SPEAKER_00: 0:00

Welcome to Strictly Facts, a guide to Caribbean history and culture, hosted by me, Alexandria Miller. Strictly Facts teaches the history, politics, and activism of the Caribbean and connects these themes to contemporary music and popular culture. Welcome back. This is part two of our rich conversation with Dr. Natanya Duncan, where we continue exploring the indispensable contributions of women in the Universal Negro Improvement Association. And if you missed part one, be sure to go back and listen as this discussion builds directly on that foundation. Having you on here, I have to talk about Laura Kofi as you alluded to earlier. Just a story that I'm like, where was this? Um, I don't even really know where to start, but I I sort of want to say, you know, Princess of God, that there's a, and you can sort of maybe full out a little bit more of her life story for us a bit. Um, but how did her story really change your understanding of the organization and particularly the way women were looked at in the organization, assuming leadership in the ways that you've outlined for us?

SPEAKER_01: 1:28

Princess Laura Atakor Kofi, in all honesty, changed my life. There were moments when, as you alluded to in grad school, you spend five or six years, you write the thing, you're finished, you move on, you start teaching, blah, blah, blah. And they say, okay, so now where's the book? The reason that the book is finished is that I wanted the world to know about this woman, but I didn't have enough to write a book about her by herself. So I had to bring her other friends into the mix. Um, Laura Kofi challenged me to understand what it meant, one, to be a Christian, to practice Christian love. Because Laura Kofi goes to a meeting that she's invited to by people who were not always on her side, but she went anyway. And she went because she truly believed that she had the opportunity to help the organization stabilize itself in South Florida at the time. There was actually two factions quarreling with each other. Mr. Garvey is um out of the United States at that point. And there are concerns about where the new headquarters is going to be, who's the leader gonna be. There are persons who are loyal to Mr. Garvey and um the movement to reincorporate the organization in Jamaica. There are people who are loyal to a faction in Philadelphia, there are people who are loyal to a faction in Cleveland, Ohio, and then there's still people trying to get everything reconstituted in New York all at the same time. And so she walks into a trap, essentially. And what the police report said, and I think I cite this in the book, was simply that she was standing at the podium, one shot rang out from the back of the room, hit her dead center, and she fell backward, and that was it. And in that moment, all I could think about was the assassination of Malcolm X.

SPEAKER_00: 3:48

I did too.

SPEAKER_01: 3:49

You know, being killed or murdered, you know, amongst your own, right? And at the place where you're supposed to be, right? Because it wasn't like she was in the wrong place at the wrong time. This was her meeting. They invited her to come to the meeting. They asked her to do something at the meeting. I sat with that. So let's take a few steps back, right? And there's some Africanist scholars who are gonna listen to this and they're gonna write you, I'm telling you now, because they come for me every time, who argue that she wasn't Ghanaian. Her name is not a derivative of any of the um noble families of the period. The New York Times lied and said that King Kennispie was coming, but then I go to Ghana, and I retrace the steps of a few scholars who argue for her as an African-born woman who comes to the United States through Canada, who spent time in Alabama, who spent time in New Orleans, and then eventually comes to Jacksonville because she's looking for a port city. The UNIA had a three-year plan and a five-year plan that included planting crops in Arkansas and harvesting those crops for trade throughout the diaspora. And so she's looking for port cities for the same purpose. She wants to import export goods from the continent through the Caribbean and the United States. Somewhat of a reverse Atlantic kind of experience, so to speak, for lack of a better way to put it. And so I'm amazed, one, at her audacity. She goes to the Atlanta penitentiary to have a conversation with Mr. Garvey, and that conversation doesn't go well. Mr. Garvey's not willing to hear from her the truths about some of the persons that he has decided are his good friends or his confidants at the time. What made Laura Kofi stand out for me and what made me understand the impact of a Henrietta Vinton Davis and a Mamie Demena and a Lavinia Smith and an Asada DeFour was when I read over and over again, and she signed up 3,000 people. And she signed up 3,000 people. And everyone who wrote about her, whatever little snippet, and she signed up 3,000 people. So I said, no. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Maybe there meant 300, 3,000 people in South Florida to sign up. No. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I need to see the paperwork. I need to find the people. So she had actually aligned herself with the Prince Hall, Masons, and Eastern Stars. So she was actually bringing people who already belonged to the Elks, the Eastern Star, and the Optimist into the UNIA. So we had this multiple membership gang going on, right? Some of these people also belonged to the NAACP. So that number of 3,000 was actually quite correct. Um, because I started looking at how the names sort of uh duplicated, right, um, in different records. And when I realized that she was able to pull that many people in, despite having reservations of her own, despite criticizing the organization publicly, despite wanting to uh have the organization have a firmer line of demarcation between organizational practices and religious practices, I understood what the efficient womanhood bridge builder meant. I understood what it meant to be a partner, and I also came to understand what it meant to be a mentor and model for other women and men because even after she passes, um the persons who are around her in what becomes a Dorca Ville, which is now on the Florida Heritage Trail, decide that they're not gonna let the legacy die. So they charged money for people to see her body five cents, use the money to pay off the land, and finish fixing the house that she had in Jacksonville, and establish this space. And in this space, they're um teaching people Arabic and um, you know, still postulatizing people in a sort of uh black nationalist Christian um framework. But isn't that the panultimate efficient womanhood? I mean, even in death, this woman is still feeding people, she's still impacting people, right? And it it really forced me to reconsider what black nationalism politically and economically is. Because we're very caught up in what I consider to be, you know, the costume black nationalism, right? You know, the the what we wear and, you know, the hotep and the, you know, we're gonna use certain phrases when we, you know, every time somebody says grand rising to me, I want to sit in them and wholly sit down, right? I can't. But anyway, um, focus here, academia, right? So um she had created this long-lasting legacy that the state of Florida recognizes to this day, right? I mean, and we're not writing about this. I mean, every Juneteenth, we should just be at Adorcaville. Everybody in Jacksonville should just go to Adorcaville on Juneteenth. You know what I'm saying? Like, this should be our barbecue spot and, you know, kind of thing. I couldn't fathom how the historiography missed her, how the conversation missed her. And in looking into it, it was one, the UNIA's Negro World newspaper discredited her, right? They referred to her as not as Laura Kofi, but as Laura Campion or Laura Champion and said that she was actually from um Georgia, from Macon, Georgia, and that she shouldn't be trusted, blah, blah, blah. Now, this is after she's heralded in the newspaper and lauded in the newspaper as the best thing since spiced bread, right? And she's like only second to, you know, she's like a John the Baptist, you know, um, kind of figure. Uh, as a matter of fact, somebody actually called her a John the Baptist, right? In one of the Negro World clips. So she goes from that to persona non-grata. So this erasure. But then the historians buy into the argument, right? And so we get lost in whether or not she's African, whether or not she's from Georgia, blah, blah, blah. And I'm sitting there saying, the woman was murdered at a UNIA meeting. Hello. Could we could we deal with the real story here? Okay. And, you know, in looking at it, I said, what about this makes scholars uncomfortable? Something about this makes scholars uncomfortable. You know, and people say, well, we don't have enough um um information to establish, you know, look, I started off with a newspaper clip that I guess they call a quarter-size page that just said, her daddy is coming. That's it. Right? Everybody traveled on a ship, so I know I got some shipping records. I got what's in the Negro world, I have the court records, and I have the police report. I got a chapter. And I think that understanding that there are limits to what we can know based on what is in the archive, yes. But then we also have to look at the information the archive provides and ask a different question. Right? Ask a different question. I asked a different question about Laura Kofi. I was less concerned about was she or was she not from Ghana and more concerned about who shot her. And asking that different question then led me to understand the ratio of women to men in the organization and why a woman who could pull 3,000 people might make somebody nervous, right? So all I did was change the question. I'm working with the same material everybody who argues with me is working with, right? Um, the fact that she herself had appeared in court twice and never served any jail time. You know, all of these add up to something in my mind. And I realized that this efficient womanhood, this willingness to partner, she partnered with the UNIA because she believed in the objectives of the UNIA. She didn't necessarily agree with all of the methods, but she agreed with the objectives. And so therefore, she was willing to partner and be a part of and move with and grow and build with, right? One day, there are two movies that need to be made. One, some actress needs to take up Lady Henrietta Vinton Davis' story. She was a Shakespearean actress, she was bad to the bone, she had her own production company, she was a playwright, a producer, she was somebody. Okay. And then we need to deal with, you know, Laura Kofi. In um two more years, it would be 100 years. And I did set the goal for myself to have a hard and fast answer on who killed Laura Kofi. I have my own assertions, but as a scholar and a historian, you know, citations matter. I have innuendo and rumor, and I've listened to other people's oral histories and interviews and so forth. And I've read the court transcripts. And so that is a question that I think we as scholars and as people who support black internationalism, who believe in black nationalism, who call ourselves Pan-Africanists, need to resolve. That needs to be resolved. I hold her in the same esteem as I do Ransom Kuti, who was murdered by her people. And I see Laura Kofi as murdered by her people.

SPEAKER_00: 15:07

Thank you so much for that, because I think in so many ways, right? As I, as I was saying, just the way that both her impact and also her murder just captured this history in that chapter of the book in a way that has literally never been uttered to me in any study, any class on Garvey on the UNIA was tremendously remarkable. And I think in a lot of ways, even brings me to my next question because, you know, in doing some of this work and also my love of pairing our history with the way that we show up in music and popular culture, etc., I can make and have made a whole playlist of songs that reference Garvey, that talk about Garvey's impetus and importance and follow Garvey and Traderoad and all these things, right? And I don't even know if I can actually name five, right? And five is a lot speaking here. So what are sort of some of your favorite examples of the way that the women of the UNIA show up in our um popular culture? It doesn't necessarily have to be music, but I think that would be a great way for our listeners to also connect to the story.

SPEAKER_01: 16:22

Queen Latifas Ladies First, even the video for Ladies First is quintessential gobbyism. It's efficient womanhood at its best. You know, um it defines it. See, the thing about efficient womanhood and the beauty of efficient womanhood, and in the in the front cover of the book, I have the artwork um that was done that sort of captures um the different stages of efficient womanhood in terms of who the women were uh in the organization. Um but I think I would have to say that one of the things we have to realize about efficient womanhood is that it's an elastic clause kind of um idiom that it's really about the ways in which women deliberately choose to live their lives. In the Say Her Name, uh Tiranna Burke is the grandchild of Garbyites. And I look back at womanly ways in the Negro World newspaper, where Benizia Demina writes an article calling out the so-called deacons of the church who whisper and murmur and call, cat call to me and say, you know. And she's in that article, she's saying, How dare you? Like, you out of your rabid mind, you know. I recognize in Black Lives Matter the decentralization, which people are critical of, but I also consider it to be a beautiful and wonderful thing in that I see it as a lesson from how the UNIA operated, where regionally, locally, the organization may look a little different in New York than it looked in Belize, than it looked in California, than it looked in South Africa. Why? Because it was serving a specific function or addressing particular issues that were relevant to people on the ground. So although you had this, you know, hierarchical, centralized office space with a set of aims and objectives of goals, you could, on your block, in your community, in your village, like with my grandmother, determine that number two and number four were the most important. And so that's what we're going to go after for the next six months. Um, I see black economic nationalism as a complete offshoot of the goals of the UNIA. I think what we witness with the Detroit Housewives League, what we're witnessing now in this moment, where people are going into a certain store and buying um ice scrapers for 17 cents and then going back and returning them in that same said store to slow down the works in that said store, that name that we're not going to say. Um I see it in this moment where the bullseye store, um, and I just drove past the bullseye store in my community just to see if we were up in there. We ain't up in there. The day before Thanksgiving, we ain't up in there. You know, the idea that from The space that we're in, we recognize the power that we have. That there doesn't have to be, I'm, you know, I don't have to go around showing everybody my membership card. The level of consciousness and awareness that I have about who I am in the world and how I choose to show up in the world is how I see the UNIA, even in this moment. So whether it's on Canvas or it's in music, it's, you know, when we had our FUBU era, our for us, by us era, you know, in my head, you used to laugh at that and say, you know, those are the things that Mr. Garvey would have been happy about. Those are the things that the official woman would have been happy about. Um I, you know, the Auntidonas of the world, right? Uh, what is happening in Jamaica right now, um, in terms of the relief efforts for St. Elizabeth and Westmoreland. Um, I myself, you know, someone messed with me the other day and said, you really live that philosophy, don't you? Right? You know, because um, I'm on the phone with complete strangers, like a friend, call a friend, call a friend. We found this lady and we need to finish the roof. You have anything can't help us? I'm like, yeah, of course. All right, tell me who to send it to. Um, kind of thing. That kind of of connection and universal understanding of the human condition, right? It's not just a black condition, it's not just a black woman's condition, right? Um, it's how I see it personified, this moment in the culture. I think the real efficient womanhood in the angels song about single mothers, right? And just sort of turning the stigma on its head. I think spice is also a brilliant example. I mean, you know, we could have the whole sidebar conversation about the stone that the builder refused. But more importantly, right, um this idea of um how we recycle and recalibrate the money that we earn and channel it back into our own community in ways that build us and reshape us, right? I also see it, you know, um, in the way that Rihanna conducts herself globally. The Prime Minister, Prime Minister Um Moxley of Barbados. Um, my new dream is to just meet her. Just not even meet her, just be in the same room with her. And and and she has, you know, her high points and her low points, and there are all kinds of criticisms. Um I see it, you know, in the ways in which black women are becoming heads of state, right? Even when we look up back, um, President Surlee Johnson, right? Um we look at the Prime Minister of Trinidad. You know, we see women galvanizing um against the gangs in in Haiti uh right now, right, in defense of their children. I think by and large, in the American context, we like to focus on Shirley Chisholm and Barbara Jordan. You know, Shirley Chisholm also grew up in a Garveyite home. Uh, Sylvia Woods, who I'm working on as my next research project, uh, was a labor organizer, co-founder of the AFL CIO. And she also ran for political office. Charlotte Bass ran for political office um in the 1950s. The idea that we look only at the bigger picture politics, the famous people, um, it sort of, you know, betrays the relevance and the significance of the everyday kinds of activism, the everyday kinds of choices. Um, I see the UNIA ironically, you know, in the women in white in churches, right? Who, you know, in some ways uh represent a sort of vanguard, right? We are not going to have any nonsense in here today, right? Um, and and that nonsense can be the preacher in the pulpit because they will take him down without a question. We've seen viral video of women say, okay, no, no, no, no, no. We finish with you, right? And take people off the pulpit, right? And, you know, it's a thing where nobody asked them, nobody designated them, right? But from their position as woman, as a person who has discernment and understanding, and someone who sees themselves as responsible for, again, that politics of care. This is a part of my duty, right? Um, has nothing to do with my separate sphere, right, or my respectability. You know, it's it's about my politics of care and how I choose to advocate for my community. And so a lot of that is what we're seeing in this moment globally and locally.

SPEAKER_00: 25:21

The last thing I want to just sort of talk about divine timing in a sense. I remember at the top of this year getting your book in the mail. It's delivered at my doorstep. And just a few days later, it's the announcement that President Biden posthumously pardons Garvey. Um, and so I just sort of with that, and I know it it wasn't, you know, it's just fate, it's just the way the world happens. Um, but I think how do you hope that, you know, putting all of these little pieces in tandem together or actually very big pieces between your book, between the pardon, um, between sort of this regalvanization and awareness. Um, how do you hope that this really helps us further and sort of deepen our understanding of Garvey, of the UNIA and its many complications, but especially of the integral role that these women played in this movement?

SPEAKER_01: 26:19

Thank you so much for that question. Uh I'm gonna start to answer that question by stating a few facts. One, Mr. Garvey was actually arrested after a woman went to the New York district attorney to complain that she had not gotten a refund on her investment in the Black Star Line, which was the shipping company established by the organization. And the intention of the Black Star Line and Trading Company, Navigation Trading Company, was essentially to provide first-class passage to persons who wanted to travel by sea because they're living during during the Jim Crow era, they were forced to um travel in stewardage, even if they paid first-class ticket price, they still had to travel in storage based on their color. So, Mr. Garvey actually ends up on trial because of black women. While this woman in particular, um, and I talk about this in the book a little bit, was on the stand, she's being questioned as to how much did she invest, when did she invest, why did she invest, etc. And then they ask an interesting question Are you still a member of the Universal Negro Improvement Association? And she says, yes. Wait, you're suing Mr. Garvey, you want your money back from the Black Star Line, but you are still a member? Yes. How come? The Black Star Line is for money, but the UNIA is for life. And so Mr. Garvey's pardon is not an exoneration. And I argue in the book that Henrietta Vinton Davis should have been on trial too. Elias, Elias Garcia should have been on trial too, because they signed the stock certificates, and Henrietta Vinton Davis signed more stock certificates than Marcus Garvey. We have to recognize, and and the way that um President Biden's forgiveness read, he counted Mr. Garve as a civil rights leader. And I think that that's probably one of the greatest understatements of the 21st century, because Mr. Garvey was more than a civil rights leader. I think my book shows that this is about more than just civil rights. This is about black autonomy and black independence. So my hope in telling this story about how women negotiated, how women could invest in the Black Star Line, be disappointed in the Black Star Line, how the Black Star Line could collapse as a company and then find itself reconstituted. Six months after Mr. Garby goes to jail, they bring back the Black Star Line, start it all over again. And the same people who bought stock the first time come back and buy stock a second time. And there's a woman who writes into the Negro world and says, please, white people, mind your business. It is our money, and we will do with it what we will. This does not concern you. That's not about civil rights. That's about something else. And so I hope that the work helps people see why America in the 21st century could fool itself by saying they didn't know or didn't believe that a black woman could be ready on day one to be president of the United States. When we had a woman prime minister in England for a number of years, we had a woman head in India, we had a woman head on the continent, we had several women heads on the continent, we have women heads throughout the Caribbean, but we didn't think that this person would be ready on day one for any number of, you know, silly reasons. When for the past 100 years, the efficient womanhood strategy not only set up a structure for how black women could negotiate spaces to protect and defend themselves and their families, but essentially provided the platform for what we come to understand to be the nascent civil rights movement. Much of what we see the women in the UNIA practicing and working out and flushing out, we see in the civil rights movement. We see it in the Black Panther Party. And then when we ask those people about their ancestors and those connections, we find that the grandmother, the great-grandmother, somebody was a Garveyite. And it's not just, you know, in the American South or in the American West. I mean, this is globally, right? So this is about more than civil rights. This is about human rights and our assertion to be seen as an intellectual people, an independent people, an autonomous people, a self-sufficient people. Um, I also hope that the work widens the conversation, not only about who is fit to lead and when, but what leadership needs to look like in moments like the one we're in, because 2025 and 1925 ain't that different. I hope that answered the question.

SPEAKER_00: 32:06

It did. I appreciate it. I think in a lot of ways, for me at least, reading this, as you pointed out, not only cements a lot of the pieces of history that have been missing, um, but as you you pointed out, so seamlessly connects with many of the things in our own time period. Um and so I appreciate you so much, Dr. Duncan, for joining us for this episode of Strictly Facts. Our listeners, I cannot recommend enough one of my favorite reads of the year, An Efficient Womanhood Woman, and the making of the Universal Negro Improvement Association. It'll be linked in our show notes. Um, it's always on our Strictly Facts syllabus on our website. So be sure to grab yourselves a copy and learn some of this history that is so immediately needed. So again, thank you so much, Dr. Duncan, for joining me. Until next time, our listeners, look more.

SPEAKER_01: 33:00

Thank you, Sister Milla. Go on good.

SPEAKER_00: 33:03

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