Remembering Amy Euphemia Garvey
SATURDAY, December 31, 2022 commemorated the 127th anniversary of the birth of Amy Euphemia Garvey, neé Jacques, journalist and activist, who was born in 1895. She was the second wife of Jamaica’s first
National Hero Marcus Garvey, and was one of the key political leaders, archivist, and interpreter of the Garvey movement. She was instrumental in teaching people about Marcus Garvey after his death in 1940.
Her parents were George Jacques, a white Jamaican farmer who married her mother Charlotte Henrietta South, who was black and educated. George Jacques’ great-great grandfather, John Jacques, was the first mayor of Kingston (1802-1809).
Amy Jacques was educated at Wolmer’s School. After her schooling, she did a short working experience with a law firm in Kingston before moving to the United States in 1917. There she met Marcus Garvey and became involved with the United Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) as Garvey’s companion and personal secretary in 1920.
After Gavey divorced his wife Amy Ashwood, Jacques became the second wife in July 1922.
Jacques was a pioneer of pan-african emancipation and became the first lady of the Interim-provisional Government of Africa of the UNIA and African Communities League (ACL) in August of 1920.
Jacques, like her husband, was dedicated to dissemination of the philosophy and principles of race, self-reliance, and nationhood. In 1923 she edited and published Volume One of
The Philosophy and Opinions of Marcus Garvey. She released Volume Two in 1925. She also edited the UNIA’S newspaper,
The Negro World.
After Garvey was sent to prison on charges of mail fraud in connection with the Black Star Line, Jacques said that she kept on going because, “My husband begged me to go out and calm the people… I roamed the country giving speeches and keeping the movement alive.”
After Garvey’s release and deportation from the United States, she returned to Jamaica with Garvey and their two children, Marcus Garvey Jr and Julius Garvey. As they toured England, France and Germany, Jacques still contributed as an editor to The
Negro World.
In a June 1971 article, ‘Marcus
Garvey and wife’, published in EBONY magazine and written by Beverley Read, she is described as the “fiery widow of Marcus Garvey”, who “carries on early black leader’s work from her Kingston, Jamaica, home”. When Read asked if she felt dominated by Garvey, Amy replied, “Hell no, man! Never!”
She was a dynamic, energetic woman. A quick thinker who possessed “all the qualities of a leader — articulate, appealing, warm personality, unshakable dedication”.
After Garvey’s death in 1940, Jacques continued the struggle for black nationalism and African independence. In 1944 she wrote A Memorandum Correlative of Africa, West Indies and the Americas, which she used to convince UN representatives to adopt an African Freedom Charter. By 1963 she published her own book, Garvey and Garveyism, and later published two collections of essays, Black Power in America and The Impact of Garvey in Africa and Jamaica.
In commenting on the “stormy” relationship between Marcus and W Dubois, the famous African American activist and head of the
NAACP, Jacques said that, “Dubois called Garvey a ‘foreigner’ and he had no damn business being in the US and he led the ‘Garvey Must Go’ campaign.”
It was Jacques’ opinion that “Dubois had no common cause with the majority of blacks from the south as Garvey did inspire those people.”
Jacques also said that, sadly, Garvey, who expounded a vision about Africa and the Back to Africa movement, never was able to set his feet on the black continent. She also said that Garvey advocated for blacks to remain in the Americas and bloom where they were planted.
Jacques, however, was able to visit Ghana and Nigeria as an honoured guest of their governments in 1960.
I would like to suggest that both Marcus and Amy inspired and energised each other in a mystical synergy of common vision, so much so that she was the “fuel that fed the powerful Garvey machine for so many years”, and he, the burning flame who first challenged the [African American] to unite to be powerful and to “stand on your own two black feet and be proud” (EBONY, June 1971, p 46).
Amy’s life still speaks now to the resilient Jamaican woman, #Blacklivesmatter movement, and people of Jamaica, especially to the politically oppressed in the garrison constituencies of the two major political parties, whose communities are often placed under public states of emergencies. She once witnessed the lynching of a black man who was set afire and dragged screaming in pain through a small town in New Orleans, and had to speak to the people telling them to be calm and peaceful, because “Violence would only lead to further repression and vengeance.”
Amy Jacques died on July 25, 1973, in Kingston, and is buried in the St Andrew Parish Church Cemetery, Jamaica.
Amy’s memorial at this time heralds the forgotten time-honoured good news of the angels, “Peace on Earth and goodwill to all.” She is the embodiment of the contributions of the Anglican Church in Jamaica to the rise of the black middle class between 1838-1944; and how its black members continue to fight against the evils of oppression and participation in the pan-african movement both locally and overseas.
Dudley Chinweuba Mclean II hails from Mandeville, Manchester, Jamaica, and is executive director of Associación de Debate Bilingüe Xaymaca (Adebatex), promoting debating in Spanish in high schools. He is a graduate of Codrington College, The University of the West Indies (Cave Hill). Send comments to the Jamaica Observer or dm15094@gmail.com.