-2718-5 (cloth: alk. paper) isbn 0-8078-5386-0 (pbk.: alk. paper) 1. Garvey, Amy Jacques. 2. African American women political activists—Biography. 3. Political activists—United States—Biography. 4. Feminists—United States— Biography. 5. Women intellectuals—United States— Biography. 6. Garvey, Marcus, 1887–1940. 7. Black nationalism—United States—History—20th century. 8. Pan-Africanism—History—20th century. 9. African American women—Political activity—History—20th century. 10. Feminism—United States—History—20th century. I. Title. II. Gender & American culture e185.97.g28 t39 2002 305.896%073%0092—dc21 2002018713 [b] cloth 06 05 04 03 02 54321 paper 06 05 04 03 02 54321 For my first teachers, my parents, William Taylor and Lillian Taylor, and my lifelong friend, Otis Campbell In loving memory of John Climmie Rogers, maternal grandfather Thretha Jackson, paternal grandmother contents Acknowledgments ix Introduction 1 1 The Formative Years, 1895–1917 6 2 Amy Jacques and the unia 18 3 I Only Live to Perpetuate the Ideas of My Husband 41 4 Our Women and What They Think 64 5 Back to Jamaica and Forward to Europe 91 6 New Freedoms, New Constraints 112 7 Single Motherhood 125 8 A Decade of Unity 143 9 The Fifth Pan-African Congress, 1945 165 10 Essays and Literature for a Pan-African World 175 11 Activism Closer to Home 194 12 The Progressive Radical 213 Conclusion 235 Notes 239 Selected Bibliography 281 Index 297 acknowledgments This book emerges out of my sincere appreciation and love for Pan- African freedom fighters. It began as a dissertation, and similar to most long-term research projects, I have matured tremendously with this text. Each successive draft conjured up new intellectual challenges that paral- leled both personal hardships and exciting triumphs. I cannot properly thank everyone in a few pages, so what follows is a modest attempt to express my gratitude to colleagues, friends, and family who o√ered sup- port and encouragement. Given that Amy Jacques Garvey represents the epitome of a diasporic subject, I conducted extensive research in New York City; Nashville, Ten- nessee; Cleveland, Ohio; Washington, D.C.; Kingston, Jamaica; Accra, Ghana; and London. Financial assistance from the Ford Foundation (dis- sertation and postdoctoral fellowships), the Schomburg Center for Re- search in Black Culture Residence Fellowship, and the University of Cali- fornia (uc), Berkeley (travel grants) was essential to completion of the archival research. I also appreciate the help I received from all of the archivists and reference librarians who pointed me in the proper direc- tion. I am extremely grateful to Beth Howse and Ann Shockley at Fisk University, Nashville; Diana Latachenere and Jonathan Mason at the Schomburg Center in New York City; and Eppie D. Edwards at the National Library of Jamaica. They always met my numerous requests with total cooperation and patience. At the University of North Carolina Press, my sponsoring editor, Sian Hunter, prodded me to rewrite when I lacked energy and focus. The anonymous readers o√ered valuable comments on how to improve the overall text. I am especially indebted to the perceptive critique o√ered by my dear friend, Chana Kai Lee. Her insightful suggestions and willing- ness to plow through a taxing rough draft have demonstrated not only her historical talents, intellectual sharpness, and, of course, endurance, but also how a close friend can be an extraordinarily generous and supportive colleague as well. Barbara Bair and Tera Hunter took time out from their work to give me valuable critical responses to earlier versions of various chapters. Kathy Checkvotich and Lynnéa Stephen provided editing ad- vice that helped me to present a more polished manuscript. As a result of their collective criticism, my book has fewer errors and obscurities than it would otherwise have contained. Many people guided me in preparing this book. During my graduate years at the University of California, Santa Barbara, Patricia Cohen, Douglas Daniels, Carl Harris, and Gerald Horne a≈rmed my passion for historical research. I found inspiration in the quality and intellectual breadth of their teaching and scholarship. I am especially indebted to Gerald Horne for the example of his own work and for his detailed commentary on mine. To Rupert Lewis, Tony Martin, Robert Hill, Bar- bara Bair, and Horace Campbell I am also deeply obligated. Their Garvey scholarship has been an indispensable foundation from which my own thought has proceeded. Advice and encouragement have come from many quarters, but I take special note of the following family members and friends with whom I discussed many of the ideas in this book. My cousin, Lynnette Wooten, read several chapters and o√ered critical insight; I owe her more than I can express. My aunt, Mary Wooten, provided scrumptious Sunday meals, wake-up calls, and warm advice. Saidiya Hartman, my heartfelt sister, gave me gentle counsel and unconditional friendship when I needed it the most. My weekly lunches with my comrade, VèVè Clark, provided me with much-needed laughs and relaxation. My grandmother, Willie Rogers, and my aunt, Priscilla Venable, cheerfully asked about ‘‘the book.’’ Both old and new friends—Otis Campbell, Venus Green, Kofi Hadjor, Marti Adams, Ralph Russell, Omar Garrett-Wray, Tamarra Lewis, Clau- dine Michel, Sharla Dundy-Millender, Kristy Bright, Shirley Burton, Je√rey Baker, Terry Lindsey, Javanè Strong, and Lamont Toney—o√ered support at pivotal moments. A special thanks to all of my colleagues and the sta√ in the Department of African American Studies at uc Berkeley. The final version of this book was actually written in the company of my nurturing father, William Taylor, and my beautiful sisters, Nan Taylor and Yolanda Taylor. Their willingness to listen to my ‘‘Amy’’ rambling and their questions regarding my work inspired me to write daily. I am blessed to have a loving ‘‘home.’’ For everything else, I am deeply grateful to God. x acknowledgments The Veiled GARVEY introduction The life and times of Amy Jacques Garvey challenge our understanding of Marcus Garvey and Garveyism and unveil the complicated reality of a black radical. Although Jacques Garvey was born in Jamaica on 31 De- cember 1895, empowered by her father’s teachings, she assumed her politi- cal identity in earnest in 1919, when she a≈liated herself with the Univer- sal Negro Improvement Association (unia) in Harlem, New York, as a private secretary to its leader, Marcus Garvey. As Garvey’s personal secre- tary, confidante, and later second wife, she worked closely with him to keep the movement afloat, and as the archivist for the organization, she kept meticulous records of his speeches and the e√orts of other activists determined to empower Africans at ‘‘home’’ and throughout the diaspora. Moreover, when Amy and Marcus married in 1922, she fully embraced the endeavor ‘‘to be conversant with subjects that would help in his career, and [to] try to make home a haven of rest and comfort for him.’’∞ This view of herself as a helpmate to Garvey would be transformed. As Jacques Garvey grew beyond the color and class boundaries that had permeated her world during her formative years, she became an independent Pan- African intellectual of stellar proportions. As a political journalist, Jacques Garvey unfailingly wrote about the shortcomings of Jim Crow America, while simultaneously presenting the unia as a viable alternative, creating a refined discourse on the politics of race in the United States. In addition, her editorials on the woman’s page in the unia’s newspaper, the Negro World, destabilized masculinist dis- course, o√ering a glimpse into the range and scope of feminism possible during the 1920s and a model of women as political beings who could change the world. In fact, Jacques Garvey’s writings were a key compo- nent of early black feminism. She was adamant that men fulfill certain gender-specific roles; nor did she question the prevailing ideology that women should be self-sacrificing wives. Jacques Garvey did, however, challenge myopic gender politics. Her politically diverse articles encour- aged women to navigate between both helpmate and leadership roles, and she was openly critical of black men who stifled options and choices for women. Amy Jacques Garvey, along with other ‘‘race women’’ at the dawn of the twentieth century, mastered what I call ‘‘community feminism,’’ a term that names the territory that Jacques Garvey was carving out—a territory that allowed her to join feminism and nationalism in a single coherent, consistent framework. At times, community feminism resembled a tug- of-war between feminist and nationalist paradigms, but it also provided a means of critiquing chauvinistic ideas of women as intellectually inferior. Essentially, community feminism permitted Jacques Garvey to balance her commitment to Garveyism and Pan-African ideas, and her commit- ment to her own personal development and feminist interests.