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“If Our Men Hesitate Then the Women of the Race Must Come Forward”: Henrietta Vinton Davis and the UNIA in New York

2014; Volume: 95; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/nyh.2014.0002

2328-8132

Natanya Duncan,

Theater, Performance, and Music History

New York History Fall 2014© 2014 by The New York State Historical Association 558 “If Our Men Hesitate Then the Women of the Race Must Come Forward” Henrietta Vinton Davis and the UNIA in New York Natanya Duncan, Lehigh University In spite of recent historical studies of Amy Ashwood Garvey and Amy Jacques Garvey, which demonstrate a growing appreciation of women’s contributions to the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League (UNIA & ACL) and to Black Nationalism, the significance of Lady Henrietta Vinton Davis, the first female president of the UNIA, remains overlooked.1 Henrietta Vinton Davis served in the UNIA hierarchy from its 1919 New York incorporation until the mid1930s .2 Lady Davis’ official involvement encompassed numerous leadership positions. Her influence, however, survived her physical presence in the organization. Through her relationship with both of Marcus Garvey’s wives, Henrietta Vinton Davis helped to expand the efficient womanhood brand of activism first established when the UNIA & ACL was founded on July 20, 1914 in Kingston, Jamaica. During that meeting, the specifics for female autonomous spaces were established. This allowed for the Baltimore-born, race conscious, preeminent actress of the day, Henrietta Vinton Davis, to appear center stage in Harlem, NY, before the largest black global social justice movement to ever exist. “If Our Men Hesitate Then the Women of the Race Must Come Forward”: Henrietta Vinton Davis and the UNIA in New York highlights the contributions of the light-skinned Shakespearean actress to the UNIA and its New York Headquarters during the hey-day of the organization. It reveals the leadership of fifty-six-year-old Henrietta Vinton Davis in the New York headquarters by examining her speeches, The Negro World 1. Tony Martin, Amy Ashwood Garvey:Pan-Africanist, Feminist and Mrs. Marcus Garvey No. 1 or a Tale of Two Amies (Majority Press, 2007); Ula Yvette Taylor, The Veiled Garvey: The Life and Times of Amy Jacques Garvey (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2002). 2. Members of the UNIA were first advised of her declining health via an announcement in the Negro World on September 26, 1932. Despite her ill health, on May 6, 1933, readers were advised to direct queries to Lady Davis while Officer-In-Charge of the American Field, Madame Maymie De Mena was traveling abroad. Duncan Henrietta Vinton Davis and the UNIA in New York 559 newspaper, the UNIA Convention Bulletins, her personal letters, and the Bureau of Investigation’s reports.3 This essay examines the life experiences of a woman born on August 25, 1860, nine months before the beginning of the American Civil War, as an actress, playwright, and activist which helped her further and shape the efficient womanhood brand of leadership in the UNIA. Combining both gender and nationalist concerns while appearing to conform to the social norms of the period, UNIA women extended the spaces the group’s constitution earmarked for them. They invented other formal spaces, under the guise of honoring Marcus Garvey, while ultimately serving their aim of gender and race progress. The sum of these negotiations , deliberations and proclamations amongst the female cadre of the organization birthed what can be called an efficient womanhood. This form of activism sanctioned the public leadership of qualified men while women scripted an agenda in word and deed that combined their gender concerns with their nationalist goals. In the end, this brand of activism cemented the right of Garveyite women to their own views about family, manhood and nation building. Until her death on November 23, 1941 at age eighty-one, Lady Davis served the UNIA as the consummate mentor/role model, unwavering partner in the fight for African independence and agency for the continent’s scattered children throughout the Diaspora and advocate for independent thinking and equal voice in service to the race amongst women and men. Her actions demonstrated the saliency of the efficient womanhood brand of activism while unequivocally earning her a place as the most powerful woman in the organization’s history. From the Harlem, New York Headquarters on West 135th Street to candle lit rooms in the Caribbean and Africa, Davis’ name was not only known, it was revered. The Universal Negro Improvement...