Amy Jacques Garvey

Amy Euphemia Jacques was born on the thirty-first of December 1895 at Kingston, Jamaica, the daughter of George Samuel Jacques — a Jamaican-stonemason-and-builder of the principal Kingston masonry-and-construction trade — and Charlotte Jacques. She was raised in the Jamaican-Anglican working-class household of her father at the principal Kingston ridge district of the closing decade of the late British colonial period.

She was placed at the Kingston Catholic-Anglican primary schools and at sixteen at the principal Kingston Sutton Street Wolmer’s Girls’ School — the principal Kingston secondary school of the closing years of the British colonial period.

She relocated to Harlem in 1917 at twenty-one and joined the principal Harlem Universal Negro Improvement Association at 56 West 138th Street, Harlem in the closing months of 1917 — among the principal Harlem Universal Negro Improvement Association early members of the closing years of the First World War period.

She became at the close of 1919 the principal personal secretary of the principal Universal Negro Improvement Association founder Marcus Garvey (placed in this archive) and the principal Universal Negro Improvement Association office-manager of the Harlem headquarters at 56 West 138th Street, Harlem.

She married Marcus Garvey on the twenty-seventh of July 1922 at Baltimore, Maryland — Garvey’s second wife, after the principal first wife Amy Ashwood Garvey (also placed in the broader UNIA mythos).

She was named in 1924 the principal editor of the Negro World — the principal Universal Negro Improvement Association weekly newspaper at Manhattan — at the closing months of the principal pre-conviction United States Universal Negro Improvement Association programmes. She edited the Negro World from 1924 to the closing months of 1927 at the principal Garvey deportation period.

She published across the closing months of the principal Garvey deportation programme the two principal Garvey political-philosophy compilations — the Philosophy and Opinions of Marcus Garvey, Volume I (1923) and the Philosophy and Opinions of Marcus Garvey, Volume II (1925) — at the principal Universal Negro Improvement Association press at Manhattan. The two Philosophy and Opinions volumes were the principal post-war Pan-African political-philosophy compilations of the closing years of the inter-war period and the principal source-text of the principal Pan-African mass-movement programmes of the closing years of the 1920s and the 1930s.

She relocated to Jamaica in 1927 at the principal Garvey deportation and continued the principal Pan-African Universal Negro Improvement Association programmes from the principal Kingston Universal Negro Improvement Association headquarters across the closing years of the inter-war period.

She was the principal Pan-African feminist intellectual of the closing decade of the inter-war period — and the principal Universal Negro Improvement Association political-and-organising figure of the closing months of the inter-war period — at the principal Kingston Universal Negro Improvement Association programmes from 1934 to 1940.

She published in 1963 the principal monograph of her later career — Garvey and Garveyism — at the principal Kingston publisher Collins and Sangster Press. The Garvey and Garveyism work was the principal post-Garvey-deportation Universal Negro Improvement Association monograph of the closing years of the post-war period.

She served as the principal Pan-African senior advisor to the principal Kwame Nkrumah and the principal post-1957 Ghanaian Convention People’s Party Pan-African programmes of the closing years of the 1950s and the early 1960s.

She died at Kingston, Jamaica on the twenty-fifth of July 1973 of natural causes, at seventy-seven.

She is honored here as the editor of the Negro World.