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What happens when the archive starts talking back? We sat down with Dr. Natanya Duncan to illuminate the women who built the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) from the ground up and gave the movement its global muscle. From a Kingston porch to Harlem kitchens and London cafés, their labor carried Garveyism across continents while reshaping what Black leadership looked like in the early twentieth century. Along the way, we meet names that deserve the spotlight: Henrietta Vinton Davis, Laura Kofey, and especially the Two Amys. Amy Ashwood Garvey co-founded the UNIA and helped the Negro World reach readers far beyond Harlem. Amy Jacques Garvey transformed the paper’s women’s page into a political and strategic forum, setting the tone for a movement that saw home life and nation building as the same fight.

Threaded through the conversation is “efficient womanhood,” a term recovered in the archive that captures how UNIA women blended gender demands with nationalist goals as one practical program. We explore how public stance and private negotiation worked in tandem, why women printed their addresses and left a paper trail of property, and how their coalitions nurtured anticolonial leadership. This is a story of logistics, courage, and care: parades organized, ledgers balanced, alliances brokered, and a movement sustained in the face of surveillance and erasure.

Editor's Note: At 03:14, Dr. Duncan meant to refer to Dr. Patrick E. Bryan instead of "Patrick Henry."

City University of New York Associate Professor of History, Dr. Natanya Duncan's research and teaching focuses on global freedom movements of the 20th and 21st Century. Duncan’s research interest includes constructions of identity and nation building amongst women of color; migrations; color and class in Diasporic communities; and the engagements of intellectuals throughout the African Diaspora. Her book, An Efficient Womanhood: Women and the Making of the Universal Negro Improvement Association, (University of North Carolina Press 2025) focuses on the distinct activist strategies in-acted by women in the UNIA, which Duncan calls an efficient womanhood. Following the ways women in the UNIA scripted their own understanding of Pan Africanism, Black Nationalism and constructions of Diasporic Blackness, the work traces the blendi

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Think you know the Garvey story? Meet the two Amys who built its backbone. We dive into the lives of Amy Ashwood Garvey and Amy Jacques Garvey, Jamaican visionaries whose organizing, editing, and leadership turned a charismatic vision into a global movement. Their names appear in the margins of many textbooks, but their fingerprints are on every chapter of Garveyism’s rise, reach, and survival.

We trace Amy Ashwood’s role as a UNIA co-founder, strategist, and early architect who helped design the organization’s infrastructure in Jamaica and nurtured its international ambitions. Her work exemplifies a transatlantic Caribbean feminism rooted in institution-building and political education, long before the term became common. We then spotlight Amy Jacques, a journalist and editor whose stewardship during Garvey’s imprisonment kept the movement alive. She edited The Negro World, wrote speeches, managed correspondence, and articulated a bold vision for women’s leadership in Black liberation. By editing and publishing The Philosophy and Opinions of Marcus Garvey, she preserved a scattered archive and ensured that future generations could study, adapt, and debate Garveyism.

Along the way, we acknowledge the human complexity—yes, Marcus married two Amys—and use that irony to open the door to deeper truths: movements are made by people with egos, contradictions, humor, and heart. Re-centering these women shifts how we measure impact, highlighting the editors, organizers, archivists, and educators who keep ideas moving across borders and time. If you’ve only heard the headline, this conversation invites you into the story behind it. If this resonated, follow the show, share it with a friend, and leave a review so more listeners can discover the women who built Garveyism. What other hidden architects of history should we feature next?

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We are starting the year with a heart of gratitude and a clear plan for what comes next. We celebrate five years of Strictly Facts by looking at how this community-built project became a classroom, a living archive, and a love letter to Caribbean voices. Along the way, we reflect on the milestones of 2025. We revisit why this space exists: to center Caribbean history as a global story rooted in everyday life. Our growth didn’t come from hype. It came from trust—the emails, classroom shares, kind reviews, and the steady support of a diaspora that knows the value of telling our own stories.

Now we turn the mic to you. Year five is a year-long celebration shaped by listener ideas. Send us your hopes and questions. Tell us what you want to learn, who should join us, and how this show can keep serving the region and its global family. We’ll keep honoring the past, standing in the present, and building a more complete record of Caribbean life together.

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Looking to read more about the topics covered in this episode? Subscribe to the newsletter at www.strictlyfactspod.com to get the Strictly Facts Syllabus to your email!

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Produced by Breadfruit Media