Amy Euphemia Jacques Garvey (1895 – 1973) was a Jamaican journalist, editor and activist.
An educated woman
Amy Euphemia Jacques Garvey was born on December 31, 1895 in Kingston, Jamaica. Eldest daughter of Charlotte Henrietta, Métis, and Georges Samuel, she grew up in a middle-class family. Encouraged by her father to read and to forge a political conscience and a knowledge of the world, Amy goes to school and learns in particular music and the piano. Georges, however, wants his daughter to stay in circles and occupations considered feminine. In particular, he allows her to take shorthand lessons because he wants her to become a nurse.
When she graduated in 1914, Amy was recruited by a law firm but her father refused, arguing that she could not work in a male environment. The same year, Georges dies and the lawyer working on his estate manages to convince Charlotte to let his daughter work for him. Amy worked for her firm for four years, until she left for New York in 1918. When she left, she was unsure whether to settle in the United States and promised her employer and her mother that she would return if the living conditions do not suit him.
Marcus Garvey
In New York, Amy attends a talk given by African-American leader and rights activist Marcus Garvey – also from Jamaica and whom she has met before – and is touched by his speech. Very quickly, she became his personal secretary and worked alongside him in the Universal Association for the Improvement of the Black Condition (United Negro Improvement Association - UNIA) which he had just founded. Marcus is then married and the versions differ on the beginning of the love affair he develops with Amy, before or after his divorce. Anyway, Marcus divorced his wife in his absence – and without telling her – in June 1922 and married Amy a month later in Baltimore.
Early in their marriage, Amy worked to compile and edit her husband's writings and speeches in the book "Philosophy and Opinions of Marcus Garvey “, before making his thought accessible to the general public. Little by little, she took an increasingly important place within the association, becoming in particular a representative of women. She writes some of her husband's speeches and, in demand by the crowd, regularly speaks alongside her husband. She demonstrated great qualities as a speaker and her speeches were highly appreciated.
Marcus' sentencing
In 1919, Marcus created a shipping company, the Black Star Line , who must support the project he defends to repatriate black people from all countries to Africa. The year after his marriage, in June 1923, Marcus was convicted of fraud and embezzlement after his shipping company went bankrupt. Six months later, he was sentenced to five years in prison, which he served in Atlanta. Amy Jacques Garvey then took over the management of the UNIA and began a tour of the United States to try to raise funds for the defense of her husband. At the same time, she continues her work of collecting and publishing Marcus' speeches and writings, and is working hard to obtain his release.
In 1927, Marcus' sentence was commuted to exile and Amy returned with him to Jamaica. They will have two sons there, Marcus Mosiah Garvey Jr. and Julius Garvey Winston. In Jamaica, Marcus resumed his lecture tour but he quickly felt cramped there and, in 1934, he moved to England without his wife and sons. He died there in 1940. The same year, Amy became editor of the newspaper “The African” published in Harlem. At the end of the 1940s, she formed a circle of African studies in Jamaica. In 1963, Amy was invited by President Nnamdi Azikiwe to Nigeria.
Garvey and Garveyism
In 1963, Amy Jacques Garvey published her own book "Garvey and Garveyism", followed by "Black Power in America:The Power of the Human Spirit" in 1968 and then a final volume of "Philosophy and Opinions of Marcus Garvey". /P>
Amy Jacques Garvey died on July 25, 1973 in Kingston.
Useful links
The Wikipedia page of Amy Jacques Garvey (English)
Amy Jacques Garvey