MAPPING GREATNESS: UNA MARSON

Una Maud Marson (1905 - 1965) was a pioneer of her time who contributed much to the unity of Black people, the liberation of women and colonised people, plus campaigned for many other issues. Her biographer Delia Jarrett-Macauley described her as the first “Black British feminist to speak out against racism and sexism in Britain”.

Una’s earliest theatrical works were characterised by the portrayal of a working female protagonist. This centering of Black women laid the foundation for her subsequent work addressing culture, class, and the position of women in a colonial patriarchal society.

(Image above: Article advertising Marson’s play At What a Price in the The New York Age (28th July 1934) and programmes for theatre productions of her other plays: Pocomania (Staged Kingston Jamaica in 1938) & the comedy London Calling (staged in London in 1937 as the first Black-produced play in the West End)

As a journalist, activist and creative visionary, Una Marson was instrumental in blazing a trail for women of African heritage. Her creative work and prominent professional positions empowered women in Jamaica, and later in Britain to document and celebrate their stories in full public view. From being the first Jamaican female Editor/Publisher for The Cosmopolitan, a political magazine in Jamaica, to becoming the first Black female producer at the BBC, Una’s work created spaces for conversations about the role, position and importance of Black women in modern society.

(Image above: Una Marson and Jamaican poet Claude McKay at a BBC radio recording. McKay was a prominent figure in the Harlem Renaissance literary movement during the 1920s)

Una became a full-time Programme Assistant in March of 1941 in the “Empire Programmes” Department before becoming a producer of the programme, Calling the West Indies in 1942. Despite initially being launched by the BBC’s Empire Service to connect Britain to White expatriates in Britain’s colonies, Una Marson ironically helped it become a popular programme that connected the Caribbean and Black communities globally, fostering a sense of national and Black pride, undermining British colonial rule.

She launched a new radio series called, Caribbean Voices, to display Caribbean culture, literary work and poetry. This became an important platform for Caribbean culture, featuring over 200 Caribbean writers such as George Lamming and V. S. Naipaul. The Barbadian poet and historian, Kamau Brathwaite, who also appeared on the show, described it as "the single most important literary catalyst for Caribbean creative writing in English".

Una Marson has recently been memorialised as an integral part of BBC and British history. She first worked in the BBC’s television studios in Alexandra Palace, and later transitioned to the radio department when the BBC closed the television studios at the outbreak of WW2.

(Image - Right to left: Una Marson, Evelyn Dove & Winifred Atwell). This mural is on the South Terrace of Alexandra Palace, “the birthplace of television” where the BBC aired its first public television transmissions in 1935. The mural was produced by the acclaimed street artist Carleen De Sözer in in 2018, as part of De Sözer’s project to capture the fundamental contribution Black people made to the very inception of the BBC.

Una was unique in being a hugely influential female voice during her lifetime campaigning for the rights of women, becoming the first Jamaican female editor and publisher of her own magazine called, the Cosmopolitan, in 1928. Unlike other outlets, the Cosmopolitan featured articles on feminist topics, local social issues and workers’ rights as well as literature and poetry. Una wrote several plays, in which working female protagonists had central roles, and feminism featured heavily in her poetry as she explored themes like beauty, race and patriarchy.

Una also adopted an internationalist approach in campaigning for the rights of women, as she joined various feminist groups. She travelled to Turkey in 1935 where she was the only Black woman to attend the 12th Annual Congress of the International Alliance of Women for Suffrage and Equal Citizenship conference in Istanbul. She passionately campaigned for impoverished women in Jamaica, to which the organisation allocated funds to support due to Marson’s advocacy.