Amy Ashwood Garvey
| Amy Ashwood Garvey | |
|---|---|
| Born |
Amy Ashwood 10 January 1897 Port Antonio, Jamaica |
| Died | 3 May 1969 (aged 72) Kingston, Jamaica |
| Known for | Activism, black nationalism, Pan-Africanism |
| Spouse(s) | Marcus Garvey (1919–22; divorced) |
Amy Ashwood Garvey (10 January 1897 – 3 May 1969) was a Jamaican Pan-Africanist activist, director of the Black Star Line Steamship Corporation, and founded the Negro World newspaper. She was married to Marcus Garvey between 1919 and 1922.
Amy Ashwood was born in Port Antonio, Jamaica, on 10 January 1897, the only daughter of the three children of businessman Michael Delbert Ashwood and his wife, Maudriana Thompson. As a child, Amy was told by her grandmother that she was of Ashanti descent. Taken to Panama as an infant, she returned in 1904 to Jamaica, and attended the Westwood High School for Girls in Trelawny, where she met Marcus Garvey, with whom she founded the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) in 1914. She organised a women's section of the UNIA, and in 1918, she moved to the United States, where she worked as Garvey's aide and as Secretary of the UNIA's New York City branch.
She and Marcus Garvey married on 25 December 1919, but the marriage quickly broke down, ending in divorce in 1922. There followed lawsuits and counter suits for annulment, divorce, alimony and bigamy. Garvey divorced Ashwood in Missouri in 1922 and quickly married Amy Jacques, Ashwood's former roommate and maid of honor. Marcus Garvey accused Ashwood of infidelity, theft, alcoholism and laziness. Amy Ashwood reportedly never accepted the divorce and contended to the end of her days that she was the "real" Mrs. Garvey.
Ashwood became a director of the Black Star Line Steamship Corporation, and founded the Negro World newspaper. She moved to Great Britain, where she struck up a friendship with Ladipo Solanke. Together, they founded the Nigerian Progress Union, and she later supported Solanke's West African Students' Union, but in 1924 she returned to New York, where she produced comedies with her companion, Sam Manning, a Trinidadian calypso singer who was one of the world's pioneering black recording artists. Among the productions was Brown Sugar, a jazz musical production at the Lafayette Theater, which featured Manning and Fats Waller and his band.
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