[Applause] Good evening everyone or good afternoon or good morning depending on where you’re joining us from it is your girl Marcy Thomas founder of brown girl Collective and the BGC book club where we come together every week for the most part to discuss books that are by for and about us featuring awesome black
Women writers and the stories that they’re telling us so welcome to the space I am joining you from the outskirts of Atlanta Georgia so as you come in the room if you don’t mind letting us know where you’re joining us from that would be awesome and also go
Ahead and share this out because this is going to be a great conversation about a real world here real world hero or Shiro I should say and the person who wrote it is a Shiro as well in her own right so we are going to be talking about our
Secret society Molly moon and the glamour money and power behind the Civil Rights Movement written by Tanisha C ford now Tanisha Ford is a writer researcher and cultural critic working at the intersection of politics and culture she has forged an international reputation for her ground breing research on the history of black style
Fashion and social movements she is currently a professor of history at The Graduate Center City University of New York where she teaches courses on African-American and African diaspora history biography and Memoir and the geopolitics of fashion in addition to our secret society she is the author of
Dress in dreams quami braithway black is beautiful and liberated threads which won the 2016 organization of American historians Liberty Legacy Foundation Award for civil rights history so that’s a lot and you can see she’s done a lot and she is a harlem girl and we can’t
Wait to talk to her this evening so without any further delay welcome to the room Dr Tanisha C for welcome hi thanks for having me Marcy yes it’s such a an honor I can’t talk I’m tongue tie it’s such an honor to have you here with me
And actually we have someone joining us from Toronto so okay we are going International as we speak welcome Deb welcome Deb so first of all I just really want to congratulate you on the book it’s so so exciting to have yet another great um piece of work to add to your you know
All of the things that you’re doing so congratulations thank you so how does it feel how has it been since our secret society has come out well the book’s been in the world now for a few weeks maybe maybe three I think maybe we’re going to our third week it was just
Released on October 24th so it’s finding its way in it in the world connecting with readers and of course black women readers are always my target audience I want to write books that reveal new things about us our existence our experiences our joy practices our strategies for resistance and rest and
Everything in between so um it’s been it’s been lovely to travel from City to City to connect with people in person and then also to do virtual events like this all right well that sounds good so before we get into the story I just have a question because you write about
History you write about fashion so what was it that Drew you to to those two particular things because you know we know history and our history is very important but black people have a certain sense of style and fashion so what was it about that and I see what
You have behind you as well yeah so what is it that Drew you to Fashion well you know I my mother um is a child of the 1960s she and my father grew up in that era and ever since I was an undergraduate I’ve been really interested in the social movements of
The 1960s and the cultural elements of that so if we think about black power I was always interested in in the afro and the dashiki and the black leather jackets and Berets and the pil bottoms and you know I wanted to try to provide a historical context to understand
Understand why black folks wear those garments um what what was it about our style that was a form of Celebration a way to connect as a community a way to create our own grammar or way we understand freedom and how it can be adorned on our bodies and trying to
Track down the answer to those questions has really led me to four different continents where I’ve interviewed everybody from fashion designers to former black panthers to fashion models and everyone in between wow that’s pretty exciting cuz I was talking to uh my mentee the other day and we were
Talking about um you know like film and what it’s plays it’s music even food how all of these things kind of come together in a creative way so I love the fact that you specifically are talking about fashion and Fashion’s place in you know many of our movements so so Molly
Moon what was it that Drew you to the Molly moon story well actually it was part of that long like line of historical inquiry I’ve had around fashion and the dress body I was working on my disertation at the time this was around 2010 and I was looking for this
Woman who was a model uh for a black a white owned wig shop in Harlem that a group was protesting against or protesting outside so I wanted to know who was this woman who was you know the black model who was the face of this white own wig shop and what I discovered
Was that she was also a beauty pageant contestant and this Miss boart’s Beauty pageant which was Molly Moon’s annual beauty pageant so the story that I found was in the early 1960s and I thought wow okay here was a black woman Molly moon who was creating a space to celebrate
Black women’s Beauty and to honor them with Awards of course you know even though legally segregation had ended it was still de facto in place and so we we often had our own pageants and that would be the only way that our Beauty could be recognized so I was just taken
By this woman who had committed herself annually to hosting this beauty pageant finding funders and donors to give uh donations and other prizes for the winners and I started to follow her in the archive any newspaper clippings I could find about Molly moon I started to collect them and I realized that wow
This woman was the Grand of Harlem Karen Huger love her Karen Huger don’t have nothing no Molly moon though Molly moon was the grandom of Harlem in the 1950s and 60s and so I I just became enamored with her and wanted to know more about her journey to become that kind of figure
And then the real story came together once I realized that these weren’t just events you know just for fun I mean they were also fundraisers so a whole another history opened up at that point it definitely did and as I was reading and I’ve already expressed to you that just
Based upon some of my own personal Endeavors I’m like wow I never so many things you don’t think about and just learning that history of of what that really means because I mean a lot of us in this day and age well depending on your age let me preface that you may
Know about the ebony Fashion Fair you know those about those events you may have gone or you know participated in those in some way but this is pre this is before that that Molly moon was putting things together but her story goes back even be before she got into
That particular field she had quite an interesting life including spent some time spent living overseas and things like that so just give us a little bit of her background so we can see who this Molly moon is yes oh what I I love you know I love international travel so I’m always
Fascinated when there is a connection to international travel in my work and in this case I didn’t have to force it because as you mentioned Molly moon did live abroad in the early 1930s she was a part of a cast of people along with Langston Hughes Dorothy West Louise
Thompson um and several others I think it was maybe 26 of them in total who went to the USSR to make a racial propaganda film that was supposed to expose the horrors of Labor exploitation and racial discrimination across the US South the film was never made unfortunately but the cast used that
Opportunity to travel abroad to take in you know operas and eat fine cuisine to listen to jazz music at the finest in the finest hotels in Moscow things that they would have never been able to do in the United States in the 1930s and a lot of them were politically
Mobilized you know around the ideas related to socialism and communism which were popular at that time because people were trying to find alternatives to capitalism during the Great Depression so Molly moon who came from very humble roots in the Jim Crow south Mississippi to be exact um she really saw a way that
She could connect her own family’s history um to this larger movement for economic Justice for the black laboring classes so she spends time in Moscow once the film goes bust she moves to Berlin really gets her life in Berlin I think at one point I say in the book
That she saw herself as you know the the Josephine Baker of Berlin she was gonna parlay her Limited film experience into you know some acting in performance opportunities in Berlin none of those things ever happened but she did become fluent in German and she did commit herself to studying um biology she
Wanted to become a biology teacher once she returned to the United States wow yeah and just reading that it’s like to think I mean we know like so you hear Josephine Baker and other people like that but to understand that it was other people as well you know and
Not just in France because you know a lot of things took place in France or whatever but to know that hey we were in USSR or we were in Germany way back in those days and just all of the history you know in being there in that time
Number one because you know Hitler and you know the stuff that he was beginning to do at that time and not just that the fact that there are so many people that she was involved with that are like wellknown what you know more well known
Than what she has been up to this point but it’s it’s just EX exciting to read that and to see that yes it was exciting for me too because you know it’s always a challenge as a historian for one to get people to be interested in the past
Because at this point the 1930s 40s 50s that seems like a really long time ago for a lot of people you know and so to get them to be interested in this history especially by about a black woman whom most of us don’t know had
Never heard of you know so I I was facing two challenges so one of the things I wanted to do and each chapter of the book was to build out her larger Community who did she know like who were the people that more people would have known than her so that you could
Understand you know by relation how important she was so the book actually opens with Molly moon in a room with Martin Luther King um and then of course as we mentioned people like Langston Hughes and Dorothy West she also was close with people like Zoro hen County Cullen um Claude McCay James
Baldwin Josephine Baker herself actually was a judge of one of the Molly moon bozarts ball beauty pageants and so there’s an amazing picture of Molly moon and Josephine Baker in the book so I really wanted to piece together her Rolodex you know if I say that she’s a
Power broker then I have to show how she wielded that power and how it was everyone from you know black stars of the literary World stage and screen it was also wealthy black philanthropists entrepreneurs um and and athletes and it was also a lot of really influential white families as well like the
Rockefellers for example so I wanted to show just this whole Matrix of of folks that she was connected to right and and it’s done it’s done so well so well put together because I couldn’t you know I couldn’t stop turning and like oh you know just learning all of these things
So of course she spends this time over in Germany and um and then she heads back to the States and when she first comes fact she she wants to be a teacher uh a teacher a science teacher but then she winds up shifting gears she does she
Has she’s forced to shift gears because again this is the Great Depression era and it’s the nator or the lowest point of the Great Depression and her mother who has remarried you know she’s divorced Molly’s father she’s remarried and that husband is a mill worker in
Gary Indiana and so the family is living in Gary and and they find themselves in dire Financial Straits once the husband has to take many months off work to you know tend to an illness and then he ends up abandoning M Molly’s mom altogether so Molly the responsible daughter the only
Child she goes back to Gary to take care of her mother and this really thwarted Molly’s dreams her plans for her future I mean part of the reason why she had moved to Harlem to begin with was because she wanted to be in community with some the you know brightest
Thinkers of the Harlem Renaissance new negro Renaissance Era and you know so this was going to be her next step you know becoming a teacher and contributing to the community in that way and then she says but the world has dropped out of my you know my world of Dreams the
Bottom has dropped out of my world of dreams you know she writes this to her future husband Henry Moon who was also on that trip to Moscow who had been supporting her to go back to get this graduate education and in science you know know education so that she could
Become a teacher so she ends up moving to Gary to support her mother and leaning on her pharmacy license she actually went to college to become a pharmacist she attended mhary Medical College in Nashville and worked as a pharmacist but then once she gotten involved in the movement she stepped
Away from that career but used it as a a fail safe once she had to go back to really support her mom and so she never again goes back to her dreams of being a teacher but she does find work eventually once she’s able to move back
To New York City after getting her mother settled um with her sister in Cleveland with Molly’s mother’s sister Molly’s aunt in Cleveland she you know she becomes a social worker for the City of New York and social work like education was another of these fields that people with a racial Justice
Mindset saw as beneficial to the community so she becomes a a really important social worker during the um Depression era in New York City yes thank you for that and you know I told you before Cleveland’s my hometown so it was good to see oh Cleveland’s in the
Book to learn some more about you know what the city was like in those days but one of the things I found really interesting that seems to be different from now is just how powerful social workers were at that time oh I’m so glad you picked up on
This I mean I shouldn’t be surprised I mean you’re an amazing reader you’re a close and careful reader but an author let me just tell you it means the world to have someone really engage with the work and you know have these beautiful takeaways from the book yes social
Workers were so important so influential they were people who were shaping you know public policy at least within the African-American Community because if you think about it these were the people who were interacting on a daily basis with the most economically destitute members of the community they were
Working with young people they were working with children who had been displaced from their families they were working with recent migrants from ac across the global South who are moving to places like New York City and it really was a time in the you know the first Decades of the 20th century where
Social Work became professionalized and black social workers started to have their own conferences their own journals and many people emerged as the leading voices among black social workers and many of those people not only within the social work realm but also within this larger conversation around you know black and intellectualism became key
Figures key public thinkers if you think about today the way um we turn to sociologists or political scientists in order to explain many social dynamics economic Dynamics today social workers played that role in the African-American community in the 1930s and 40s and and it was through her work as a social
Worker that Molly formed close ties with Lester Granger who was also a social worker who went on to become the head of the National Urban League right and so so that’s where the tie-in kind of comes to her getting involved with the National Urban League which is where she
Really did a bulk of her work in terms of being a philanthropist so just you know of course the whole point is for people to read the book but just to give us a little snippet of what how she started getting into the whole philanthropy and fundraising piece so
She first works with a community art center in Harlem that was helmed by Augusta Savage and later gwindel and Bennett and they needed a major fundraising initiative to help support this organization that was woefully underfunded by FDR’s New Deal Administration so Molly moon comes in because at this point she’s established
These you know networks from New York City to Washington DC and they want to lean on again that PO powerful address book that she has a mased of people who can help give to the cause most of these people were African-Americans um who were progressives if not radicals and also
Left leaning white folks as well contributed once that Center was closed unfortunately um Molly moon then had to Pivot and that pivot came once Lester Granger became the executive director of the Urban League he tapped Molly moon to create a fundraising and volunteer arm of the National Urban League which she
Called the National Urban League Guild and that’s where she really used the platform of the National Urban League to expand her reach to expand her network um and to launch well she had launched her signature event the Barts ball while she was doing the fundraising for the Harlem Community Arts Center but that
Barts ball really grows in scope and scale by the time we get to um the 19 the late 1940s when when the guild is really in full swing I even found in the archive this was a really interesting gym I found where the Duke and Duchess of Windsor the former King of England
And his American Wife Wallace Simpson she had invited them to be judges of that that Year’s costume ball and I found in the archive a note from their personal secretary sending their regrets that the Royals would be out of the country at the time and so therefore
They could not judge but that just shows her reach the fact that the Royals even responded to her invitation right and that was something you know kind of goes back to the network that she had you know her husb her then Husband by this time was you
Know um in DC so she had those connections there as well as the connections that they had in Harlem the two of them together and the ones that she made on her own so just to think that this woman who started in Mississippi has now you know traveled
The world and and led you know led a life there you know we we we skipped over a couple things had a couple marriages you know things like that that was happening to her all along the way and you know she was able to get to this point where she knows royalty basically
And all of the Who’s Who and you know and the black community from you know from writers to actors everyone but it was just so interesting to see that and at the same time you talk a little bit about you I can show you you know her picture
You know what she looks like and there were things that she dealt with as you know a woman who looked like she looked and she was not a slender skinny woman so there were different things that she had to deal with at that time that you know were pertaining to even
Her physical being most certainly one thing that that I um appreciate learning about Molly moon that although she’s a fairer skinned woman her mother was a Brown skinn woman and so I I like to think that her mother disabused her of these ideas that light was right right so I’ve never
Found evidence in Molly Moon’s letters or in any other correspondence written by her friends or peers that she ever leaned into colorism or leaned into you know her looks in a particular way and part of the reason why I think that is was that in many ways a lot of the
People who were involved in the new negro U movement um they they wanted to disavow colorism and the color hierarchy or this idea that a close proximity to whiteness was the way to True power so they would have already rejected many of those Notions but Molly moon herself
Even though I found people referring to her as exotic and you know even her toying around with these Notions of what would it mean to be read as East Indian or from the South Pacific um it was very clear that that she did a lot of these
Things in order to subvert the racial hierarchy to expose the fallacies of race as a social construction and also the fact that as you mentioned she is what we today would call a full figure or a curvy woman so there was a lot of chis criticism and critique around her
Physical appearance so there was a way that she even though she was lighter skinned you know with a curl pattern looser curl pattern in her hair um because she was you know a fuller figured woman she was often ridiculed for that in the press and by particularly by black male writers um
Today we call this fat phobia that language didn’t exist back then but they really taunted her and followed her her diets and you know how much weight she had gained or lost so I really wanted to think about that intersection of race gender color and body size in order to
Understand you know the multiple intersections of Oppression that Molly moon would have experienced in her time period I also thought it was fascinating too that she never really wore her hair long like she she tended to wear her hair in shorter Bobs I think the longest
I ever saw her hair was maybe down you know here to her shoulders and part of that was because extremely long hair wasn’t necessarily in Vogue in that moment but I also think that that was another form of subversion especially for a woman like Molly moon who who
While a very dignified woman and definitely believed in Black dignity and black self-determination wasn’t someone who leaned really into this notion of respectability or an outward performance of you know one’s class standing and good good grooming to appease white folks like she never really leaned into
Those things and so I think the whole package was part of her you know personal resistance and a self-making that didn’t rely upon these more superficial elements of her beauty in order to get ahead yes thank you so much for sharing that cuz I I did find that
Interesting cuz I think they said you know a 12 or 14 or whatever and I’m like okay yeah whatever right you know like and the way they taunted her over that I mean and we see it today with social lights other you know celebrities I mean
They want to be small enough to fit these sample sizes with the Couture designers and if and if you are larger than the sample size which I think today is like a size two then a lot of designers won’t dress you for the major events you have to attend so you know
This is also why black messes um were really important in the black community because they understood our curves they understood our body proportions and sizes and so Molly moon I love seeing in her letters when she would write about going to her seamstress and taking things to have
Them made and you know what she would wear to the various social events in New York City and DC at the time right well you’ve mentioned her letters a few times so I’m GNA go there for a moment so you were able to actually access letters that she written
Correspondence and things of that nature what was how did that feel or what was that process like you know as a historian we rely on primary source material so we want an archive of materials that we can dig into do a deep dive in those archives excavate you know
Lost histories you know uncover hidden figures all those things and you know many African-Americans unfortunately do not have formal papers hous in archives but Molly moon and many people in her Social Circle in fact did so in some ways that made my work as a historian easier because I had an
Archival base that was already established and I didn’t have to do the work necessarily of piecing together things from random and disparate sources I could just go to one or in my case I went to several but you get what I’m saying like one repository to find the
Holdings and then pull across the various repositories I went to to pull the story together so finding Molly Moon’s letters I mean oh my goodness it was just such a a trove of information she and her husband Henry Lee moon for a good time in the early part of their
Marriage lived apart so they wrote each other letters in the way that we write each other texts right emails and so they just had just tons of letters which allowed me to piece together who were their friends how they thought about those people how they saw themselves as
A black woman’s historian what we’re also interested in learning about is the interiority of black women’s lives so outside of the public performance or how they had to present themselves in public how did they see themselves you know what What mattered to them most and so having access to Molly Moon’s letters
Became a way for me to get into that interior space of her life it helped me understand how she thought how she communicated herself um what kind of language she would have use colloquially with her good friends I was also able to piece together like often times they
Spoke in codes in the letter really they had a friend that they call Rasputin the longest it took I was like who is Rasputin you know and so I had to I had to go back and forth it was one of their friends from the Moscow trip who
Was a major player a ladies man and you know if you know anything about Rasputin and his sorcery and trickery um how he cast spells and such this guy would cast spells on the women so they called him Rasputin so once I was able to figure
Out like oh I know exactly who Rasputin is now like I I could use the letter to do all sorts of things W that’s that’s pretty that’s pretty neat that you were able to do that but you know of course you’ve already kind of mentioned she’s you know the who’s who of black
Society and that’s just the thing right there black society we don’t necessarily Envision you know now we don’t necessarily Envision that there was black society but then there was because you know we think about some of the sororities and things like that like which I’m a member of um Saro we just
Celebrated our 101 yesterday so yes yes lovely but you know to think that there were sororities there were a lot of women’s organizations you know the links Jack and Jill you know all these sorts of things that would being formulated in that time frame and that um that Molly
Moon would have had to kind of work with those people to be able to you know be a fundraiser because these were the people who had money and you know just even thinking about you talk about um certain people who may have been making $100,000 back then and we’re thinking wow that
How much was that really worth back then and things like that so that there were people who were doing well that were able to be supporters of you know a lot of our organizations yeah you know that was a huge piece of this um I call it the
Black Freedom Financial grid what I was trying to do was understand how was Mo Money flowing into and out of the movement and this is a really opaque history we don’t really think about how money flows to movements how movements are supported where that money comes
From it’s it’s part of the the process toward black democracy and gaining full rights Civic and human that um gets undertow in in the US History narrative so using a figure like Molly moon allowed me to do that and I realized that black society was definitely important and black society changes over
Time over the course of the book particularly after World War II when you have more African-Americans than ever who are literate more African-Americans than ever who have college degrees who are moving into white colar employment um we have you know at that point to date the largest number of black um
Millionaires which at that time there was maybe like 12 and that was a huge deal you know less than a hundred years out of slavery that there was a dozen black millionaires I mean a lot of people in the black community saw this as a time for you know growth in the
Area of philanthropy and that we would no longer need to depend on money from the The Rockefellers and the carnegies and other folks of you know of that ilk we could go to our own communities so Molly moon most certainly maximized both the impact of the second wave of the Great Migration
Which was bringing black people into cities across the US South but also in the North um so she was able to use that wave to establish other National urbanly Guild chapters in these cities that were now on the black society map in ways that they hadn’t been before everywhere from
Um Miami to Grand Rapids Michigan you know she was able to you know help establish networks in those communities and like you mentioned I mean it was everybody from sororities and fraternities black churches black um Finance clubs bridge clubs you know a lot of those people you know you thought
It was just bougie black people playing cards but no they were using those big National tournaments to raise money for thec Snick core the indp the Urban League and to give money to these organizations so I wanted to look at those networks and then how those networks were also and and connected to
The Elks and Eastern Star and um other domestic labor organizations and and you know unions so Molly moon really moved very well between all of those organizations both in terms of holding events in her house that were fundraisers but also public parties and big big ticket
Galas but one of the things that that had happened with her and just happens in general when you have these black or you know black Centric organizations when you need money sometimes you have to step outside of the black community yeah oftentimes most of the time right I mean
And that was a major conflict and and I definitely don’t shy away from that in the book one of the things Molly moon realizes once she starts working very closely with the National Urban League is that unlike the Harlem Community Art Center which is definitely more Grassroots in its funding the National
Urban League by the time you know we get into the mid 20th century is a major civil rights organization with government backers so like politicians Titans of Industry from you know Ste and um oil to Media you know a lot of media conglomerates were supporting the National Urban League and so it just
Meant that she had a much larger platform but it also meant that she was raising funds from people who didn’t look like her people who didn’t have her same class background oftentimes people who didn’t share her core political leanings like I said Molly moon was very leftist in her political thought
Particularly earlier on in her life and now you’re working alongside fiscal conservatives religious conservatives and so forth so she often times found herself being the only black person in the room which meant she then had to translate Blackness to these white donors um and explain like why they
Should support the causes and then have conversations with African-Americans about whether or not they should take money from White donors and it was a really fraught landscape I mean there are no easy answers I mean in 2020 we see a similar Dynamic you know in the
Coid 19 early years of the the pandemic the early months and then of course with the murder of George Floyd like all this money that’s being funneled into black organizations and then there questions around like what does it mean to take this money and how should we then use it
So Molly moon and her peers were having the same questions in the 1950s and 60s around things like the March on Washington you know just had a big anniversary over the summer a lot of that money came from that you know black Freedom Financial grid that I’m talking about that’s mostly
African-Americans but tons of of that money also came from the field Foundation the tonic Foundation these are white foundations you know that were you know pumping in today’s dollars millions of dollars into the March on Washington and other large scale voter registration drives yeah and and that’s just
Something to think about because it does make you wonder and it it comes up in the book you know like our things are is the um is the vision or the going to be watered down when you start having to appease or appeal to others who may
Not you know have the same desire you know are they doing it because they really believe in what it is that you are you know going for or working towards are they doing it because there’s tax write offs you know it’s just a lot of things yeah most certainly so I again
Like this was one of of those tensions that I wanted to explore because as we know African-Americans black people more broadly we are not a monolith you know we all have different political views and leanings we have different ideas about money and where where money should come from some people said take that
Money and run like once they give it to us we can use it to do the things that we want to use it for other people said well no if we’re going to rely on capitalism it should be black capitalism so let’s you know rely Upon Our Own homegrown millionaires um other people
Said um no we shouldn’t rely on these structures at all and instead we should you know partner and build relationships with people across the you know the black and brown Global South so with people on the continent of Africa on the continent of Asia like those should be
Our our movement peers and we should develop a Freedom Movement that’s black and brown Le not one that even relies upon Western Notions of philanthropy so all of that that element was there you know and again you know women like Molly moon were the ones charged with
Doing this labor which also meant they were the ones who were most criticized in the Press when these things didn’t work out I mean there’s a story I tell in the book about her organizing alongside you know the women of the Vanderbilt family again one of these old
Money American families and other women who were you know part of major department stor chain so they had family money from those chains um people who you know were editors at Major magazines and things and when those when those organizations didn’t work when those efforts to organize together didn’t work
Molly moon would have to take to the black press and explain herself you know why this event was a failure because what we could see was that even though there were these two women’s divisions within the Urban League one was primarily black one was primarily white
The one that was primarily white was the extremely we white women donors that the league was trying to court and so they could raise more money than the black women even though like you said their motives for for doing so might not have been as um grounded in Black freedom in
The ways that black people were articulating it as it was you know Molly moon and her women of the National Urban League Guild so I wanted to also look at like how women black women carry the burden of Freedom work and how that labor that we perform often times goes
Unrecognized and it’s that very labor that gets lost to you know lost to history so part of this book is a Reclamation of black women who work in the nonprofit space of black women who are volunteers be it through their churches or be it through their their children’s schools or through their
Sorority or you know their their whatever social club or group that they’re in I mean this is the work that we’ve done it’s part of our tradition is part of the very horizontal way we think about community building and M Mutual Aid and you know this was this is our
Story you know and so yes there’s beautiful gowns and there’s you know amazing food and incredible food for people who love all those things the book has all those elements it has the Intrigue it has the romances and rumored Affairs and all of this but it’s also at
Its core too a celebration of you know our hidden work and how we uplift our communities absolutely because when you mention churches I’m like yes cuz a lot of churches would not be standing if it wasn’t for the the women in those churches who are you know giving their
Tithes and you know putting in their time and running the Bak sale or the fish whatever the case may be you know make not at the level of what Molly moon was doing but just those pieces of what they do and like you mentioned Georgia
Gilmore I think of her and you know what she did in in in um in in Alabama I’m about to say Mississippi in Alabama and Montgomery with helping to fund the the Montgomery Bus boy wot right I was actually there a couple of months ago so
It was cool to kind of be in that space and you know learn more about the things that Georgia Gilmore Did You Know by cooking you think all she’s doing is cooking but she was making money that she could then turn around back into the movement so it’s it’s something to see
That but you also mentioned the things that Molly had to go through Molly moon had to go through in terms of how people perceived her of the alleged Affairs and these sort of things because you know she’s a woman who’s a little more mature by the time she gets into this space of
Her journey you know she’s been married she’s traveled globally you know all of these things and people have some perceptions about the type of woman that she is right because again she’s not trying to conform to a notion of respectability um she had experience that the black Bourgeois in New Orleans
Of all places so people who know New Orleans know like the you know New Orleans cre all Elite she had married into that community and you know in marrying her first husband and became really disenchanted with it even though everything in her her background you know again she came from very humble
Working class Roots but you’re supposed to get an education so that you can you know Elevate classwise so she had done all those things only to realize just how hurtful and limiting being in those spaces could be for African-American women like her who especially didn’t see their biggest role
As being in the domestic space I mean Molly moon was a woman who was always very ambitious and that ambition I think many people found it threatening you know people within the black community but also and most certainly white Americans you know like here’s this woman who is unapologetically herself
Who you know doesn’t really care what you think about her like even in her there were very few moments where I could find where she cared at all what people thought about her you know so this was a woman who you know was very self-possessed and a very dignified
Woman um but because she showed off her curves she loved a good party she could make a strong cocktail you know she did love food she did love to entertain she was an amazing cook I mean all these things about her personality that very much steered her into this pleasure
Space at a time when the movement was shifting toward direct non-violent action and so they are looking for the most respectable women to be representatives of the race that’s why we get a Rosa Parks figure who represents the montgom bus boycott and a very limited Rosa Parks I mean we must
Say that too her activism was far more expansive than what we see it shows up in the Press around the bus boycott but somebody like you know a Rosa Parks becomes a figure we can rally around ketta Scott King is a figure we can rally around somebody like Molly Moon
Who you know represents this you know this Leisure and entertainment space maybe not so much so while she had a lot of supporters she was kind of constructed as more of like a celebrity Hostess activist adjacent socialite figure than like a hardcore activist even though in my work what I’m trying
To do is to show that when it comes to African-American women in the 20th mid- 20th century there’s not a clear distinction you know that like quote unquote socialites were also activists in that time period so I’m really trying to build out a peer group of black women
Who were similar to Molly moon who were highly educated um who were politically oriented who were deep thinkers and you know political theorists even in some some cases they were definitely intellectuals and strategists and to say that even though she fell outside of this narrative around being you know a
Civil rights activist that we you know we come to think of in fact we need to just expand our Horizons but as you mentioned that depiction of Molly moon as this beguiling hostess with the MCE who brushed shoulders with the Rockefellers and other prominent wealthy men LED some people to speculate that
The only way she could get them to give all this money was if she were in fact having affairs with with these men and it was really a you know a damning accusation and so I tried to very carefully um piece together why would have come to those conclusions and to
Show the the stakes at a time when mation was illegal in in many states across the country where you know you couldn’t marry somebody of the of an opposite race where where black people both men women and children were being lynched for even looking at in the
Direction of a white person I mean these were really damning allegations and so I wanted to like give a context to understand um why lobbing these kind of accusations against her would have have been U such a great attack against her personality and also her reputation
Right and her her Integrity all of those things you know to say that you know this is what was going on but one of the things also in that is the fact that she was a married woman ultimately had a daughter you know and that aspect of it as well I found
Interesting because her both her and her husband were power Brokers in their own way yeah but it wasn’t a situation where her husband ever tried her husband Henry Lee ever tried to dim her light most certainly and that’s one thing I really love about him and this was clear in
Their letters it’s clear in an interview I heard I listened to of the two of them together um speaking with people who knew them I mean he loved this woman down like he loved her you know and and he you know he loved her ambition he
Never tried to knock her down a peg or you know dim her light he wanted her to shine and in many ways he understood that she was the bigger of the two personalities that had Molly moon been born in a later era she would have been the politician right she would have been
The one who you know she could have been kamla Harris for example right because she had the skill set she had the charm she had the personality she was smart you know Henry moon was very smart as well he was a leading intellectual and at this time um in the
United States had written tons of articles for the Amsterdam news the New York Times And even a book called balance of power about voting rights and the the importance of securing the right to vote for African-Americans but he was more bookish he was a bit more introverted I mean she was the big
Personality so I love seeing how they complimented one another and how they supported one another’s Endeavors and you know um how Henry you know went to bat for Molly moon when people were trying to come for her and attack her you know and and they just really were what today we
Would call a power couple and in an era where we’re looking for examples of black love that isn’t struggle love that you know this this healthy love that you know people are always talking about on social media I felt like you part of my role as the historian was really to
Piece together their loving relationship and partnership ship and show how it evolved from 1938 when they were married to when it ends and it only ends because Henry passes away in the mid1 1980s so you know they were together for the bulk of their adult lives and um it was just
Beautiful to see yes it definitely was to see that and you know all of the things that they both had to endure you know just because of the work that they were doing because we know that they were going to people who were going to
Be people who did not like the fact that they were you know working towards Liberation we know that but you know the things that that you just encounter just in being a human and people trying to find ways to dig or to hold you back or
To keep you down or you know try to make you seem like you don’t have integrity it was just really powerful to read that and see how they work together but as a woman in the Civil Rights Movement there were a lot of things that she dealt with
Just from being working within the organizations of how you know there are certain men that we see we always hear their name there are a few women thrown in there here and there but how even though she was doing the M doing the things to help them get the money to do
The work often times she was relegated to a lesser status most certainly so one of things I appreciated about the power of the guilds was by the time they got to the early 1950s a lot of lot of the women who you know were helming Guild chapters Affiliates across the country
Realize that we’re being treated like like we’re just the hostesses like we just come to these events in poor te but we’re power Brokers in our own Community we’re the ones who are the most publicly engaged with the you know everyday members of of the community so we need
To be honored and recognized as such so they organize uh to form the National Council of Urban League Guild and this is a way for them to formalize their work um as a collective of guilds they end up holding their own conferences they start their own publication they become an organization
Within an organization and so by the early 1960s I mean men within the the National Urban League some of them are quite intimidated by these women because they feel like the guild is supposed to serve at the behest of the executive director and the board of directors
They’re not supposed to have their own agenda and be their own semi-autonomous organization so a lot of the men you know had had qualms with this and they tried to suppress the work of the guilds in certain cities um Molly moon ever the politician you know she tried to
Navigate these things very carefully because she didn’t want to alienate you know the key leadership especially because unlike some of the women who were H heads of the Affiliates of the guild she was also too on the national like the the the national board of directors for the Urban League so she
Was in the room with these people so she had to be very strategic but the sexism was real I mean they did experience this and and even more so massage Noir is this word we’ve been given by Moya Bailey to help us understand the intersection of gender oppression and
Racial oppression that black women experience and for Molly this shows up very acutely once Whitney Young becomes the head of the National Urban League after Lester grang 20-year run and he basically pushes to the margins the people who were deeply um connected to Lester grer in his era of the National
Urban League so I I found that piece to be another form of you know marginalization of Molly Moon’s work and what ends up steering the movement away from understanding her major contributions and it’s not until the late 1980s where the National Urban League really makes strides to reclaim
Molly moon and the work that she did around volunteerism and fundraising for the movement and they Institute a Molly moon volunteer service award and fortunately Molly is still alive at that time to give that first award to her good friend Helen Harden who had been in the trenches with her working with the
Guilds basically since his Inception and at that speech you know when she gives the speech Molly tells the audience like over the decades we have given millions of dollars to the National Urban League and we’ve done so without restrictions so as opposed to many of these big foundations like the Ford foundation and
The Rockefeller brothers and you know field foundation and so forth that have you know restrictions on how the money could be used where it can go we never gave you all those kinds of restrictions and that really was to me was a testament to her very horizontal community-based Grassroots approach to fundraising and
Philanthropy yeah it was so good to see that and glad that she was able to be recognized for her work you know all the time all the time that she was there all the work that she did and there are other things that you all have to read the book to
Find out you know what happens we’re not g to tell you everything but it was just really good to see that you know eventually they gave her her flowers but we did have a couple comments I put them up but you might not have seen them um
One is from Pierre says this is awesome your book is amazing and then we also have Nicole thank you so much for this work and the book I never think about movements being funded yes exactly it’s so true and so many of us don’t you know and even me I
I’m a historian of the Civil Rights Movement prior to really working on this book I didn’t realize just how little we discuss the money but these if you’re gonna have a freedom ride how are you GNA get the buses the buses have to go some you know come from somewhere if you
Have a Montgomery Bus Boycott and you’re going to boycott the bus system locally how are people going to get to job to their job you know what kind of food do they need all those things cost money and once I really started to think about
It I was like Wow and I started to trace how much money we as a black community have spent even just to fund ending voter suppression for our full right to boote vote we have raised billions at least at least a billion dollars to to secure this basic Civic right that has
At least allegedly been ours you know you know for for decades but as we see every election that voter suppression remains a major issue so these are still the things that our money is going to support that is movement work that is movement funding yes so you think of like
Organizations like the the Urban League or NAACP or you know other organizations like that yes you may have memberships but that membership is those memberships are a small amount of what it is that really keeps these organizations running and funded you know to be able to do the work that they do
Right salaries and all that stuff it more so what is it that you think that we can learn from Molly Moon’s experiences that will help people who might find themselves in the nonprofit space or the fundraising space today well I just think just one of my
Big goals is I want her to be a household name you know Netflix is about to release their Byer Rustin biopic and I’m so glad that we have that film coming out you know just to understand the movement from the perspective of a black gay man and how he organized and
The kind of oppressions that he faced doing that work I would like to see the same for Molly moon you know because again moving into this fundraising space and understanding that history is so vital for us as a community to understand our history and one you know
I I listen to people I try to listen to our community and I hear people telling me all the time or just saying you know large that we’re tired of stories of just where black people struggle right you know where it’s just you know it’s just slavery and it’s just being us
Beaten down the fundraising story is one where you get to see black people you get to see what black Cooperative economics looks like you get to see what black Leisure looks like you get to see what black Joy looks like you know and so it’s a different vantage point on our
History that allows us to trace our giving tradition Ians from West Africa the Caribbean Etc to understand how we mobilize in times of struggle even when the media isn’t focused on our struggles even when billion dollar donors aren’t you know running to give money to racial
Justice so I want us to understand that but I also want us to understand how essential black women were to building a nonprofit space in the gym Crow era you have to remember black women in the 30s 40s 50s 60s they couldn’t get jobs working for mainstream nonprofit
Organizations so they use those skills within their own communities and built in that way and so it was social workers and teachers who had the skill sets to do a lot of that you know Social Services oriented work that grounds an organization like the National Urban
League for example so it wasn’t just the lawyers who were you know part of the NAACP legal defense teams and those sorts of things like these women like Molly moon they were essential to building up this nonprofit space and then it also helps us to see that even once these industries became more
Integrated um how black women then tried to disrupt the structures of the nonprofit world that both come out of big government funding but also out of the private philanthropic World which again is closely Tethered to capitalism so between the the you know geopolitics and political economy of government you
Know um nonprofit funding and then the private philanthropic world and its ties to capitalism I mean these systems are so locked step that it’s black women who’ve been doing this work in our communities who are always trying to be the disruptors in these spaces and so
Part of what this book does is it shows these strategies that historically we we’ve developed in order to push back to be in service of our communities yes that is it that is it and I told you just personally there were so many things in the book that
Really resonated with me and give me food for thought and you know I actually work for a nonprofit right now and I’m going to share this book with some of the people that I work with you know to give them some food for thought you know
As they as they move forward and and just things to think about you know as As We are continuing to grow so in terms of what you have coming up next I know you have been on a book tour and is there anything that you have coming up
Either an in any in-person events or even online other things that people can tap into to to hear your Brilliance Oh yay yes yes so um I have a a big NPR interview on Fresh Air and fresh air like that that that was an incredible interview to be able to you know utilize
That NPR space to tell a Molly moon story so you know you can Google that interview to get a gist of the book and and what I’m doing there but in terms of other events um I have’t an event in Atlanta on November 29th at the Auburn Avenue research Library my calendar put
That on the calendar right after Thanksgiving on the 29th I will be there in the building um I think I think the event starts at 7M but you can go to my website our secret society book.com to find all the tour information but I will be in Atlanta on November 29th and then
Later again you can this is on my website but in early December I will be doing a virtual event with the shamberg center for research and Black Culture so if virtual events are your thing if you can’t get to the Atlanta event you can find me there again if you go to our
Secret society book.com you can find all of that tour information it’s really been a joy to connect with people on the road but also through virtual portals like this one so I totally appreciate you Marcy for inviting me on your platform oh yes I was excited to have
You because you know yes it I love history I love to learn I just I just yeah this is This Is My Jam right here so I’m so glad that you were able to come and spend time with us to talk about Molly moon and it’s just another
Person for me to you know to to look to and to glean from and I know that there are are many others as well so so I am going to um let you go I just want to say good night to everyone else while I’ll let you go but please don’t hang up
Just yet so I can say goodbye to you proper thank you again for your time I do appreciate you Tanisha and I look forward to more and more opportunities to talk to you about some of the other work that I know you have coming up all right thank you barcy oh you’re welcome
You’re welcome oh wait we have a we have one comment let me put that up before you leave sis thank you for the work you have done to bring this PO positive historical perspective I will surely be getting the book yes thank you yes Deb
You need to get the book and I Gotta Give A Shameless this plug right quick because uh there is a brown girl Collective bookstore it’s affiliated with um with Bookshop so if you go there you can find a copy of the book there as well so appreciate that so all right well thank
You everyone for joining us this evening for this great conversation with Tanisha Ford it she is a brilliant woman who puts all her heart and soul into her work and it’s such a pleasure to have people here in this space that believe in doing that so just um as a means of
Announcement next week there will not be a show because we are going into Thanksgiving and I know people will be you know traveling cooking cleaning whatever it is they have to do to prepare for the holiday so there will not be a show next week but then we come
Back the following week I will have um Phyllis Dixon with her book intermission so we’ll be on the lookout for that and then actually be starting to wind down the year to take a break for the holiday so thank you to everyone for being here this evening as always share this out by
The book all of those wonderful things please support these wonderful black women writers who are putting their heart and soul into telling our stories so as always thank you for your time thank you for being here and we look forward to seeing you again in a couple of weeks take good care bye
Bye
source
