Strictly Facts: A Guide to Caribbean History and Culture

Recovering Architects Of The UNIA with Dr. Natanya Duncan Part II

Send us a text message and tell us your thoughts.A woman signs up 3,000 new members, walks into a meeting she was invited to lead, and is assassinated at the podium. That single moment opens a window into the hidden architecture of a global movement and the women who kept it alive when headlines and historians looked away. We continue our conversation with Dr. Natanya Duncan to explore the life and legacy of Princess Laura Adorkor Kofey and the broader force she represents: efficient womanhood inside the Universal Negro Improvement Association. We unpack how Kofey leveraged overlapping memberships across Black political organizations to grow the UNIA at scale, and why her ability to mobilize made her both indispensable and threatening. Dr. Duncan traces archival breadcrumbs to show how debates about Kofey’s origins obscured the central question: who shot her, and what does that reveal about power, loyalty, and gender in mass movements?We broaden the lens to spotlight women like Henrietta Vinton Davis who signed stock certificates and underwrote the Black Star Line, illustrating how everyday decisions about money, mutual aid, and accountability built real infrastructure. This isn’t just civil rights history; it’s a blueprint for Black autonomy and human rights that shaped the tactics of later movements and still resonates now. Tune in, rethink the narrative, and help surface the names and questions that deserve daylight. City University of New York Associate Professor of History, Dr. Natanya Duncan's research and teaching focuses on global freedom movements of the 20th and 21st Century. Duncan’s research interest includes constructions of identity and nation building amongst women of color; migrations; color and class in Diasporic communities; and the engagements of intellectuals throughout the African Diaspora. Her book, An Efficient Womanhood: Women and the Making of the Universal Negro Improvement Association, (University of North Carolina Press 2025) focuses on the distinct activist strategies in-acted by women in the UNIA, which Duncan calls an efficient womanhood. Following the ways women in the UNIA scripted their own understanding of Pan Africanism, Black Nationalism and constructions of Diasporic Blackness, the work traces the blending of nationalist and gendered concerns amongst known and lesser known Garveyite women. Support the showConnect with Strictly Facts - Instagram | Facebook | Twitter | LinkedIn | YouTube | Website Looking to read more about the topics covered in this episode? Subscribe to the newsletter at www.strictlyfactspod.com to get the Strictly Facts Syllabus to your email!Want to Support Strictly Facts? Rate & Leave a Review on your favorite platform Share this episode with someone or online and tag us Send us a DM or voice note to have your thoughts featured on an upcoming episode Donate to help us continue empowering listeners with Caribbean history and education Produced by Breadfruit Media

Recovering Architects Of The UNIA with Dr. Natanya Duncan Part I

Send us a text message and tell us your thoughts.What happens when the archive starts talking back? We sat down with Dr. Natanya Duncan to illuminate the women who built the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) from the ground up and gave the movement its global muscle. From a Kingston porch to Harlem kitchens and London cafés, their labor carried Garveyism across continents while reshaping what Black leadership looked like in the early twentieth century. Along the way, we meet names that deserve the spotlight: Henrietta Vinton Davis, Laura Kofey, and especially the Two Amys. Amy Ashwood Garvey co-founded the UNIA and helped the Negro World reach readers far beyond Harlem. Amy Jacques Garvey transformed the paper’s women’s page into a political and strategic forum, setting the tone for a movement that saw home life and nation building as the same fight.Threaded through the conversation is “efficient womanhood,” a term recovered in the archive that captures how UNIA women blended gender demands with nationalist goals as one practical program. We explore how public stance and private negotiation worked in tandem, why women printed their addresses and left a paper trail of property, and how their coalitions nurtured anticolonial leadership. This is a story of logistics, courage, and care: parades organized, ledgers balanced, alliances brokered, and a movement sustained in the face of surveillance and erasure.Editor's Note: At 03:14, Dr. Duncan meant to refer to Dr. Patrick E. Bryan instead of "Patrick Henry."City University of New York Associate Professor of History, Dr. Natanya Duncan's research and teaching focuses on global freedom movements of the 20th and 21st Century. Duncan’s research interest includes constructions of identity and nation building amongst women of color; migrations; color and class in Diasporic communities; and the engagements of intellectuals throughout the African Diaspora. Her book, An Efficient Womanhood: Women and the Making of the Universal Negro Improvement Association, (University of North Carolina Press 2025) focuses on the distinct activist strategies in-acted by women in the UNIA, which Duncan calls an efficient womanhood. Following the ways women in the UNIA scripted their own understanding of Pan Africanism, Black Nationalism and constructions of Diasporic Blackness, the work traces the blendiSupport the showConnect with Strictly Facts - Instagram | Facebook | Twitter | LinkedIn | YouTube | Website Looking to read more about the topics covered in this episode? Subscribe to the newsletter at www.strictlyfactspod.com to get the Strictly Facts Syllabus to your email!Want to Support Strictly Facts? Rate & Leave a Review on your favorite platform Share this episode with someone or online and tag us Send us a DM or voice note to have your thoughts featured on an upcoming episode Donate to help us continue empowering listeners with Caribbean history and education Produced by Breadfruit Media

Two Amys, One Movement

Send us a text message and tell us your thoughts.Think you know the Garvey story? Meet the two Amys who built its backbone. We dive into the lives of Amy Ashwood Garvey and Amy Jacques Garvey, Jamaican visionaries whose organizing, editing, and leadership turned a charismatic vision into a global movement. Their names appear in the margins of many textbooks, but their fingerprints are on every chapter of Garveyism’s rise, reach, and survival.We trace Amy Ashwood’s role as a UNIA co-founder, strategist, and early architect who helped design the organization’s infrastructure in Jamaica and nurtured its international ambitions. Her work exemplifies a transatlantic Caribbean feminism rooted in institution-building and political education, long before the term became common. We then spotlight Amy Jacques, a journalist and editor whose stewardship during Garvey’s imprisonment kept the movement alive. She edited The Negro World, wrote speeches, managed correspondence, and articulated a bold vision for women’s leadership in Black liberation. By editing and publishing The Philosophy and Opinions of Marcus Garvey, she preserved a scattered archive and ensured that future generations could study, adapt, and debate Garveyism. Along the way, we acknowledge the human complexity—yes, Marcus married two Amys—and use that irony to open the door to deeper truths: movements are made by people with egos, contradictions, humor, and heart. Re-centering these women shifts how we measure impact, highlighting the editors, organizers, archivists, and educators who keep ideas moving across borders and time. If you’ve only heard the headline, this conversation invites you into the story behind it. If this resonated, follow the show, share it with a friend, and leave a review so more listeners can discover the women who built Garveyism. What other hidden architects of history should we feature next?Support the showConnect with Strictly Facts - Instagram | Facebook | Twitter | LinkedIn | YouTube | Website Looking to read more about the topics covered in this episode? Subscribe to the newsletter at www.strictlyfactspod.com to get the Strictly Facts Syllabus to your email!Want to Support Strictly Facts? Rate & Leave a Review on your favorite platform Share this episode with someone or online and tag us Send us a DM or voice note to have your thoughts featured on an upcoming episode Donate to help us continue empowering listeners with Caribbean history and education Produced by Breadfruit Media

Five Years, Forward for 2026!

Send us a text message and tell us your thoughts.We are starting the year with a heart of gratitude and a clear plan for what comes next. We celebrate five years of Strictly Facts by looking at how this community-built project became a classroom, a living archive, and a love letter to Caribbean voices. Along the way, we reflect on the milestones of 2025. We revisit why this space exists: to center Caribbean history as a global story rooted in everyday life. Our growth didn’t come from hype. It came from trust—the emails, classroom shares, kind reviews, and the steady support of a diaspora that knows the value of telling our own stories.Now we turn the mic to you. Year five is a year-long celebration shaped by listener ideas. Send us your hopes and questions. Tell us what you want to learn, who should join us, and how this show can keep serving the region and its global family. We’ll keep honoring the past, standing in the present, and building a more complete record of Caribbean life together.Support the showConnect with Strictly Facts - Instagram | Facebook | Twitter | LinkedIn | YouTube | Website Looking to read more about the topics covered in this episode? Subscribe to the newsletter at www.strictlyfactspod.com to get the Strictly Facts Syllabus to your email!Want to Support Strictly Facts? Rate & Leave a Review on your favorite platform Share this episode with someone or online and tag us Send us a DM or voice note to have your thoughts featured on an upcoming episode Donate to help us continue empowering listeners with Caribbean history and education Produced by Breadfruit Media

*Throwback* Celebrating the Holidays in the Caribbean

Send us a text message and tell us your thoughts.Celebrate the holidays with us with a throwback episode as we open a window onto a season where streets become stages, kitchens turn into archives, and every drumbeat and carol carries a story. From the clatter of cowbells in Nassau to the smoky crackle of a roast pig on Christmas Eve, the region’s holidays reveal how history lives in sound, taste, and togetherness. We start with the pulse of festival culture: Junkanoo’s lavish costumes and goatskin drums marching down Bay Street in the Bahamas, and the Boxing Day launches in the U.S. Virgin Islands, St. Kitts and Nevis, Belize, and Montserrat. Each celebration stitches heritage to the present—months of planning, bursts of creativity, and a shared promise to meet at dawn. Then we head to St. Vincent and the Grenadines, where Nine Mornings wakes neighborhoods at 4 a.m. with concerts and games, culminating in a joyful jump up that proves community thrives when people gather before sunrise.Our journey continues into homes and churches. In Suriname, Godo Pa—Dearest Daddy—arrives on December 6 with gifts and poems, a post-independence figure who replaces Old World icons with a reflection of local identity. Across the Spanish Caribbean, Noche Buena brings families to the table for lechón, yuca, and music that lasts late into Christmas Eve, while Three Kings Day keeps the season open into January as children leave grass and water for the camels and wake to gifts beneath the bed. These customs hold the region’s layered past while nurturing the joy that keeps people close. No Caribbean holiday is complete without music. Parang bands roam neighborhoods in Grenada, and parang-soca lights up Trinidad and Tobago with door-to-door harmonies. We share favorites—from Scrunter’s Christmas classics and Bindley B’s celebratory anthems to Carlene Davis’s reggae carols—curating a playlist that can transform a winter commute into a warm-weather fête. By the end, you’ll hear how a festival becomes a bridge, how a song becomes a keepsake, and how a meal becomes a map back home.Press play, share your family tradition, and tell us the holiday song you return to every year. If this tour of Caribbean celebrations moved you, follow, rate, and leave a review to help others find the show.Support the showConnect with Strictly Facts - Instagram | Facebook | Twitter | LinkedIn | YouTube | Website Looking to read more about the topics covered in this episode? Subscribe to the newsletter at www.strictlyfactspod.com to get the Strictly Facts Syllabus to your email!Want to Support Strictly Facts? Rate & Leave a Review on your favorite platform Share this episode with someone or online and tag us Send us a DM or voice note to have your thoughts featured on an upcoming episode Donate to help us continue empowering listeners with Caribbean history and education Produced by Breadfruit Media