"Mr. Black Man, watch your step! Ethiopia's queens will reign again": Amy Jacques Garvey's Black Atlantic

While the work of male pan-Africanists is well known in the historical research, female activist have often been overlooked. Nonetheless, women and issues of gender have had a tremendous influence on black emancipation movements. One of those key figures has been Amy Jacques Garvey. Born in 1895 in a Jamaican middle class family that enabled her to get a higher education, she migrated to New York in 1917. There she soon became involved in Marcus Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association. As a major black emancipation movement of the 1920’s, the UNIA pursued the unification of black people around the globe, the development of economic independence, and the establishment of a nation state lead by black people in Africa. These principles were permeated with concepts of gender: As I will discuss in my paper, philosophy and organizational structures of the UNIA provided separate spheres of influence for men and women. Manhood was associated with authority and doing policy while females were assigned to nurturing and moral uplift of the community. The UNIA’s visions for emancipation went along with both liberating and restricting effects for black women in the Atlantic world. However, despite the proclamation of male leadership and female support in the background, women were able to gain key positions within the organization. Amy Jacques Garvey for example acted as Associate Editor of the organization’s official newspaper Negro World and edited a page called “Our Woman and What They Think”. In her editorials, she reinforced, but also challenged, notions of male governance within the transnational network of black people that the UNIA generated. Based on these editorials and personal materials of Jacques Garvey, I will explore how she positioned herself and other black women within the Black Atlantic and how she defined its shapes, structures and hierarchies.