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(1896-1973), Marcus Garvey’s second wife, are especially important to consider during this period because of their potential impact on thousands of working class urban blacks involved with the most powerful nationalist organization in the United States—the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), which her husband founded in Jamaica in 1914 with his first wife, Amy Ashwood. 7 As a young man, Marcus was outraged by the exploitation of blacks in the Caribbean. A trip to London in 1912 brought him in contact with Africans who inspired him to struggle against colonialism. When he returned to Jamaica, he organized the UNIA for the promotion of racial solidarity and self-determination among African peoples throughout the world. From the beginning, women were crucial in the hierarchy of the organization, and women’s issues were discussed, among them the question of whether a woman’s intellect was as highly developed as a man’s. Scholars of the Garvey movement also agree that a distinguishing characteristic of the UNIA was the opportunity it provided for black women’s political development.
    As editor from 1924-1927 of the Women’s Page of the Negro World, the UNIA’s weekly newspaper, Amy Jacques Garvey wrote passionately in “Our Women and What They Think” about the evils of imperialism, racism, capitalism, and the interlocking race, class, and gender oppression that black and other women experienced globally, particularly in colonial contexts. She believed the women’s movement was one of the most significant struggles in human history, and that the emancipation of women was imperative. She called for women to participate in all spheres of public life despite their important duties as wives and mothers. She also felt that women were central to the success of black liberation struggles both in the United States and abroad, and she urged them to struggle against imperialist domination as well as their own oppression within their communities.
    Echoing Sojourner Truth and Anna Julia Cooper, she espoused a feminist vision of the world in which women would set things right: “You [men] had your day at the helm of the world, and a pretty mess you have made of it... and perhaps women’s rule will usher in the era of real brotherhood, when national and racial lines will disappear, leaving mankind in peace and harmony one with another” (Garvey, Negro World, 1926, 5). She also had a special warning for black men: “... watch your step! Ethiopia’s queens will reign again and her Amazons protect her shores and people. Strengthen your shaking knees and move forward, or we will displace you and lead on to victory and glory” (Lerner, 579). Concerned about the status of women globally, particularly in Asia and Africa, she applauded Egyptian women’s removal of the veil and women’s political
gains in India, Russia, and China. A “training ground for black feminists of the 1930s,” both in the United States and Jamaica (Lewis and Bryan, 82), the UNIA deserves a place in the history of black feminism in the diaspora.
    Despite the decline in black fertility rates since the turn of the century, advocating for birth control was another black feminist agenda item during the 1920s and 1930s. 8 It is important to point out that the covert use among slave women of contraceptives and abortifacients was perhaps the earliest manifestation of black women’s exercising reproductive freedom, a major demand of contemporary feminists. Having fewer children was a deliberate choice of some women to enhance their family’s standard of living as well as a strategy espoused in the black press for ensuring the community’s economic well-being, particularly during the Depression. Black women also had a feminist perspective on excessive childbearing, linking it to burdensome physical and mental problems, and were also concerned about sterilization abuse. On a