An Efficient Womanhood

From its Kingston, Jamaica, inception in 1914, women helped define and shape the Black Nationalist and Pan-Africanist aims of the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA). Their efforts, made possible in part by UNIA cofounder Amy Ashwood Garvey, helped sustain the largest social justice organization of the twentieth century. In this deeply researched collective biography, Natanya Duncan documents the complexities of UNIA women as active participants in Black nation-building. Women from both sides of the Atlantic joined the UNIA in pursuit of gender and racial equality, developing a three-tiered activist strategy that Duncan calls “efficient womanhood”: seek equitable partnerships with like-minded persons and organizations, work as peer and intergenerational mentors, and serve as bridge builders between the organization and resources and people in service to their immediate communities and the race at large.

Through an impressive and original archive of their self-determination, Duncan presents the stories of Henrietta Vinton Davis, Maymie de Mena, and Laura Kofey, as well as groups of UNIA women like the Black Cross Nurses, the Universal African Motor Corp, and the Lucy 9 Club, who circumvented the ideals of their era and created a brand of independent female leadership. The book demonstrates how UNIA women orchestrated and activated the organization from the bottom up while influencing and informing men and each other. By focusing on how women of the UNIA created an activist framework, Duncan reveals a model of organizing that has endured into the present day.