Bailey, Amy

November 27, 1895 (or November 28, 1896)
October 3, 1990

Even in death, Amy Bailey advocated service to Jamaica, claiming a last word for a mission to which she had dedicated much of her life. At the service of thanksgiving held to commemorate her life, a brief letter she had written sometime in 1989 and updated in 1990 was read. Addressed "To my friends and those interested," the letter explained that she had asked that no eulogy be given at the service because she wanted the praise and honor not for herself but to "humbly say, Thank you, God." She ended the letter with a call to serve others and "to leave Jamaica a better place" (Bailey, 1990).

Bailey had done just that. She was born and lived at a time when the structures of slave society remained deeply embedded in the economic, social, and political fabric of colonial Jamaica, despite Emancipation in 1838. Her parents, who were teachers, lived and worked in rural Jamaica and regarded education as the foundation necessary for blacks to advance in society. They inspired their eight children with this vision.

Bailey's early education, her formal training at Short-wood Teachers' College, and her work as a teacher at Kingston Technical School from 1919 to 1958 shaped her sense of mission. In addition to teaching her students shorthand and typing, she persistently advocated for employment opportunities for graduates in a system that did not regard technical school graduates to be "civil service quality."

Bailey's political orientation included race consciousness and anticolonial activism, and she was influenced by the work of Marcus Garvey and her involvement beginning in the 1930s with organizations such as the Jamaica Poetry League and the Readers and Writers Club. She was also active in social welfare groups such as Save the Children and in 1939 she co-founded the Birth Control Association. The Women's Liberal Club (WLC), which she cofounded in 1936, combined a women's rights agenda with the nationalist call "to help make Jamaica a better place for Jamaicans" (Domingo, 1937/1993, pp. 35–36). The resolutions of the WLC's First Women's Conference in 1939 included calls for women to vote on equal terms with men (but not for universal adult suffrage); for the appointment of women as jurors, justices of the peace, and police officers; and for women to be able to stand for election for the legislative council.

Bailey had raised many of the WLC's demands in articles she published regularly in Public Opinion, a progressive nationalist newspaper founded in the late 1930s. She wrote on a range of social issues and spoke out on topics that polite society considered unspeakable: race and color; black women who were not wanted by black men, who chose to marry brown or white women; and black young women who were not wanted as workers in business establishments. Her advocacy was strengthened by practical action directed toward changing employment practices in retail establishments. She felt great satisfaction for this aspect of her work and more generally for what she "did for colour in this country" (Brodber, 1986, p. 14).

Bailey was co-opted into the leadership of the colonial-oriented Jamaica Federation of Women, which was founded in 1944. This was probably a tactical move by Bailey, who was moving to form her own organization but saw the benefit of her presence and voice in an organization that brought together all the main women's groups in the country under the charismatic leadership of the governor's wife and was to be a space for struggle between the procolonial and nationalist tendencies within the women's movement of the time.

Bailey's focus was on her Housecraft Training Centre, where young women received training in domestic science. Some of the estimated six thousand young women who attended were able to use their training as a way to improve their lives, while for the majority, domestic service was presented as the main option for women's employment.

Bailey belonged to a generation of black Jamaican nationalist feminists that includes Amy Jacques Garvey, Amy Ashwood Garvey, Una Marson, Mary Morris Knibb, Edith Dalton James, and Eulalee Domingo, who were determined to change the face and nature of Jamaica and to secure women both influence and a place of respect in the life of the country. The government of Jamaica honored Bailey with the Order of Distinction in 1971 and in 1990 with the second highest national honor, the Order of Jamaica. The pamphlet Tributes to Miss Amy that was published after her death and distributed at her funeral, as well as the guard of honor at her thanksgiving service that was formed by the representatives of women's and other civic organizations, comprised her eulogy, never spoken but still declared.

See also Garvey, Amy Ashwood; Garvey, Amy Jacques; Garvey, Marcus; Morris Knibb, Mary; Marson, Una

Bibliography

Bailey, Amy. "To my friends and those interested." Letter, with attachment from Vivian Crawford, long-time advisor to the Bailey family, identifying it as Bailey's last letter, July 26, 1990. Private archives of Linnette Vassell, Kingston, Jamaica.

Brodber, Erna. "The Pioneering Miss Bailey." Jamaica Journal 19, no. 2 (1986).

Domingo, Eulalee. "Women's Clubs of Jamaica" (1937). In Voices of Women in Jamaica, 1898–1939. Compiled by Linnette Vassell. Mona, Jamaica: Dept. of History, University of the West Indies, 1993.

"Making History Take the Stage: Pauline Crawford's Amy Bailey." In Women Speak: Newsletter About Caribbean Women, no. 23. Women and Development Unit, Extra Mural Dept., UWI, Pinelands, Barbados. April, 1988.

Service of Thanksgiving for the Life of the Honourable Miss Amy Bailey, OJ MBE JP (pamphlet). Private archives of Linnette Vassell, Kingston, Jamaica.

Tributes to Miss Amy (pamphlet). Private archives of Linnette Vassell, Kingston, Jamaica.

linnette vassell (2005)