Career
She joined the Communist Party in 1947. In the 1950s she worked as vice president of the National Negro Labor Council and as executive secretary in the council"s New York chapter. She moved to Africa in the late 1950s, and while there helped organize Malcolm X"s itinerary while he was in Ghana.
From 1964 to 1971 she taught English in China.
She returned to the United States in the 1970s, where she was part of rallies in support of some prisoners (for example, Mumia Abu Jamal) and did public speaking. The Vicki Garvin papers (1923–1998) are held at the New York Public Library, in the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.
