Henrietta Vinton Davis

Activist and actor

• Born: August 15, 1860
• Birthplace: Baltimore, Maryland
• Died: November 23, 1941
• Place of death: Washington, D.C.

Davis’s oratorical gifts and considerable leadership skill were crucial to the success of Marcus Garvey’s pan-African liberation and black nationalism movements that presaged the later twentieth century Civil Rights movement.

Early Life

Henrietta Vinton Davis was born on August 15, 1860, in Baltimore, Maryland, to Mansfield Vinton Davis and Mary Ann (Johnson) Davis. Her father died when she was very young, and her mother soon married George A. Hackett, a wealthy man who was able to provide his stepdaughter with many advantages. When Hackett died in 1870, his widow moved to Washington, D.C., where Davis received the remainder of her education.

At fifteen, Davis became a teacher in the Maryland schools, but she soon accepted a better position in Louisiana. After a few years, she returned to Washington to care for her mother. In 1878, she obtained a copyist’s position at the Office of Recorder of Deeds in Washington, becoming the first African American woman to be employed in that office. She worked there until 1884.

Life’s Work

During this period, Davis began to consider a career in the theater. She studied under Marguerite Saxon and later with Edwin Lawrence of New York and Rachel Noah of Boston. She made her dramatic debut in Washington in April of 1883, where she was introduced by Frederick Douglass. In 1884, Davis left her job to devote herself to her new career. She toured extensively and gained the endorsement of African American leaders as well as attention from white audiences. One of her most significant theatrical accomplishments was to breach the barrier between black actors and Shakespeare. In 1884 in Cincinnati, Davis and Powhatan Beaty, another black actor, staged a successful theatrical festival in which they performed Macbeth. Later that year, Beaty played opposite Davis in New York in several other Shakespearean roles. Davis is thought to be the first African American woman to perform Shakespeare.

At the age of fifty-nine, Davis undertook another career change. In 1919, Marcus Garvey persuaded her to leave the stage and join his African Redemption Movement. Within months of her initial speech at Harlem’s Palace Casino, Davis became a major figure in the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League (UNIA-ACL). Her oratorical skill and theatrical renown were significant assets, and she traveled extensively to promote the organization’s cause. Garvey quickly placed her in positions of importance, as a director of his Black Star Line and as the first international organizer for the UNIA-ACL. At the organization’s 1920 convention, she was signatory to the Declaration of the Rights of the Negro Peoples of the World and received the title of “Lady Commander of the Sublime Order of the Nile.”

In 1921, Davis became Fourth Assistant President General of the UNIA-ACL. She established branches of the organization in a number of Caribbean countries, and in 1924, she became the only woman in a delegation to Liberia. She also was selected as one of six delegates to tender a request for President Calvin Coolidge’s support in founding a homeland for black Americans.

Davis’s relationship with Garvey extended beyond the purely professional; she was his loyal supporter and confidante. Davis was one of only a few in the UNIA-ACL who remained loyal throughout Garvey’s legal difficulties and who continued to defend him publicly even as he served a prison sentence for mail fraud. Garvey’s loyalty to Davis was less constant. After years of turmoil in the UNIA-ACL, Davis finally left in 1932 to become the first assistant president general of a rival group, UNIA, Inc., and took the office of president in 1934. During the Great Depression, she focused primarily on civil rights and employment opportunities for African Americans.

Little is known of Davis’s life after 1936. She died in St. Elizabeths Hospital in Washington, D.C., on November 23, 1941, at eighty-one years of age.

Significance

Davis was a longtime leader in the UNIA-ACL and is therefore an exemplar of the importance of women in the Garvey movement, which commonly is viewed as largely male-driven. She was instrumental in garnering support for Garvey’s African Redemption Movement among ordinary African Americans and the black leadership. She also was a key player in spreading support for pan-African liberation throughout the United States and the Caribbean—newspaper accounts describe audiences as cheering wildly whenever she appeared. Davis’s contributions were instrumental in the effectiveness and significance of the Garvey movement.

Bibliography

Bair, Barbara. “True Women, Real Men: Gender Ideology and Social Roles in the Garvey Movement.” In Gendered Domains: Rethinking Public and Private in Women’s History—Essays from the Seventh Berkshire Conference on the History of Women, edited by Dorothy Helly and Susan Reverby. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1992. Provides insight into gender roles and expectations within the Garvey movement and how they shaped Davis’s life and work, her relationship with Marcus Garvey, and her relative historical obscurity.

Hill, Errol. “Henrietta Vinton Davis: Shakespearean Actress.” In Women in American Theatre, edited by Helen Krich Chinoy and Linda Walsh Jenkins. New York: Theatre Communications Group, 2006. Contains significant information on Davis’s long elocutionary and theatrical career as well as her later transition to activism.

Seraile, William. “Henrietta Vinton Davis and the Garvey Movement.” Afro-Americans in New York Life and History 7, no. 2 (January, 1983): 7-24. Provides a detailed overview of Davis’s life and work, especially her activism in and importance to the Garvey movement.