Amy Jacques Garvey: a lifelong association with the UNIA

The 110th anniversary of the birth of the two wives of national hero Marcus Garvey will occur within the next two weeks. December 31 will mark the birthday of Amy Jacques Garvey, the second wife, while January 10 will mark the birthday of the first wife Amy Ashwood Garvey. This is an insight into the life of Jacques Garvey, provided by the Africa Liberation Committee in Kingston. Look next week for Ashwood Garvey’s story.

When the first child of George and Charlotte Jacques was born on New Year’s Eve in 1896, little would they know the part she would play in world history. For their daughter Amy went on to spend a lifetime in the historic Garvey movement, which in the early 20th century challenged the prevailing ideas and practices of racism and became the largest Pan African movement ever.

Today, the world acknowledges the singular contribution which Amy Jacques Garvey made to the development of that movement.

In some ways her childhood did prepare her for the role she was to play. As a child she was known to be very intellectually inclined, more interested in her books than in playing like other children. And her father would hold regular discussions with her on politics and international affairs. She attended St Patrick’s school on Windward Road, Deaconess High School (now St Hugh’s) and then Wolmer’s Girls School. After school she became a legal secretary to the family solicitor TR McMillan. All these skills were to prove invaluable for her work in the UNIA, the organisation founded by Marcus Garvey.

What did not prepare her for this work was her social upbringing which was fairly middle class having the racial and class assumptions of the time. Amy has said she remembers being ashamed of her father coming to her school because he was too black!

A trip to the United States in 1918 when the Garvey movement was in its heyday would change that attitude. There was no way that anyone could ignore what was happening in Harlem, in particular the headquarters of the UNIA where thousands gathered weekly to hear the words of Marcus Garvey. Amy became curious and attended one of the public meetings at Liberty Hall and was impressed. A personal meeting with the leader Marcus Garvey the following day convinced her this was the right movement and ended with her taking a job, thus beginning a lifelong association.

Within the UNIA she held the post of secretary to the Negro Factories Corporation, a subsidiary which encouraged manufacturing; office manager, where she regularised their affairs; personal secretary to Marcus Garvey and associate editor of the Negro World, the weekly newspaper of the organisation where she edited a women’s page including a column called Our Women and What They Think. She also proved an effective platform speaker and occasional fundraiser.

Later she became Garvey’s second wife, and remained a tower of strength to him, especially during times of crises.

She had two sons, Marcus Jnr and Julius. In one of his poems written while he was in the federal prison at Atlanta, Garvey paid tribute to her

But you have been a light to me

A fond and dear, and true Amie;

So what care I for falsest friends,

When on your love I can depend.

But perhaps her greatest contribution to the Garvey movement was her editing The Philosophy and Opinions of Marcus Garvey Vols I and II. These books contain a selection of Garvey’s speeches and writings and were published between 1923-26, originally as part of the campaign to have him released from prison. But it proved immediately popular and became like a Bible in the movement.

Some 20 years after his death, Amy wrote Garvey and Garveyism, which was her personal account of the life of Marcus Garvey, the movement he led and the part she played in this. No publisher would touch the manuscript so she published it out of her own pocket. In other words she wrote the text, got it printed and personally sold and distributed the volumes.

She remained up to the time of her death a major source of reference for researchers and anyone seeking information, answering letters and other queries, giving talks and keeping abreast of developments in Africa and the diaspora through wide ranging correspondence. Amy Jacques Garvey died in 1973, but two years before her death she was awarded the Institute of Jamaica Musgrave gold medal.