Few people can probably tell you who Henrietta Vinton Davis is, and yet she was a largely influential player in the abolitionist and Black nationalist movements. In fact, she is seen as the link between the two.

Henrietta started as a teacher at the young age of fifteen. By her late teens, she became the first Black womyn to work in the Office of the Recorder of Deeds in Washington, DC. Three years later, Frederick Douglass would become the Recorder of Deeds. It was here that their relationship began, but not where it ended. The year that Douglass became the Recorder of Deeds, Davis began her career as a well-known actress. She had a ton of success playing in a wide range of plays from Shakespeare to Twain. She started her own Company in Chicago and then traveled to the Caribbean on tour. Although Davis was already a political player, it was in the Caribbean that she became acquainted with the work of Marcus Garvey. Shortly after meeting Garvey, Davis left acting to become fully dedicated to the cause of Black liberation.

Her association with Garvey, whose ideas of racial purity and superiority were repugnant to much of the Black owning class, caused Davis to lose many of her old friendships and professional connections. That didn’t stop Davis, though. She continued to work with Garvey and became the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League’s International Organizer, then the fourth assistant President-General, and eventually the Secretary General (despite being unseated by Garvey in 1923). She also established UNIA-ACL divisions in Cuba; Guadeloupe; St. Thomas, Virgin Islands; Port-au-Prince, Haiti; Trinidad and Tobago and Jamaica.

Davis was also one of the signatories on the 1920 Declaration of Rights of the Negro Peoples of the World, which, among many other things, declared red, black and green to be the colors of the Black race. In 1932, she broke from Garvey to become the first Assistant President General of the rival UNIA, Inc. In 1934, she was elected President of UNIA, Inc. Davis influenced the world by organizing for Black liberation in all four hemispheres.