Mr. Black Man, Watch Your Step!

Ethiopia’s
Queens Will Reign Again: Women in the
Universal Negro Improvement Association
KEISHA N. BENJAMIN

R eflecting on the role of women in Marcus Garvey’s Universal

Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), Black Nationalist leader
Madame M.L.T. De Mena argued, “Women were given to understand
that they were to remain in their places, which meant nothing more
than a Black Cross Nurse or a general secretary of the division.”1 Her
statement addressed the complex relationship between gender and
Garveyism, which Amanda D. Kemp and Robert Trent Vinson defined
as Garvey’s “race-based philosophy that places great emphasis on black
political, socioeconomic, and educational advancement, racial pride, and
self-reliance, in the ultimate objective of establishing black-led nation-
states, particularly in Africa.”2 Garvey, arguably the most influential
Black Nationalist of the twentieth century, was born in St. Ann’s Bay,
Jamaica on August 17, 1887. His difficult childhood experiences shaped
the ideologies on which he founded the Universal Negro Improvement
and Conservation Association and African Communities League
(which later became the UNIA) in 1914.3 Two years after founding the
UNIA in Kingston, Jamaica, Garvey visited the United States, where
he recognized an underlying commonality in the socioeconomic status
of Blacks in Jamaica and in the United States. Determined to expand
1
Quoted in Mark D. Matthews, “Our Women and What They Think: Amy
Jacques Garvey and the Negro World,” in Black Women in United States History, ed.
Darlene Clark Hine (Brooklyn: Carlson Publishing, 1990) vol. 7, 875.
2
Amanda D. Kemp and Robert Trent Vinson, “‘Poking Holes in the Sky’:
Professor James Thaele, American Negroes, and Modernity in 1920s Segregationist
South Africa,” African Studies Review 43, no. 1 (April 2000): 158.
3
Tony Martin, Race First: The Ideological and Organizational Struggles of Marcus
Garvey and the Universal Negro Improvement Association (Dover, MA: Majority Press,
1976), 3-6.
68 COLUMBIA UNDERGRADUATE JOURNAL OF HISTORY

the organization’s impact, Garvey moved the UNIA to Harlem, New

York in 1918, where the organization was embraced by millions of
Blacks in the Diaspora until its gradual decline in the early 1930s.4
While the UNIA was influential, it often neglected to give a voice
to Black women, who were very involved from its founding in Jamaica.
Despite their substantial numbers in the organization, women held
restricted roles and responsibilities, and were often placed in subordinate
positions to male Garveyites. While some Garvey scholars, such as
Tony Martin and Robert Hill, maintain that women held important
positions in the UNIA, the evidence indicates otherwise. Certainly, one
cannot overlook remarkable women within the organization such as
Amy Jacques Garvey, Henrietta Vinton Davis, Amy Ashwood Garvey,
and Madame M.L.T. De Mena, whose contributions were many. These
were not typical UNIA women—the average female Garveyite did not
receive the recognition or hold prominent positions as these women
activists did.
As a result of their prominence, these four women have received
considerable attention in the historiography on Marcus Garvey and the
UNIA; Jacques Garvey and Ashwood Garvey have been the subjects
of full-length biographies and Vinton Davis and De Mena have been
mentioned in various articles. Scholars have often used these cases to
support the idea that women held prominent positions in the UNIA,
without acknowledging the fact that the majority of women in the
UNIA were restricted from gaining such influence. By addressing
the responsibilities of women in the organization, this paper will
demonstrate that women’s leadership positions did not mirror their
numbers in the UNIA. More significantly, the paper will contribute
to the literature on Garveyism by focusing on rank-and-file female
Garveyites—a group that has often been neglected by Garvey scholars.
Finally, it will address the ways that many of these women attempted
to create a new space within the organization—even as they struggled
to abandon some of their Victorian ideals—largely through the use
of “Our Women and What They Think,” the women’s page in the
Garveyite newspaper, The Negro World.
4
Only one year after the UNIA relocated to Harlem, Marcus Garvey boasted
of over two million members and approximately thirty branches throughout the
world. For more information on UNIA membership, see Martin, Race First, 3-19.
 MR. BLACK MAN, WATCH YOUR STEP! 69

The abundant literature on Marcus Garvey and the UNIA has

minimized the work of women within the organization. The works of
Tony Martin and Rupert Lewis demonstrate the dearth of information
on the role of women in the UNIA.5 These Garvey scholars and others
overlooked the significant contributions of female Garveyites. Instead,
their works addressed Garvey’s success (or lack thereof) and analyzed
his movement’s influence in the United States and abroad. Theodore
Draper diminished the Garvey movement as unrealistic, and criticized
the nationalism of Garveyites, which he believed “[had] little or nothing
to do with their immediate lives, with their own time and place.”6
Similarly, E. David Cronon argued that while Garvey was unique, he
was insignificant.7 As an intense debate ensued, these scholars paid
little attention to the “woman question” and the significant ways in
which female Garveyites impacted the movement.
More recently, in their attempts to remedy prior exclusions, some
scholars have overstated women’s contributions to the organization.
This is best exemplified in Tony Martin’s 1988 essay, which appears
in Rupert Lewis’s anthology, Garvey: His Work and Impact, published
twelve years after Martin’s seminal book, Race First: The Ideological and
Organizational Struggles of Marcus Garvey and the Universal Negro Improvement
Association.8 In this essay, Martin emphasized the responsibilities of a
few prominent UNIA women, which were atypical of the role and
responsibilities of rank-and-file female Garveyites. Although one
cannot overlook the prominent women in the organization, an accurate
analysis of women in the UNIA must fully recognize their involvement
and influence, while accepting their limitations within the hierarchy of
the organization. Thus, Martin’s 1988 article on women in the Garvey
movement failed to remedy his earlier exclusions in Race First, in which
he made very few references to female Garveyites and often presented

5
Martin, Race First, 27, 34; Rupert Lewis, Marcus Garvey: Anti-Colonial Champion
(London: Karia Press, 1987), 68-69, 85.
6
Theodore Draper, The Rediscovery of Black Nationalism (New York: Viking
Press, 1970), 48-56.
7
E. David Cronon, Black Moses: The Story of Marcus Garvey and the Universal
Negro Improvement Association (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1955), 221-
222.
8
Rupert Lewis and Patrick Bryan, eds., Garvey: His Work and Impact (Mona,
Jamaica: Institute of Social and Economic Research, 1988), 67-72, 73-86.
70 COLUMBIA UNDERGRADUATE JOURNAL OF HISTORY

these women in a problematic light.9

Since Martin’s essay, however, many historians have written on the
participation of women in the UNIA. Ula Taylor’s The Veiled Garvey,
the first full-length biography of Amy Jacques Garvey, and Tony
Martin’s Amy Ashwood Garvey, Pan-Africanist, Feminist and Mrs. Marcus
Garvey No 1, the first full-length biography of Amy Ashwood Garvey,
are significant, but they continue to focus exclusively on prominent
female figures. More recently, Laura Kofey has joined the list of the
most recognized females in the UNIA with a 1987 biographical profile
published in Richard Newman’s Black Power and Black Religion: Essays
and Reviews and in numerous essays by Barbara Bair.10 In sharp contrast
to this emphasis on prominent female figures, this study highlights
ordinary women in the Garvey movement, whose names have rarely
been mentioned in any work on the UNIA.

T he 1920s was an era of significant transformations in the lives

of women across the United States. Women of this period were
embracing new ideals and reinventing themselves as strong leaders in
their homes and communities. Consequently, women in the UNIA
refused to be considered “fragile,” and demanded expanded roles and
responsibilities irrespective of their gender. The ratification of the
Nineteenth Amendment at the beginning of this new era, as Deborah
Gray White asserted, symbolized the “advent of the New Woman.”11
The “New Woman” of the 1920s challenged the Victorian ideals that
had shaped the status quo in the United States during the nineteenth
century. These women no longer aspired to be the “perfect wife,” an
ideal that Martha Vicinus expounded on:

The perfect wife was an active participant in the family, fulfilling a

9
This is best exemplified in Martin’s description of Laura Kofey in Race First.
Martin minimized Kofey as a mere imposter, without fully acknowledging her
fully documented influence in the UNIA. The description is on page 59.
10
For a more recent account of Laura Kofey’s life and legacy, see Barbara
Bair, “‘Ethiopia Shall Stretch Forth Her Hands Unto God’: Laura Kofey and the
Gendered Vision of Redemption in the Garvey Movement,” in A Mighty Baptism:
Race, Gender and the Creation of American Protestantism, ed. Susan Juster and Lisa
Macfarlane (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1996).
11
Deborah Gray White, Too Heavy a Load: Black Women in Defense of Themselves,
1894-1994 (New York: W.W. Norton, 1999), 112.
 MR. BLACK MAN, WATCH YOUR STEP! 71

number of vital tasks, the first of which was childbearing. She was
expected in the lower classes to contribute to the family income.
In the middle classes she provided indirect economic support
through the care of her children, the purchasing and preparation
of food and the making of clothes … her social and intellectual
growth was confined to the family and close friends. Her status
was totally dependent upon the economic position of her father
and then her husband. In her most perfect form, the lady combined total
sexual innocence, conspicuous consumption and the worship of the family
hearth.12

No longer were women in the United States willing to fit this Victorian

model, and for the Black woman, the 1920s were an opportune time to
advocate change.
The 1920s also represented a pinnacle of the feminist movement
in the United States. It was at the beginning of the decade that the
National Woman’s Party moved to center stage, as its leader, Alice
Paul, advocated equality for all women: “Men and women shall have
equal rights throughout the United States and every place subject
to its jurisdiction.”13 The NWP’s endorsement of the Equal Rights
Amendment signified a step toward women’s expanded influence, and
as far as Paul was concerned, it was the necessary step towards the swift
attainment of complete equality. However, Paul’s call for equality had
its limitations. Her appeal for equality extended to white women only;
the NWP excluded Black women from its agenda.14
The NWP’s stance reflected the position of numerous feminist
organizations during the 1920s, which had excluded the concerns of
Black women and were “permeated with racism.”15 Black feminists
of the period shouldered the responsibility of securing social rights
for women and for Blacks in general. Therefore, while they supported
12
Martha Vicinus, ed., Suffer and Be Still: Women in the Victorian Age (Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 1972), ix; emphasis added.
13
Quoted in Robert L. Daniel, American Women in the 20th Century: The Festival
of Life (San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1987), 52.
14
Kathryn Kish Sklar and Jill Dias, “How Did the National Woman’s Party
Address the Issue of the Enfranchisement of Black Women, 1919-1924?” Women
and Social Movements in the United States, 1600-2000 1 (1997).
15
Matthews, “Our Women and What They Think,” 867.
72 COLUMBIA UNDERGRADUATE JOURNAL OF HISTORY

suffrage for women, they were also concerned with the plight of
Black men and women. According to Deborah Gray White, “[Black
women] knew that they would not be voting in tandem with white
women because few white women shared their preoccupation with
civil rights, antilynching, job discrimination, and disfranchisement.”16
Furthermore, racism also hindered Black and white women from
working together for suffrage. In her ground-breaking text, Ain’t I
A Woman: Black Women and Feminism, bell hooks addressed the “racial
apartheid” that was evident in the feminist movement of the 1920s:
“The first white women’s rights advocates were never seeking social
equality for all women; they were seeking social equality for white
women … white women suffragists were eager to advance their own
cause at the expense of black people.”17
Despite these divisions, however, the decade of the 1920s was still
a period of significant change for Black women. The Great Migration
brought a massive demographic shift; by the beginning of the twenties,
approximately 300,000 Black men and women had migrated to the
Northeast, and another 350,000 relocated to the Midwest. Additionally,
this was also a period of significant Black migration from parts of
the West Indies to the United States. Between 1923 and 1924 alone,
approximately 17,000 migrants entered the United States from various
parts of the Caribbean.18 While there were various factors that motivated
Blacks to relocate, Black women in particular migrated for their own
personal safety. According to Darlene Clark Hine, Black women left the
South “out of a desire to achieve personal autonomy and to escape both
the sexual exploitation inside and outside of their families and from the
rape and threat of rape by whites as well as black males.”19 Although
these women seemed to escape one set of troubles, new challenges
awaited them in the North. Like their male counterparts, Black women
encountered discrimination and limited educational and employment
16
Deborah Gray White, Too Heavy a Load, 116.
17
bell hooks, Ain’t I A Woman?: Black Women and Feminism (Boston: South End
Press, 1981), 124.
18
Winston James, Holding Aloft the Banner of Ethiopia: Caribbean Radicalism in
Early Twentieth-Century America (London: Verso, 1998), 49.
19
Darlene Clark Hine, “Rape and the Inner Lives of Black Women: Thoughts
on the Culture of Dissemblance,” Hine Sight: Black Women and the Re-Construction of
American History, (Brooklyn: Carlson Publishing, 1994), 40.
 MR. BLACK MAN, WATCH YOUR STEP! 73

opportunities.20 As Robert L. Daniel noted, the Great Migration was

also a period of disillusionment for Black women, whose educational
opportunities were significantly thwarted. 21 On the contrary, however,
this period was also marked by a flourishing of Black expression and
creativity.
This creativity took shape in the Harlem Renaissance or “New
Negro Movement,” a period of prolific Black intellectual and literary
expression through a variety of mediums including poetry, literature and
music.22 Most significantly, however, the Harlem Renaissance signified
the emergence of the “New Negro,” the antithesis of the submissive,
passive, and accommodating “Old Negro.” As Michele Ann Stephens
pointed out in Black Empire, the “New Negro” represented a new Black
identity, perspective and set of ideals, had evolved largely throughout
the twentieth century.23 Thus, the “New Negro” evoked the image of
a strong, militant Black man—as espoused in J.E. McCall’s poem of
the same title.24 Furthermore, this “New Negro” was the by-product
of the mass migration of Blacks from the South and Caribbean to the
North during the 1920s.25
The mass migration of this period also made the emergence of the
“New Negro Woman” possible. Similar to the image of strong Black
manhood represented by the “New Negro,” the “New Negro Woman”
represented strong Black women, who were unwilling to accommodate
racism and sexism. In the UNIA, the “New Negro Woman” did not
accept the organization’s limitations for women, and she was determined
to create more space and opportunities for her voice to be heard.

I n a letter to The Negro World in 1924, Eunice Lewis, a female Garveyite

from Chicago, shared her definition of the “New Negro Woman”:
“The New Negro Woman is [intent on] revolutionizing the old type of
20
Darlene Clark Hine, “Black Migration to the Urban Midwest: The Gender
Dimension, 1919-1945,” Hine Sight, 89.
21
Daniel, American Women in the 20th Century, 61.
22
Kevin Gaines, Uplifting the Race: Black Leadership, Politics, and Culture in the
Twentieth Century (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005), 224.
23
Michelle Ann Stephens, Black Empire: The Masculine Global Imaginary of
Caribbean Intellectuals in the United States, 1914-1962 (Durham: Duke University
Press, 2005), 40.
24
Gray White, Too Heavy a Load, 117.
25
Gaines, Uplifting the Race, 11.
74 COLUMBIA UNDERGRADUATE JOURNAL OF HISTORY

male leadership.”26 Lewis went on to list a “few of the important places

[in] which the New Negro Woman desire[d] to take in the rebirth of
Africa at home and abroad”:

1. To work on par with men in the office as well as on the

platform.
2. To practice actual economy and thrift.
3. To teach practical and constructive race doctrine to the
children.
4. To demand absolute respect from men of all races.
5. To teach the young the moral dangers of social diseases, and
to love their race first.27

Lewis’s statements fully articulated the vision of the “New Negro

Woman,” a term that signified female Garveyites’ efforts to expand their
positions within the UNIA and in the community as a whole. According
to Lewis, the “New Negro Woman” connoted a female Garveyite
who, like her male counterparts, could have significant responsibilities
in the workplace and in the political arena. Furthermore, the “New
Negro Woman” was committed to influencing the ideological views of
Black children and members of the Black race in general.28 This vision
inspired female Garveyites to resist their subordinate positions within
the UNIA, through the use of the women’s page of The Negro World.
Published by the UNIA from 1918 to 1933, The Negro World was
one of the most influential Black newspapers of the period, reaching
peoples of African descent throughout the world. Described as the
“most effective of Garvey’s propaganda devices,” The Negro World

26
Eunice Lewis, “The Black Woman’s Part in Race Leadership,” The Negro
World, April 19, 1924.
27
Lewis, “The Black Woman’s Part,” 10.
28
For a more detailed analysis of the “New Negro Woman,” see Keisha N.
Benjamin, “How Did Rank and File Women in the Universal Negro Improvement
Association (UNIA) Use The Woman’s Page of The Negro World To Define the
‘New Negro Woman’?” Women and Social Movements, 1600-2000 12, no. 3 (September
2008).
 MR. BLACK MAN, WATCH YOUR STEP! 75

promoted racial uplift, self-reliance and Black unity.29 Filled with

Garvey’s speeches, articles, and advertisements, The Negro World
addressed practically every aspect of Black life and the UNIA’s main
principles—the “establishment of a powerful black nationality in
Africa, selective emigration, [black capitalism, race pride and the study
of African history.”30 Consequently, although it served as a means of
informing and empowering Blacks in the Diaspora, The Negro World was
also a source of contention for others. According to Martin, colonial
leaders in parts of Africa and in the Caribbean saw The Negro World as
the cause of numerous political uprisings.31 The extensive readership
of The Negro World reflected the UNIA’s widespread membership,
spanning Africa, Europe, the Americas, and every place where people
of African descent resided.32
By and large, The Negro World neglected to give a voice to Black
women.33 When The Negro World did include statements from women
prior to “Our Women” they were “often briefly paraphrased, while
Garvey’s [statements] were usually printed word for word.”34 The
inclusion of women’s views in the weekly Negro World mirrored
their actual involvement in the UNIA; they were present but rarely
recognized. Described as the “backbone” of the UNIA, women most
often participated “behind the scenes,” while UNIA men gained public
recognition.35 According to Beryl Satter, male Garveyites ran UNIA
businesses, serving as statesmen and diplomats, while women worked
in the background, providing “clerical, cultural and civic support

29
Martin, Race First, 91. Portions of this analysis on The Negro World appear in
Benjamin, “How Did rank and File Women in the Universal Negro Improvement
Association (UNIA) Use The Woman’s Page of The Negro World To Define the
‘New Negro Woman’?”.
30
Michael O. West, “Like a River: The Million Man March and the Black
Nationalist Tradition in the United States,” Journal of Historical Sociology 12, no. 1
(March 1999): 86.
31
Martin, Race First, 93.
32
Tony Martin, “Marcus Garvey and Trinidad, 1912-1947,” Garvey: Africa,
Europe, the Americas, ed. Rupert Lewis and Maureen Warner-Lewis (Kingston,
Jamaica: Institute of Social and Economic Research, 1986), 52.
33
Bair, “Ethiopia Shall Stretch Forth, 39; James, Holding Aloft the Banner of
Ethiopia, 138.
34
Bair, “Ethiopia Shall Stretch Forth,” 48.
35
Ibid., 44.
76 COLUMBIA UNDERGRADUATE JOURNAL OF HISTORY

services.”36 Most women, in fact, served in only limited capacities in the

Universal Motor Corps and as Black Cross Nurses.
As Black Cross Nurses, UNIA women—acting in their assigned
positions as nurturers—were involved in community service, offering
medical aid in Black neighborhoods throughout the United States.
These nurses “learnt first aid and medicare under the tutelage of a
registered nurse who was a UNIA member.”37 They were “respected
community midwives and herbalists,” providing services to those in
need.38 Similarly, UNIA women participating in the African Universal
Motor Corps and Juvenile Divisions of the organization further
fulfilled their expected roles as nurturers to the Black community,
under strict male leadership.39 In the Universal African Motor Corps,
in particular, adult and teenage women learned military drills and a
variety of other automotive skills, including driving cars, taxis and
ambulances.40 However, whether they were Black Cross Nurses or
members of the Motor Corps, women were “under the jurisdiction of
the male officers of the African Legions.”41 In every female auxiliary,
women held restricted leadership positions, and were always accountable
to males within the organization.
Although they obtained more leadership opportunities than
women in other Black organizations of the 1920s, only a handful
of UNIA women gained prominence and public recognition.42
Ashwood Garvey, who was Marcus Garvey’s first wife, served as one

36
Beryl Satter, “Marcus Garvey, Father Divine and the Gender Politics of
Race Difference and Race Neutrality,” American Quarterly 48, no. 1 (1996): 49. For
a more detailed discussion of women’s responsibilities in the UNIA, see Martin,
“Women,” 62-72; Honor Ford Smith, “Women and the Garvey Movement in
Jamaica,” in Garvey: His Work and Impact, 73-86; Bair, “True Women, Real Men,”
in Gendered Domains: Rethinking Public and Private in Women’s History, ed. Dorothy O.
Helly and Susan M. Reverby (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1992), 154-166.
37
Lewis, Marcus Garvey, 68.
38
Bair, “Ethiopia Shall Stretch Forth,” 45.
39
Bair, “Ethiopia Shall Stretch Forth,” 45.
40
Lewis, Marcus Garvey, 68.
41
Bair, “Ethiopia Shall Stretch Forth,” 45; Lewis, Marcus Garvey, 68.
42
For a more detailed discussion of women’s leadership opportunities in the
UNIA and a comparison to women’s participation in other Black organizations
of the 1920s, see Martin, “Women,” 62-72; Honor Ford Smith, “Women and the
Garvey Movement in Jamaica,” in Garvey: His Work and Impact, 73-86; Bair, “True
Women, Real Men,” 154-66.
 MR. BLACK MAN, WATCH YOUR STEP! 77

of the first members and secretaries of the UNIA.43 Jacques Garvey,

who became Marcus Garvey’s second wife in 1919, served in many
capacities including associate editor for The Negro World and de facto
leader of the UNIA during her husband’s incarceration.44 Vinton Davis
became the UNIA’s International Organizer in 1919 and served on the
organization’s executive council. Likewise, De Mena became a member
of the executive council, serving as the UNIA’s Assistant International
Organizer.45
Unlike these prominent women, Laura Kofey gained brief
recognition throughout the early 1920s as a charismatic leader, only to
lose her reputation and life shortly thereafter. Described as a “dynamic
personality [and] quite the organizer,”46 Kofey emerged during what
Barbara Bair described as a “time of crisis” for the UNIA, following the
imprisonment of Marcus Garvey. Through Kofey’s charisma and zeal,
thousands joined the UNIA during the short time that she served as an
organizer, despite the suspicions surrounding Garvey’s alleged misuse
of funds. According to Bair, “By the spring of 1927, her influence as
a highly charismatic apostle of Garveyism had gained her widespread
recognition. She was now a stellar phenomenon on the UNIA scene.”
In Tampa alone, more than three hundred men and women joined
the UNIA under Kofey’s direction during the summer of 1927.47 It is
therefore no surprise that Garvey became very familiar with Kofey and
her work for the UNIA. In fact, in August 1927, she visited Garvey in
his Atlanta prison cell.48
However, within months of that visit, Kofey’s reputation became
severely tarnished, as other Garveyites—mostly male—became
suspicious of her immediate success. In a telegram to Garvey in
September 1927, J.A. Craigen, who served as the executive secretary
of the Detroit division, denounced Kofey as a fraud from Georgia
43
Martin, Amy Ashwood Garvey, 22-23.
44
Ula Yvette Taylor, The Veiled Garvey: The Life and Times of Amy Jacques Garvey
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002), 27, 65-66.
45
Taylor, The Veiled Garvey, 30, 45, 103.
46
Amy Jacques Garvey to Richard Newman, January 31, 1972, Laura Adorkor
Kofey Research Collection, 1926-1981, New York Public Library at Schomburg
Center for Research in Black Culture, New York, New York.
47
Bair, “Ethiopia Shall Stretch Forth,” 54, 56.
48
US Department of Justice Penitentiary Records, August 1, 1927, Garvey
Club Collection, 1927-1948, Schomburg Center.
78 COLUMBIA UNDERGRADUATE JOURNAL OF HISTORY

posing as an African princess.49 Craigen warned, “If she is not advised

to discontinue her activities in the association serious trouble will ensue
which will entail serious complications.”50 By February 1928, Garvey
openly denounced Kofey in The Negro World. “This woman is a fake” he
wrote, “and has no authority from me to speak to the Universal Negro
Improvement Association.”51 Following her public condemnation,
Kofey left the UNIA to form the African Universal Church and
Commercial League, teaching “a blend of Garveyism and religion.”52
During an evening service on March 8, 1928 and in the presence of
her most avid followers, Kofey was brutally murdered.53 Although no
one has ever been convicted of Kofey’s murder, male Garveyites were
present at the 1928 service, and had threatened (and harassed) Kofey
prior to the shooting. Immediately following her murder, Kofey’s
followers murdered Maxwell Cook, a male Garveyite, in retaliation.54
Kofey’s life and legacy unveiled the complex nature of the UNIA’s
leadership structure and revealed that while a handful of women were
granted certain leadership positions in the organization, women were
still expected to remain under male control. Kofey openly challenged
male leadership while in the UNIA and posed a threat to Garvey’s
influence—and certainly to other male Garveyites—even before she
formed her own organization. Kofey’s rapid rise to fame and great
influence in the UNIA intimidated Garvey and other male Garveyites,
who were unprepared to allow a woman to surpass them. Her decision
to form a rival organization, however, only further ignited male
resistance. Kofey deviated from the UNIA’s expectations for women
and in the process lost her life.
While her experience represented an extreme case, and her murder
49
Martin describes Kofey in the same manner and diminished her role and
significance in the Garvey movement; Race First, 59.
50
J.A. Craigen Western Union Telegram to Marcus Garvey, September 20,
1927, Garvey Club Collection, 1927-1948, Schomburg Center.
51
Quoted in Bair, “Ethiopia Shall Stretch Forth,” 56.
52
Richard Newman, “‘Warrior Mother of Africa’s Warriors of the Most High
God’: Laura Adorkor Kofey and the African Universal Church,” in This Far By
Faith: Readings in African- American Women’s Religious Biography, ed. Richard Newman
and Judith Weisenfeld (New York: Routledge, 1996), 113.
53
Bair also notes that prior to Kofey’s assassination, male Garveyites had
attended her meetings on numerous occasions to harass her; Bair, “Ethiopia Shall
Stretch Forth,” 57.
54
Bair, “Ethiopia Shall Stretch Forth,” 57-58.
 MR. BLACK MAN, WATCH YOUR STEP! 79

may have been the result of a variety of circumstances—her gender,

her decision to form a rival organization, her widespread influence,
or a combination of all three—other women in the UNIA faced
resistance when their influence appeared to exceed that of males
within the organization. Jacques Garvey encountered male resistance
as she took on more leadership responsibilities during her husband’s
imprisonment.55 Ultimately, regardless of the apparent prominence
that Vinton Davis, De Mena, Jacques Garvey and Kofey exercised,
these women, as the majority of women in the UNIA, remained in
positions subordinate to males within the organization.

T he UNIA’s founding documents and Marcus Garvey’s views on

women shaped the hierarchal structure of the organization and
reinforced women’s exclusion from positions of leadership. From the
outset, women’s inclusion in the Garvey movement was very limited in
scope. In the “Declaration of the Rights of the Negro Peoples of the
World,” published in 1920 at a gathering of 25,000 UNIA delegates in
Harlem, there were only four references to women:

II. In certain parts of the United States of America our race

is denied the right of public trial accorded to other races when
accused of crime, but are lynched and burned by mobs, and such
brutal and inhuman treatment is even practiced upon our women. …
1. Be it known to all men that whereas all men are created
equal and entitled to the rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of
happiness, and because of this we, the duly elected representatives
of the Negro peoples of the world, invoking the aid of the just
and almighty God, do declare all men, women and children of our blood
throughout the world free citizens, and do claim them as free citizens of
Africa, the Motherland of all Negroes. …
18. We protest against the atrocious practice of shaving the
heads of Africans, especially of African women or individuals of
Negro blood, when placed in prison as a punishment for crime
by an alien race. …
29. With the help of almighty God we declare ourselves the
sworn protectors of the honor and virtue of our women and children, and
55
Taylor, The Veiled Garvey, 66-67.
80 COLUMBIA UNDERGRADUATE JOURNAL OF HISTORY

pledge our lives for their protection and defense everywhere, and
under all circumstances from wrongs and outrages.56

The articles of the “Declaration of the Rights” upheld the responsibility

of Black men as protectors of their fragile female counterparts
and as “sworn protectors of the honor and virtue of our women.”
Furthermore, while the articles acknowledged the freedom of men and
women alike, they failed to address Black women’s equal status to Black
men.
Likewise, in a letter to The Negro World in 1924, a male Garveyite
asserted, “If you find any woman—especially a Black woman—who
does not want to be a mother, you may rest assured she is not a true
woman.”57 The unequal status of Black men and women as espoused by
Garvey and the UNIA reinforced traditional gender constructions—the
tradition of Black women as “community mothers,” rather than active
participants in community activism.58 Garvey’s poetry, articles, and
speeches reinforced women’s responsibility as nurturers who “needed
to be uplifted” and protected by their male counterparts.59
As a result, women were “relieved of certain onerous tasks in the
public sphere,” and instead were glorified for their physical beauty and
maternal characteristics.60 In his poem entitled “The Black Woman,”
Garvey emphasized the Black woman’s beauty and grace: “Black queen
of beauty, thou hast given color to the world! / Among other women
thou art royal and the fairest!” He then indirectly affirmed their position
in society: “Like the brightest of jewels in the regal diadem/ Shin’st
thou, Goddess of Africa, Nature’s purest emblem!” As “nature’s purest
emblem,” Garvey highlighted the fragility of Black women, at whose
“virginal shrine” Black men should worship.61 Furthermore, Garvey
upheld the Black woman’s responsibility as nurturer in his poem, “The
Black Mother”: “If on life’s way I happen to flounder/ My true thoughts
56
Marcus Garvey Life and Lessons: A Centennial Companion to the Marcus Garvey and
Universal Negro Improvement Association Papers, ed. Robert A. Hill and Barbara Bair
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), 43, 45, 47, 48; emphasis added.
57
Quoted in Satter, “Marcus Garvey, Father Divine,” 48.
58
Satter, “Marcus Garvey, Father Divine,” 49.
59
Ford-Smith, “Women and the Garvey Movement,” 75.
60
Ibid.
61
The Poetical Works of Marcus Garvey, ed. Tony Martin (Dover: Majority Press,
1983), 44.
 MR. BLACK MAN, WATCH YOUR STEP! 81

should be of Mother dear/ She is the rock that ne’er rifts asunder/
The cry of her child, be it far or near.”62 Garvey personified the Black
mother as a rock, on which her children could depend—a source of
comfort and stability. In so doing, he sent the explicit message that
Black women—and not Black men—were responsible for nurturing
Black children. Thus, he again stressed the message that Black women
were responsible for “produc[ing] a ‘better and stronger race’ through
the quality of their childcare.”63
Articles published by other male leaders in The Negro World also
reaffirmed the role of women in the UNIA and society as a whole. On
June 9, 1923, Percival Burrows, a male Garveyite, reminisced on the
days of old, stating: “Let us go back to the days of true manhood when
women truly reverenced us and without any condescension on our part,
for all true women will admire and respect a real man: therefore, let us
again place our women upon the pedestal from whence they have been
forced into the vortex of the seething world of business.”64 Calling
for Black men to reclaim their rightful positions and save their women
from the “seething world of business,” the article reflected the same
sentiments that had appeared in the UNIA’s “Declaration of the Rights
of the Negro Peoples of the World” in 1920—Black men needed to be
“sworn protectors” of their fragile women.65

A lthough the UNIA was founded on the notion that Black men
were responsible for protecting their fragile Black women, female
Garveyites were determined to resist their subordinate positions within
the organization. They did so first in a very public way, boldly addressing
an exclusively male and unreceptive audience during the afternoon
session of the 1922 UNIA convention.66 According to Bair, women
could be delegates to the international conventions, but they had
difficulty being recognized from the floor by men, who presided over
the sessions.67 However, this did not deter women at the 1922 UNIA
Convention. Feeling that they had not received “proper recognition
62
Ibid., 59.
63
Satter, “Marcus Garvey, Father Divine,” 49.
64
Quoted in ibid., 48.
65
Garvey Life and Lessons, ed. Hill and Bair, 48.
66
James, Holding Aloft the Banner of Ethiopia, 138.
67
Bair, “Ethiopia Shall Stretch Forth,” 45.
82 COLUMBIA UNDERGRADUATE JOURNAL OF HISTORY

during all the former sessions,” a group of women addressed the

convention with a list of grievances. “We, the women of the U.N.I.A.
and A.C.L.,” they stated, “know that no race can rise higher than its
women.” They went on to cite the value of women being placed in
“important places of the organization to help refine and mold public
sentiment.”
Speaking on behalf of the disgruntled women, Victoria Turner
presented the following list of resolutions designed to improve the
status of women in the organization:

1. That a woman be the head of the Black Cross Nurses and

Motor Corps and have absolute control over those women, and
this shall not conflict with the Legions.
2. That women be given more recognition by being placed
on every committee, so that she may learn more of the salient
workings of the various committees.
3. That more women be placed in the important offices and
field work of the association.
4. That women be given initiative positions, so that they may
formulate constructive plans to elevate our women.
5. That Lady Henrietta Vinton Davis be empowered to
formulate plans with the sanction of the President-General so
that the Negro women all over the world can function without
restriction from the men.68

The resolutions conveyed the sense of dissatisfaction that this group of

women felt. Most significantly, however, they unveiled the core of the
hierarchical structure of the organization, which failed to provide an
equal place for women. Although Garvey claimed that the UNIA “was
one organization that recognized women,” he did not acknowledge
that women held unequal positions to their male counterparts.69 While
the organization provided an opportunity for a few women to hold
positions of prominence, the resolutions demonstrated that women
did not have full autonomy.
68
Marcus Garvey and the Universal Negro Improvement Association Papers, ed. Robert
Hill (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1989) vol. 4, 1037.
69
Ibid., 1038.
 MR. BLACK MAN, WATCH YOUR STEP! 83

Women at the 1922 convention were also displeased that female

Garveyites were not represented on every committee within the
organization. These women were concerned that if female Garveyites
remained excluded from certain committees, they would not have the
opportunity to develop various skills and learn more about running the
organization. Similarly, they argued, women in the UNIA needed to be
placed in “the important offices and field work of the association.”70
This demand revealed female Garveyites’ attempt to expand their
spheres of influence within the organization and develop the skills
necessary to serve in a multiplicity of ways.
The request for women to serve on every committee did not mean
that female Garveyites never served in these capacities. Mrs. Robinson, a
female Garveyite from New Orleans who attended the 1922 convention,
served as a field commissioner for the UNIA and Mrs. Willis from New
York worked as a field representative for the organization.71 Likewise,
women such as Vinton Davis and De Mena held “important offices”
and “initiative positions.”72 These women, however, represented the
exception rather than the norm. Consequently, female delegates at
the 1922 convention argued for the expansion of women’s positions
within the organization as a general standard and expectation for all.
They were no longer willing “to sit silently by and let the men take
all the glory while they gave the advice.” Not surprisingly, however,
the resolutions were passed only after Garvey’s excessive modifications
and attempts to dismiss the women’s claims, citing that “women already
had the power they were asking for under the [UNIA] constitution.”73
Indeed, the UNIA Constitution, formulated in July 1918, granted
women many of the rights they were requesting in 1922. It did not
indicate gender as a factor in the election or appointment of officers.74
Furthermore, it reserved a position for females within the organization
to serve as “Lady President”: “The Lady President shall be given control
of all those departments of the organization over which she may be able
to exercise better control than the male president, and she shall have
the right to preside over any meeting called by her on the approval of
70
Ibid., 1037.
71
Ibid., 1037-38.
72
Ibid., 1038.
73
Ibid.
74
Garvey Papers, ed. Hill, vol 1, 264.
84 COLUMBIA UNDERGRADUATE JOURNAL OF HISTORY

the general membership.” Yet, the constitution specifically maintained

male Garveyites’ ultimate leadership and control: “But all her reports
shall be submitted to the Male President for presentation to the general
membership.”75 Moreover, despite Garvey’s argument that women
already had the “power they were asking for under the constitution,”
it was evident that in practice, women lacked equal positions within the
UNIA.76 As a result, therefore, UNIA women formulated the 1922 list
of grievances to advocate change in the organizational and leadership
structure.

W hen Amy Jacques Garvey introduced “Our Women and What

They Think” in The Negro World in February 1924, she made a
bold step toward expanding women’s spheres of influence within the
UNIA. “Our Women” did more for women in the UNIA than the
yearly Women’s Day at UNIA conferences, which celebrated women’s
achievements and accomplishments in and out of the organization.77
Unlike the yearly Women’s Day, the women’s page, in particular,
provided female Garveyites with an opportunity to express their views
without direct male censorship. According to Taylor, Jacques Garvey
took on a more influential editorial role during a period in which
Marcus Garvey “was unable to wield direct power over the organization
from his Atlanta prison cell.”78 Introduced during the most difficult
period in the life of the UNIA, “Our Women” represented an open
outlet for Black women to debate a range of topics, often denouncing
“antiquated beliefs” and empowering each other as the organization’s
leader awaited the result of his appealed conviction.79
The women’s list of grievances at the 1922 convention foreshadowed
the concerns and personal struggles they would later discuss in “Our
Women and What They Think.” When the women’s page first appeared
in The Negro World, it immediately challenged many of Garvey’s views
and the core principles of the UNIA. Filled with advertisements for
dinner sets, women’s clothing and hair treatment, “Our Women” must
75
Garvey Papers, ed. Hill, vol. 1, 269.
76
Garvey Papers, ed. Hill, vol. 4, 1038.
77
Martin, Race First, 27; Bair, “Ethiopia Shall Stretch Forth,” 47.
78
Taylor, The Veiled Garvey, 65.
79
Amy Jacques Garvey, “No Sex in Brains and Ability,” The Negro World,
December 27, 1924.
 MR. BLACK MAN, WATCH YOUR STEP! 85

have initially stunned the Garveyite community with its feature article,
“Women’s Party Wants Not Only Equal Rights, But Equal Responsibilities
With Men.”80 The article detailed the National Woman’s Party’s efforts
to introduce eighteen bills to the New York State Legislature, calling
for women’s labor rights. Ironically, the NWP had already excluded
Black women from its agenda by 1924.81 According to Paula Giddings,
Alice Paul represented the “most militant faction of White suffragists,”
whose main concern was securing the ballot for white women, rather
than assisting Black women.82 Still, the appearance of the NWP
article in “Our Women” must have served as an inspiration to female
Garveyites, indicating that Black women, like their white counterparts,
could equally mobilize for their own rights in and out of the UNIA.
If the NWP article failed to send the intended message, then the
article next to it clarified any possible misconceptions: “The Negro Girl
of Today Has Become a Follower—Future Success Rests With Her
Parents and Home Environment.”83 Written by Carrie Mero Leadett,
“The Negro Girl of Today” challenged young Black women to build
better futures for themselves through innovation rather than imitation.
Leadett, Garvey’s first secretary, was an active member of the UNIA
and a frequent writer for the women’s page. 84 A resident of New York,
Leadett worked as a clerk at the UNIA headquarters in Harlem and for
the organization’s shipping company during the 1920s.85 In “The Negro
Girl of Today,” she argued that although Black women should aim for
the same successes as women of other races, they needed to become
leaders and not followers. Leadett further contended that “today if
Mary Jones, a white girl, comes to school with her hair bobbed—
tomorrow as many of our Negro girls [will] follow suit, whether it is
becoming to their features or not.” Instead, Leadett encouraged young
Black women to embrace their dark, natural hair as a sign of their Black
80
“Women’s Party Wants Not Only Equal Rights, But Equal Responsibilities
with Men,” The Negro World, February 2, 1924; emphasis added.
81
Sklar and Dias, “Enfranchisement of Black Women.”
82
Paula Giddings, When and Where I Enter: The Impact of Black Women on Race
and Sex in America (New York: William Murrow & Co., 1985), 160.
83
Carrie Mero Leadett, “The Negro Girl of Today Has Become a Follower—
Future Success Rests With Her Parents and Home Environment,” The Negro
World, February 2, 1924.
84
Garvey Papers, ed. Hill, vol. 5, 351.
85
Garvey Papers, ed. Hill, vol. 6, 418.
86 COLUMBIA UNDERGRADUATE JOURNAL OF HISTORY

identity and beauty. Ironically, The Negro World advertised “light brown”
dolls with straight or long curled hair, as opposed to natural hair.86
Nonetheless, Leadett’s editorial certainly reflected female Garveyites’
desire to pave their own paths and “surpass those of all other races,
socially, industrially and morally.”87
Another article, “The New Woman” by Saydee [Sadie] E. Parham,
challenged women’s positions in the UNIA and in the community as a
whole. Parham, a frequent writer for “Our Women,” was a law student
who served as Garvey’s secretary in 1926.88 In her article, she discussed
the process of evolution through which all species experience growth
and maturation. Along these lines, she argued that women needed to
grow in society: “From the brow-beaten, dominated cave woman,
cowering in fear at the mercy of her brutal mate … from the safely
cloistered woman reared like a clinging vine, destitute of all initiative
and independence … we find her at last rising to the pinnacle of power
and glory.”89 Certainly, Parham’s representation of women differed
greatly from the imagery of women in Garvey’s poems, “The Black
Woman” and “The Black Mother.” By contrast, Parham challenged the
sexism within the organizational structure of the UNIA, which—as
the experiences of Laura Kofey and other women revealed—reserved
power and glory for male Garveyites.
Another writer, Blanche Hall, expressed similar views in a 1924
article, “Woman’s Greatest Influence is Socially.” Hall addressed the
important responsibilities that women held in society as a whole, citing
men’s dependence on women in every aspect of life. “Show me a
good, honest, noble man of character” she wrote, “and I will show
you a good mother or wife behind him.” Consequently, Hall reminded
readers that the UNIA could not advance without the assistance of
female Garveyites: “There is much that the woman can do to make
this organization a success.”90 Florence Bruce reinforced this position
86
Michele Mitchell, Righteous Propagation: African Americans and the Politics of
Racial Destiny after Reconstruction (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 2004),
191-192.
87
Leadett, “The Negro Girl of Today,” 10.
88
Garvey Papers, ed. Hill, vol. 6, 406.
89
Saydee Parham, “The New Woman,” The Negro World, February 2, 1924;
emphasis added.
90
Blanche Hall, “Woman’s Greatest Influence is Socially,” The Negro World,
October 4, 1924.
 MR. BLACK MAN, WATCH YOUR STEP! 87

in her 1924 article, “The Great Work of the Negro Woman Today.”91
Bruce, an active member of the UNIA, was the wife of John E.
Bruce, who served as a contributing editor of The Negro World from
1921 until his death in 1924.92 Citing women’s impact in society since
antiquity, Mrs. Bruce contended that women’s influence would help the
advancement of the UNIA and the Black community. “No race has
succeeded without a good and strong womanhood,” she wrote, “and
none ever will.”93
While Bruce’s statement affirmed the importance of Black women’s
expanded influence and involvement in the UNIA, Jacques Garvey’s
1926 editorial clarified any possible misconceptions. The editorial
confirmed that women in the UNIA were determined to have equal
opportunities in and out of the organization, and they were unwilling
to allow male Garveyites to hinder their progress:

If the United States Congress can open their doors to white

women, we serve notice on our men that Negro women will
demand equal opportunity to fill any position in the Universal
Negro Improvement Association or anywhere else without
discrimination because of sex. We are very sorry if it hurts your
old-fashioned tyrannical feelings, and we not only make the
demand, but we intend to enforce it.94

Jacques Garvey’s statements underscored the frustration of women in

the UNIA who felt that male Garveyites often thwarted their efforts
for equality within the organization. They also revealed her absolute
dissatisfaction with the limited roles of women within the organization.
Jacques Garvey could be more forceful in her requests for gender
equality with her husband miles away in an Atlanta prison cell. Still, her
statements reflected the growing sentiments of rank-and-file female
Garveyites and their determination to bring about change within the
UNIA and the Black community as a whole.
91
Florence Bruce, “The Great Work of the Negro Woman Today,” The Negro
World, December 27, 1924.
92
Garvey Papers, ed. Hill, vol. 7, 979.
93
Bruce, “The Great Work,” 8.
94
Amy Jacques Garvey, “Black Women’s Resolve for 1926,” The Negro World,
January 9, 1926.
88 COLUMBIA UNDERGRADUATE JOURNAL OF HISTORY

While Jacques Garvey, Parham, Hall and others demanded change

within the UNIA, they also envisioned change—albeit a conservative
one—in Black women’s responsibilities within the home. Although
women in the UNIA did not completely reject traditional Victorian
ideals in the home, they advocated the importance of respecting
Black women who worked to support their families. Therefore, many
UNIA women rejected Garvey’s earlier criticism of Black homes
that deviated from patriarchal standards. According to Ford-Smith,
“Garvey unapologetically saw the man as head of the patriarchal family
and spoke out against illegitimacy and female-headed households.”95
Moreover, Garvey argued that it was solely the man’s responsibility to
work and provide for the family.
Female Garveyites, on the other hand, recognized the problem
facing many Black women, both those whose husbands could not fully
provide for their families and those who were single mothers. As a
result, many of these women entered the workforce in their attempt to
assist their husbands or provide for their children. Madame B. Rhoda,
an active UNIA member and singer from Nashville, TN articulated
these views in her editorial, “Our Women Think We Should Make
Employment”96:

We Negro Women have a very hard time getting work and are
constantly told by our white employers that all we do with the
money we earn is to support preachers who build big churches
where we go once a week…. We Negro women are tired of this
kind of thing and feel that our men are exploiting us to abuse and
ill-treatment. We are compelled to work, for our men can’t support us and
our children. Our only hope is in the teaching of the U.N.I.A.97

Rhoda criticized Black men, whose failures forced Black women

to assume many responsibilities in the home that they would not
normally fill, including that of breadwinner. Likewise, in her editorial,
“Half Million Dollar Churches and No Jobs,” Amelia Sayers, a female
Garveyite from New York, justified Black women’s decisions to enter
95
Ford-Smith, “Women and the Garvey Movement,” 76.
96
Garvey Papers, ed. Hill, vol. 4, 1031.
97
Madame Rhoda, “Our Women Think We Should Make Employment,” The
Negro World, March 7, 1925; emphasis added.
 MR. BLACK MAN, WATCH YOUR STEP! 89

the workforce, reiterating, “We are compelled to work.”98 Sayers was

an active member of the UNIA and served as a delegate to the Fourth
Annual International UNIA Convention in August 1924, where she
was honored at the court reception.99 According to Robert Hill, Sayers
travelled with Jacques Garvey and worked as her personal assistant
during Marcus Garvey’s incarceration.100 Sayers’ statements provide a
glimpse into the general views of rank-and-file female Garveyites who
resisted the male insistence that working Black mothers indicated a lack
of racial progress.101
Rhoda and Sayers’ statements, while revealing Black women’s
frustration with men’s criticism of working women, failed to address
the socioeconomic conditions of the 1920s. Racism in the labor market
restricted Black men and women from obtaining white-collar jobs,
and for the few jobs that they could obtain, Blacks received meager
salaries.102 For this reason, a typical working-class Black male could not
effectively provide for his family without the assistance of his wife.
According to Sharon Harley, “The racial barriers that Black males faced
in the employment market forced a significant number of married
Black women to join the labor force.”103 Therefore, Black women were
necessarily committed both to the duties of labor and the duties of the
home.104 Many of these women viewed labor force participation as part
of the traditional Black culture.105
While there is no doubt that many women in the UNIA entered
the workforce to assist their husbands financially, it is important to
note that others chose to work as a means of personal fulfillment,
or as a means of uplifting the Black race in general. In her article,
“The Woman’s Part in Race Developments,” Vida Horsford detailed
98
“Half Million Dollar Churches and No Jobs,” The Negro World, November
29, 1924.
99
Garvey Papers, ed. Hill, vol. 5 833, vol. 7, 44.
100
Garvey Papers, ed. Hill, vol. 7, 44.
101
Sharon Harley, “For the Good of Family and Race: Gender, Work and
Domestic Roles in the Black Community, 1880-1930, Signs 15, no. 2 (Winter
1990): 341.
102
Ibid., 340.
103
Ibid., 342.
104
Karen Dugger, “Social Location and Gender Roles Attitudes: A
Comparison of Black and White Women,” Gender and Society 2, no. 4 (December
1988): 428.
105
Ibid.
90 COLUMBIA UNDERGRADUATE JOURNAL OF HISTORY

the important influence that the “Negro Woman” would have in

the workforce. “By her carefulness, her calmness, her truthfulness,
her honesty, her sweetness of disposition [and] her punctuality,” she
wrote, “she may create a lasting impression on the minds of her
fellow workers.” Horsford went on to argue that Black women in the
workforce would help “promulgat[e] racial doctrines” and destroy the
misconception that Blacks were inferior to whites.106
Female Garveyites also expressed new ideas about the women’s
responsibilities within the home. While they accepted the importance of
raising and caring for children, they advocated expanded responsibilities,
including women’s ability to budget and secure the financial futures of
their families. This was fully articulated in Rosa Lee Smith’s letter to
the women’s page in September 1924. Smith, a female Garveyite from
Pittsburgh, argued that a woman must not only know how to care for
her children, but she must also have financial knowledge and budgeting
skills. “Since the woman spends most of the money in the home” she
wrote, “it is necessary that she know how to spend it wisely.”107
Female Garveyites also supported women’s ability to make their
own choices in the home—even in mundane matters such as wearing
a wedding ring. On September 6, 1924, Jacques Garvey posed the
question: “Should married men, like women, wear wedding rings?”
The varied responses revealed much about female Garveyites, many
of whom supported a woman’s right to decide whether or not she
would wear a ring. In her response to the question, Leadette, herself
married, passionately asserted: “The wedding ring is a survival of
primitive times, when a married woman wore a heavy band of iron,
a symbol of bondage—a sign that she was her husband’s property,
his slave to do with as he pleased.” While she further asserted that in
modern times, the wedding ring represented a different symbol—one
of “faithfulness and of purity of love,” Leadett upheld her argument
that the ring should be optional, since one’s faithfulness and love
should be an inward attribute.108 Olivia Whiteman, a vocal critic of the
106
Vida Horsford, “The Woman’s Part in Race Developments,” The Negro
World, September 19, 1925.
107
Rosa Lee Smith, “Managing a Household,” The Negro World, September
27, 1924.
108
Carrie Leadette, “Married Lady Thinks Its Optional,” The Negro World,
September 6, 1924.
 MR. BLACK MAN, WATCH YOUR STEP! 91

UNIA’s leadership structure, who spoke on behalf of women’s rights

at the 1924 UNIA convention, also contended that the wedding ring
should be optional for men and for women.109 As far as Whiteman was
concerned, a wedding ring meant very little: “The best way for a wife
to show the world her husband is a married man is to be so active and
play such a part in his affairs and life that the world will know of him
as a husband.”110
Rank-and-file female Garveyites also sought to expand their
opportunity for involvement in politics. Not surprisingly, in response
to Jacques Garvey’s question, “Will the Entrance of Women in Politics
Affect Home Life?” a variety of comments appeared, confirming the
importance of Black women in politics. One response from Parham
argued that a woman’s involvement in politics actually strengthened
her home life and served as an excellent example to her children: “The
interest displayed by women in politics is responsible for playgrounds
where children may physically develop into healthy men and women…
Woman, by the accomplishment of bringing about these conditions,
is responsible for happy, healthy home conditions.”111 Theo E. A.
McCurdy also emphasized the importance of women in politics,
stating: “It will tend to promote discussions of public questions around
the family table enlarging the interest of the home and adding to its
intelligence.” McCurdy continued to argue that women’s involvement
in politics would protect the home, since women would ensure the
passing of laws and regulations for better schools, hospitals and other
institutions.
Similarly, E. Elliot Rawlins argued that women’s entrance into
politics would help “purify” it: “School conditions, rent laws, property
and personal taxes, soldiers, bonus, health laws, city and state politics
affecting liquor, morality and crime …. Women in politics could exert
a great influence for good in many of these political questions affecting
the home.”112 These women were the “New Negro Women” who could
not be restricted to domestic duties and, as Turner articulated in the
1922 convention, were no longer willing to sit idly by as men took all
109
Garvey Papers, ed. Hill, vol. 5, 559, 754.
110
Olivia Whiteman, The Negro World, September 6, 1924.
111
“Will the Entrance of Women in Politics Affect Home Life?” The Negro
World, June 14, 1924.
112
Ibid.
92 COLUMBIA UNDERGRADUATE JOURNAL OF HISTORY

the credit for advice given by women.113

While Jacques Garvey’s editorial revealed female Garveyites’ attempt
to expand their influence in the political arena, it also underscored some
of the similarities between female Garveyites and white feminists of
the 1920s. The so-called maternalist ideology of white feminists, in
particular, upheld the notion that it was necessary for women to function
in motherly roles: “By maternalism historians have meant the female
version of paternalism, the assumptions women reformers made about
women’s nature, and the policy strategies they devised to provide social
protection for women’s maternal responsibilities.”114 The references to
women’s participation in politics as a necessity for children’s physical
and intellectual development further demonstrated female Garveyites’
support of maternalism. For example, in her response to Jacques
Garvey’s question, “Will the Entrance of Women in Politics Affect
Home Life?” Parham noted the ways in which women’s participation in
politics strengthened the home and aided in the development of their
children.115 Likewise, in her letter, “The Black Woman’s Part in Race
Leadership,” Lewis stressed the Black woman’s responsibility to raise
and teach values to her children.116 Thus, it is significant to note that
female Garveyites—as white feminists of the 1920s—still emphasized
the significance of motherhood even as they articulated the need to be
recognized in the political arena and in the public sphere in general.117

W hile many rank-and-file women in the UNIA openly resisted

male supremacy in the organization, this does not imply that
all rank-and-file female Garveyites held this conviction, or that female
Garveyites did not at times accommodate the same male supremacy
113
James, Holding Aloft the Banner of Ethiopia, 139.
114
Kathryn Kish Sklar, “The Historical Foundations of Women’s Power in
the Creation of the American Welfare State, 1830-1930,” Mothers of a New World:
Maternalist Politics and the Origins of Welfare States, ed. Seth Koven and Sonya Michel
(New York: Routledge, 1993), 45.
115
“Will the Entrance of Women in Politics Affect Home Life?” The Negro
World, June 14, 1924.
116
Lewis, “The Black Woman’s Part,” 10.
117
For a more thorough analysis of the twentieth century maternalist ideology
and race, see Linda Gordon, “Black and White Visions of Welfare: Women’s
Welfare Activism, 1890-1945,” Journal of American History 78, no. 2 (September
1991): 559-590.
 MR. BLACK MAN, WATCH YOUR STEP! 93

that they fought so passionately against. In her work, The Veiled Garvey,
Ula Taylor emphasized the conflicting nature of Jacques Garvey and
many other female Garveyites, which comes to light through the
pages of “Our Women.” Taylor’s term, “community feminism” more
accurately describes the politics of these female Garveyites:

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
chauvinist ideas of women as intellectually inferior.118

Women in the UNIA—like other clubwomen of the twentieth

century—struggled to advance the Black feminist and Black Nationalist
causes. This dual purpose created at times a “tug-of-war” that is evident
in the articles of the women’s page, which, despite its critique of the
UNIA’s hierarchical structure, also revealed at times an acceptance of
male supremacy in and out of the organization.
While many of the articles in “Our Women” challenged Garvey
and the core principles of the UNIA, some also reinforced these
principles. In describing the distinctiveness of “Our Women,” Jacques
Garvey had asserted, “Usually a Women’s Page is any journal devoted
solely to dress, home hints and love topics but our page is unique in
that it seeks to give out the thoughts of our women on all subjects
affecting them in particular and others in general.”119 However, while
the women’s page of The Negro World did not “devote solely to dress,
home hits and love topics,” it did not ignore them either.120 Each issue
also included “suggestions to the housewives,” recipes, and articles
reinforcing sexism.
Sayers, who wrote numerous articles demanding women’s expanded
responsibilities in the organization, also upheld male supremacy in a
118
Taylor, The Veiled Garvey, 2.
119
Quoted in Matthews, “Our Women and What They Think,” 869.
120
Ibid.; emphasis added.
94 COLUMBIA UNDERGRADUATE JOURNAL OF HISTORY

few of her articles and letters to the women’s page. In her 1924 article,
“Man is the Brain, Woman the Heart of Humanity” she affirmed
traditional gender roles:

The man is the brain, but the woman is the heart of humanity;
he its judgment, she its feelings; he its strength, she its grace,
adornment and comfort. Even the understanding of the best
woman seems to work chiefly through her affections. And thus,
though the man may direct the intellect, the woman cultivates the
feelings, which chiefly determine the character. While he fills the
memory, she occupies the heart. She makes us love what he can
make us only believe, and it is chiefly through her that we are
enabled to arrive at virtue.121

Sayers’ statements reinforced sexism and belittled women as emotional

individuals, while arguing that intelligence and wisdom were exclusive
male attributes. Sayers also referred to women as the “heart of
humanity,” reinforcing Garvey’s metaphor of women as “nature’s
purest emblem,” in contrast to men, who were “sworn protectors” of
their women.122
Similarly, other articles in “Our Women” affirmed women’s
responsibility as self-sacrificing wives and mothers and reinforced
sexism. One example is “The Ideal Wife” by Vera,123 which succinctly
summarized the perfect woman: “The woman who winds herself
into the rugged recesses of her husband’s nature, and supports and
comforts him in adversity.” Describing women as the “softer sex”
and “ornament[s] of man” Vera went on to explain that women were
responsible for meeting the needs of their men, and thereby allowing
these men to succeed in the community.124 Another article, “Thoughts
on Matrimony,” upheld the patriarchal standards of the home and
the importance of wives submitting to their husbands. 125 Echoing the
1920 “Declaration of the Rights of the Negro Peoples of the World,”
121
Amelia Sayers, “Man is the Brain, Woman the Heart of Humanity,” The
Negro World, November 8, 1924.
122
Poetical Works of Garvey, ed. Martin, 59.
123
The author’s last name is not provided.
124
.“The Ideal Wife,” The Negro World, April 5, 1924.
125
“Thoughts on Matrimony,” The Negro World, May 10, 1924.
 MR. BLACK MAN, WATCH YOUR STEP! 95

another article entitled “White Man Humorously Tells of Worship Of

His Men For Their Women” upheld Black men’s responsibilities as
“sworn protectors” of the feeble Black woman. The anonymous writer
contended, “I am for women voting, or doing anything they want to
do…. But I cannot get the Titanic disaster out of my minds, nor keep
from feeling that it was somewhat nobler for those men to step back
and put the women in the boats; in a word, to treat them [women]
as superiors, as beings to protect and serve and die for, and not as ‘equals.’”126
Reflecting on the Titanic disaster, the author expressed her struggle to
embrace women’s equality with men, which failed to consider women’s
fragility and men’s responsibility as protectors.
Other women in the UNIA also dealt with the same struggles as
they aimed to expand their roles and responsibilities while equally
supporting their male counterparts. In her 1924 article, “Marriage
Today and the Woman,” active Garveyite Carrie Mero Leadett offered
advice to young women preparing for marriage. She outlined three basic
points to help each marriage succeed: wives must be realistic in their
expectations, wives must keep their husbands interested, and wives
must please their husbands. According to Leadett, marriages suffered
when women did not spend the time to find out their husband’s needs,
likes and dislikes. She also excused men’s infidelity and loss of interest
in the marriage, citing the woman’s failure to remain current in her
husband’s interests: “Today a pretty face allures him, tomorrow it may
be a fine conversationalist or a musical person, and if a wife is to keep
her husband in the right path she must fit herself for many and varied
duties.”127
Similarly, in a letter to the women’s page in June 1924, Laura
Thomas expressed Black women’s responsibilities to please their men:
“Every woman has different qualities, whether these qualities are good
or bad, but above all women, we should make them good. We should
live so that our husbands and the men of our race will be proud of
us and respect us at home and abroad.” Thomas then suggested a list
of ways in which Black women could gain respect from Black men,
including Black women’s choice of friends and the “study [of] the
126
“White Man Humorously Tells of Worship Of His Men For Their
Women,” The Negro World, April 19, 1924.
127
Carrie Mero Leadett, “Marriage Today and the Woman,” The Negro World,
June 21, 1924.
96 COLUMBIA UNDERGRADUATE JOURNAL OF HISTORY

higher ideals of life and not the low, degrading things.” Furthermore,
Thomas reinforced Garvey’s own sentiments as espoused in his poetry:
“[Black women] should live for others.”128
While these contradictions exhibited Taylor’s notion of “community
feminism,” they also demonstrated the conflicts that female Garveyites
faced as they attempted to embrace Black Nationalist ideology while
upholding their Christian values.129 Most of the women (and men)
of the UNIA were Christians, and the hierarchical structure of the
organization closely mirrored the Black church.130 Furthermore,
members of the UNIA often compared Garvey to Jesus Christ.
In a letter to President Calvin Coolidge in 1927, Garveyites from
Panama argued, “We the Negroes of the World look upon Garvey
as a superman; a demigod; as the reincarnated Angel of Peace come
from Heaven to dispense Political Salvation…we love Garvey next to
our God.”131 These descriptions of Garvey revealed the hero-worship
that was evident in the UNIA, and only confirmed the challenges that
UNIA women, in particular, faced in their efforts to expand their roles
and responsibilities. For many of these women, their attempt to balance
Christian ideals—which recognized men in a dominant position of
authority—and “community feminist” aspirations was a challenging
one. Therefore, the “tug-of-war” that appeared in the women’s page
also unveiled the personal and religious struggles of many female
Garveyites as they envisioned the “New Negro Woman.”

T he articles and writers considered in this paper provide a glimpse into

the ways in which rank-and-file female Garveyites often wavered
between advocating feminist ideals and embracing male supremacy
within the UNIA. Although we may accept Taylor’s assertion that these
women were “community feminists,” they were “undeniably feminists,”
and this fact cannot be overlooked.132 According to Linda Gordon,
128
Laura Thomas, “Living for Others,” The Negro World, June 14, 1924.
129
It is significant to note that Garvey’s interpretation of Christianity differed
greatly from mainstream Christianity. Garvey and members of the UNIA rejected
“white Christianity” and instead embraced a “Black Christianity,” which depicted
God as Black. For a detailed analysis of the UNIA’s religious beliefs, see Martin,
Race First, 67-80.
130
Bair, “Ethiopia Shall Stretch Forth,” 39-40.
131
Quoted in Martin, Race First, 69.
132
Taylor, The Veiled Garvey, 65.
 MR. BLACK MAN, WATCH YOUR STEP! 97

“Feminism is a critique of male supremacy, formed and offered in the

light of a will to change it, which in turn assumes a conviction that it is
changeable.”133 The list of resolutions presented by women at the 1922
UNIA convention, the vision of the “New Negro Woman,” and the
articles and letters to the women’s page revealed, among other things,
a critique of male supremacy within the UNIA and women’s attempts
to change it.
Thus, “Our Women and What They Think” remains a significant
chronicle of women in the UNIA, unveiling their views, conflicts,
and efforts to foster change during the most tumultuous period of
the Garvey movement. It is a revelation of these women’s struggle to
balance their own feminist ideals with the Victorian patriarchal standards
espoused by Garvey and other male Garveyites. Like Jacques Garvey,
many of these rank-and-file women desired expanded opportunities in
the UNIA and the community at large, while others battled to expand
their limited spheres of influence, often fearing that to do so would
detract from the successes of the “New Negro” men.
Yet, even as many of these women tried to balance their support of
men’s ambitions and their own personal goals, they became more and
more frustrated as their efforts seemed to go unnoticed. Amelia Sayers
Alexander expressed her frustration and impatience in her editorial, “A
Brave Man Betrayed”: “It is so peculiar how some of our Negro men
lack character…. Therefore, women of my race, get busy. You have
seen the results that some of our men have produced. It is high time
for us to get together and work.”134 No female Garveyite, however,
expressed as much anger as Jacques Garvey herself:

We are tired of hearing Negro men say, “There is a better day

coming,” while they do nothing to usher in that day. We are becoming
so impatient that we are getting in the front ranks and serve notice
to the world that we will brush aside the halting, cowardly Negro
leaders…. Mr. Black Man watch your step! Ethiopia’s queens will
reign again, and her Amazon’s protect her shores and people.
133
Linda Gordon, “What’s New in Women’s History,” Feminist Studies, Critical
Studies, ed. Theresa de Lauretis (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986),
29.
134
Amelia Sayers Alexander, “A Brave Man Betrayed,” The Negro World, March
14, 1925.
98 COLUMBIA UNDERGRADUATE JOURNAL OF HISTORY

Strengthen your shaking knees and move forward, or we will

displace you and lead on to victory and glory.135

Jacques Garvey challenged Black women to “push forward”

despite the lack of assistance and appreciation from Black men. Then,
in another bold step, Jacques Garvey extended a warning to Black men
to support their women’s leadership aspirations and recognize their
equality, otherwise, these same women would eventually surpass their
male counterparts.
On April 30, 1927, the publication of “Our Women and What They
Think” abruptly ended. Jacques Garvey offered no explanation for her
decision to discontinue the page; some scholars have contended that
she grew tired of pleading with women to contribute articles.136 While
we may never know why the women’s page ended only three years after
its debut, it provides a meaningful contribution to our understanding
of women in the Garvey movement. More importantly, it gives us the
opportunity to understand how rank-and-file women in the UNIA
defined and strived to become the “New Negro Woman.” We are able
to hear the voices of rank-and-file female Garveyites who, until now,
had remained largely silent in the literature on Marcus Garvey and the
Universal Negro Improvement Association.

135
Amy Jacques Garvey, “Women as Leaders Nationally and Racially,” The
Negro World, October 24, 1925.
136
Karen S. Adler, “‘Always Leading Our Men in Service and Sacrifice’: Amy
Jacques Garvey, Feminist Black Nationalist,” Gender and Society 6, no. 3 (September
1992): 346-75.