Henrietta Vinton Davis - UNIA-ACL Membership

UNIA-ACL Membership

While traveling in the Caribbean, Davis learned of the work of Marcus Garvey. In 1919, she accepted Garvey's invitation to speak at the Palace Casino in Harlem, NYC. She decided to give up her career to work with Garvey and the UNIA-ACL, becoming the UNIA's first International Organizer, a director of the Black Star Line and the second Vice-President of the corporation.

At the UNIA-ACL convention in August 1920, Miss Davis was one of the signatories of the The Declaration of the Rights of the Negro Peoples of the World. Among the 54 declarations made in this document are resolutions that the colors red, black, and green are to be the symbolic colors of the African race and the term "nigger" cease being used. Furthermore, it demands that the word "Negro" be written with a capital "N". During the same convention the High Potentate of the UNIA conveyed upon her the title "Lady Commander of the Grand Order of the Nile".

In 1921, Lady Davis rose in rank to become the fourth assistant President-General of the UNIA-ACL. She established UNIA-ACL divisions in Cuba; Guadeloupe; St. Thomas, Virgin Islands; Port-au-Prince, Haiti; Trinidad and Tobago and Jamaica.

Unseated by Garvey in June 1923 in an effort to quell dissent in the UNIA's New York headquarters, she was reelected during the August 1924 convention. On August 25, 1924 she chaired the convention meeting as the Fourth-Assistant President General of the UNIA. In December, she traveled to Liberia, West Africa as the only woman in the UNIA delegation seeking consent to establish a UNIA-ACL colony in Liberia. In that same year she was a member of a committee which delivered petitions to U.S. President Calvin Coolidge seeking Garvey's exoneration on mail fraud charges. At the 1929 International Convention of the UNIA she was elected UNIA Secretary General.