SPEAKER_00: Hey, y'all.I'm Erin Haines.I'm the editor-at-large for the 19th News, a nonprofit newsroom reporting on gender, politics, and policy. I'm also the host of a brand new weekly podcast from the 19th News and Wonder Media Network called The Amendment.Each week, we're bringing you a conversation about gender, politics, and the unfinished work of American democracy.Our very first episode features my dear friend and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, Nicole Hannah-Jones.It's out now, so please go listen and follow the show.On top of all of this, I'm your guest host for this month of Womanica. This Black History Month, we're talking about revolutionaries, the Black women who led struggles for liberation from violent governments, colonial rulers, and enslavers.These women had the courage to imagine radically different worlds, and they used their power to try and pull those worlds into view.
Today, we're talking about a prominent activist who worked at the intersection of civil rights and labor organizing. She paved the way for a radical reimagining of racial politics and drew attention to the plight of Black women in America and abroad.Let's talk about Vicki Garvin. Vicki was born Victoria Holmes in Richmond, Virginia, in 1915.Vicki's family, like many other black families at the time, moved north to Harlem during the Great Depression.Her mother was a domestic worker for upper-class white families.Her father was a plasterer who, due to racism in construction unions, was often out of work. Vicki saw firsthand the kinds of injustice that her parents experienced in the workplace.She and her family often found themselves forced to move apartments on short notice, leaving in the middle of the night to escape eviction.Vicki already had the activist spirit in her by the time she graduated from high school and majored in political science at Hunter College.
In her teens, she got involved with her church's youth program, a group led by future leftist congressman Adam Clayton Powell Jr., She continued her activism there after graduation, attending her first picket line during the Don't Buy Where You Can't Work protest in Harlem, which Powell organized. As an adult, Vicki was on the front lines at protests for Black civil rights and labor rights.She was a switchboard operator at the American League for Peace and Democracy, as well as a member of its corresponding union, the Professional Workers of America.There, she saw the power of workplace organizing.In 1940, Vicki moved to Northampton, Massachusetts, where she studied economics at Smith College. She became interested in Marxist theory and the way that race and class struggles intertwine.When she graduated, she became the first African-American woman to earn a master's degree in economics from Smith College.During the early 1940s, Vicki also became friends with a young Malcolm X, who was working as a bartender in Harlem at the time.She encouraged Malcolm to be politically active and invited him to lectures.
Those conversations sparked a lifelong friendship between the two activists. who spent time exchanging ideas about revolution and political economy.Vicki was also a founding board member of the newspaper Freedom, which focused on the plights of African Americans, particularly Black women, and challenged America's conception of itself as a democracy. Inspired by her studies, writing, and conversations with other activists, Vicki joined the Communist Party in 1947.As her reputation and popularity grew, she helped found the National Negro Labor Council, or the NNLC.In fact, she helped organize the first NNLC convention in 1951, which hosted around 1,000 delegates. Vicki was a defiant voice of the Black left, though, during the Cold War, she found little sympathy from mainstream politics or from her own politics and labor affiliations.In the late 1940s, she openly criticized her union for not militantly supporting the rights of Black workers, calling upon the organization to do better.In 1953, at the height of anti-communist McCarthyism, Vicki was called to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee. By the early 60s, Vicki had resigned from the Communist Party and found fewer and fewer opportunities for her in the United States.
But she certainly wasn't ready to stop working.Vicki turned her attention abroad.She began traveling all over, observing how the political and social issues she witnessed on American soil manifested internationally.Her first stop was Nigeria, where she started focusing her work on anti-colonialism. After two years in Lagos, she intended to return to America, but a fateful stopover changed her plans.In 1957, Ghana had gained its independence from Great Britain.Its leader, Kwame Nkrumah, was a militant pan-Africanist. By the 1960s, Ghana had attracted an expanding group of Black American intellectuals.And soon, Vicki was among its ranks.She roomed with Maya Angelou and later lived next door to W.E.B.
Du Bois.In 1964, Vicki's old friend Malcolm came to Ghana for a visit.Vicki guided him around, mentoring him and helping him build relationships with radicals outside of America who came from places like Algeria, Cuba, and China. Malcolm's tour of Africa was absolutely critical to the evolution of his political views.Vicki also spent some time in China, editing an English newspaper in Beijing and teaching English in Shanghai.She eventually returned to the United States, where she continued to mentor up-and-coming activists across movements.Vicki died in 2007 and continues to be remembered as a key mentor and leader in social movements across three different continents. During her memorial service, a pamphlet distributed to guests concluded with one of Vicki's calls to action.Of course, there will be twists and turns, but victory in the race belongs to the long-distance runners, not sprinters.Everywhere, the JUST slogan is reverberating.
No justice, no peace. All month, we're talking about revolutionaries.For more information, you can find us on Facebook and Instagram at Womanica Podcast.Special thanks to co-creators Jenny and Liz Kaplan for having me as a guest host.Talk to you tomorrow.
