Early Years 

Una Marson was the youngest of six children. Her father was a Reverend in a Baptist parson. Marson grew up in a middle-class environment, and she received a colonial English public-school education at Hampton High School. As her family fell into financial trouble, she moved to Kingston to do social work training, and then went into journalism.

In 1926, at the age of 21, she became Jamaica’s first woman editor-publisher. She started her own publication called The Cosmopolitan, which focused on feminist topics and social issues.

Career 

During the 1930s, Marson’s activism highlighted the link between art and nationalist struggle. She moved to London in 1932 after establishing herself in Jamaica in order to find a wider audience for her work. She continued to publish feminist articles, but she was also interested in discussions about race, eugenics, and the colour-bar, focusing on the most pressing issues faced by Black migrants living in Britain.

After going back to Jamaica for two years, she returned to Britain where she was offered work for the BBC as a freelance magazine writer for the Picture Page where she arranged interviews with visitors from the Empire. After the outbreak of the Second World War, Marson lectured occasionally at the Imperial Institute, and worked as a talks and script writer for the BBC. In 1941, she was appointed full-time programme assistant to the BBC Empire Service, where she hosted and co-ordinated the broadcasts under the title Calling the West Indies.