Amy Ashwood Garvey

[BlackQueen]

Amy Ashwood Garvey (10 January 1897 - 11 May 1969) was a Jamaican Pan-Africanist activist.

Born in Port Antonio, Jamaica as Amy Ashwood, she spent some years living in Panama, but returned to Jamaica to found the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) alongside Marcus Garvey 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 branch.

Ashwood became a director of the Black Star Line Steamship Corporation, and founded the Negro World newspaper before divorcing Marcus in 1922. She then moved to 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. There, she produced comedies with musician Sam Manning. Among these was "Brown Sugar," a jazz musical production at the Lafayette Theatre, which featured Manning and Fats Waller and his band.

In 1934, she returned to London, and with Manning, she opened the Florence Mills Social Club in Carnaby Street, a jazz club which became a gathering spot for supporters of Pan-Africanism. She was also involved with establishing the International African Service Bureau and the London Afro-Women's Centre. She returned to New York and then Jamaica, where she organised the J. A. G. Smith Political Party.

In 1944, Ashwood again returned to New York, where she joined the West Indies National Council and the Council on African Affairs, and also campaigned for Adam Clayton Powell Jr. She moved back to Britain to organise the 1945 Manchester Pan-African Congress.

In 1946, Ashwood moved to Liberia for three years, where she began a relationship with William Tubman. She then returned to London, where she founded the Association for the Advancement of Coloured People. In 1959, she chaired an enquiry into race relations following the murder of Kelso Cochrane, before returning to Africa in 1960, then touring the Americas and finally returning to Jamaica