The Women of the Universal Negro Improvement Association

The Universal Negro Improvement Association is often most closely associated with Marcus Garvey, but from the beginning, the work of women was essential to the development of the organization. Amy Ashwood co-founded the UNIA with Garvey, and it was her connections and capital that launched the Negro World newspaper, but after her brief marriage to and divorce from Garvey, she was removed from the UNIA and the newspaper. Other women, like Garvey’s second wife, Amy Jacques Garvey, and actress Henrietta Vinton Davis, played important and public roles in the UNIA, especially during Garvey’s incarceration, but their contributions aren’t as widely remembered as Garvey’s. Joining me in this episode is Dr. Natanya Duncan, associate professor of history and director of Africana studies at Queens College CUNY, and author of An Efficient Womanhood: Women and the Making of the Universal Negro Improvement Association.

Our theme song is Frogs Legs Rag, composed by James Scott and performed by Kevin MacLeod, licensed under Creative Commons. The mid-episode audio is "Explanation of the Objects of the Universal Negro Improvement Association," a studio recording made by African-American leader Marcus Garvey in New York in July 1921, and adapted from his longer speech "A Membership Appeal from Marcus Garvey to the Negro Citizens of New York;" it is in the public domain and available via Wikimedia Commons. The episode image is a photograph of Henrietta Vinton Davis, published in Women of distinction: remarkable in works and invincible in character by L. A. Scruggs in 1893; the image is in the public domain and is available via Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Manuscripts, Archives and Rare Books Division, The New York Public Library.

Additional Sources:

• “Women of the Universal Negro Improvement Association,” by Dr. Melissa Brown, BlackFeminisms.com.
• “Uncovering the Silences of Black Women’s Voices in the Age of Garvey,” by Keisha N. Blain, Black Perspectives, November 29, 2015.
• “Marcus Garvey: Look for Me in the Whirlwind,” PBS.
• “Theorizing (with) Amy Ashwood Garvey,” by Robbie Shilliam, Chapter in Women’s International Thought: A New History, edited by Patricia Owens and Katharina Rietzler, 158–78. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021.
• ""Negro Women Are Great Thinkers as Well as Doers": Amy Jacques-Garvey and Community Feminism, 1924-1927," by Ula Y. Taylor, Journal of Women's History 12, no. 2 (2000): 104-126. 
• ”Black History Month: Amy Jacques Garvey,” by Emily Claessen, King’s College London, October 20, 2023.
• “The inside story of the pardon of Marcus Garvey,” by DeNeen L. Brown, The Washington Post, February 1, 2025.
• “Henrietta Vinton Davis: Lady Commander Order of the Nile,” by Meserette Kentake, Kentake Page, August 15, 2015.
• "“If Our Men Hesitate Then the Women of the Race Must Come Forward”: Henrietta Vinton Davis and the UNIA in New York," by Natanya Duncan, New York History, vol. 95 no. 4, 2014, p. 558-583. 
• “Laura Adorkor Kofey research collection,” New York Public Library.
• “After 85 years, slain minister's Jacksonville legacy lingers,” by Steve Patterson, Jacksonville.com, March 7, 2013.