by
_____
On April 19, 1935, a young Black woman stepped up to the podium at a women’s conference in Turkey.
She spoke about her own experience coming from the Caribbean island of Jamaica, a British colony once dependent on a sugar and slave-based economy, and a place of economic and social hardship.
She spoke about the straitened circumstances of poor Black women in Jamaica. She spoke about the racial segregation of life in London. And she spoke about racism in the US and the brutality of lynching.
“Negroes are asking for things common to all humans,” Una Marson told the audience at the 12th International Alliance of Women for Suffrage and Equal Citizenship. “They want justice.”
She was just 30 years old, but her words conveyed gravity and purpose. The speech received thunderous applause and made headlines back in Britain.
Una Marson has been honored with a Google doodle that shows her as many in Britain and the Caribbean knew her best, at the microphone.
Una Marson has just been honored with a Google doodle that shows her as many in Britain and the Caribbean knew her best: at the microphone. Behind her are sunny scenes of Jamaica and grey London.
Marson was an internationally-known poet, playwright, journalist, and broadcaster, a producer of radio programs about the Caribbean.
She was born in rural Jamaica in 1905. As a young woman in 1928 she established “The Cosmopolitan,” a journal focused on women’s concerns — but not typical magazine fare about fashion and housekeeping. For example, in April 1931 Marson wrote this about the Miss Jamaica beauty content:
“Some amount of expense and disappointment could be saved numbers of dusky ladies who, year are year, enter the Beauty competition if the promoters of the content would announce in the daily press that very dark or ‘black beauties’ will not be considered…. There is a going feeling that Miss Jamaica should be a type of girl who is more truly representative of the majority of Jamaicans.”
Constrained by the colonial world and its restrictions on women, she left for London in 1932. But she was shocked to find that things were not much better there — the culture was deeply segregated and stratified.
According to Delia Jarrett-Macauley, author of the biography The Life of Una Marson, 1905-65, Marson was taught in Jamaica to look up to all things British. But in many ways, the reality was “a bitter disappointment.”
During World War II Marson became the first Black woman employed by the BBC. She produced a weekly radio program “Calling the West Indies” that was broadcast on the BBC Overseas Service, featuring poems and short stories by Caribbean authors. She turned that program into “Caribbean Voices,” another showcase for Caribbean literary work.
She began moving in civil rights circles, and writing poetry and plays that reflected her awakening perspective.
Marson used the visibility of her radio persona and platform to speak out against racism and sexism. In London, she was invited to speak to organizations such as the Women’s Freedom League, the Women’s Peace Crusade, the Women’s International Alliance, and the British Commonwealth League.
She would talk about Jamaican history and society, the legacy of slavery, and the entrenched social problems, especially among women who suffered from poverty and malnutrition.
She would speak about Jamaican history and society, the legacy of slavery, and the entrenched poverty there, especially among poor women who suffered from malnutrition and disease.
In 1935, Marson was invited to speak at the 12th International Alliance of Women for Suffrage and Equal Citizenship, at the Palace of Yildiz on the outskirts of Istanbul. Her topic was “East and West in Cooperation.”
She told the audience that “Negroes are suffering under enormous difficulties in most countries in the world.” And she called upon colonial powers in Africa to protect the rights of African women demanding, “they must do this in all spheres, social, religious and educational.”
Marson traveled widely and experienced professional success, but hers was also a life marked by instability and hardship. On a visit to Jamaica in May 1965, she suffered a heart attack and died. She was just 60.
As Jarrett-Macauley writes, there is no headstone to mark her grave. “The ground is covered with ‘Rice and Peas,’ small, pink Jamaican flowers, growing wild.”
© Copyright 2021
________________________________
Want to talk? Reach me at dana@danarubin.com