I appreciate you for being here I know that oh I guess I should turn this mic there we go can you hear me now I know that um traffic is crazy tonight and I also know that it’s cold for Atlanta or at least that’s what I’ve been told
Multiple times since I’ve been here seeing that I live in New York I’m like okay like but I understand how those things can be factors and getting people out of the house especially after they may have work a busy day so I appreciate you for spending your evening with me um and
Yeah I would L to be in conversation with Dr Cheryl Finley a leading visual study scholar and art historian who asked very smart questions about um black art and black image making and I especially was looking forward to that conversation because much of the book deals with um
The the connection between black art and this long Civil Rights Movement history and one of Molly Moon’s first fundraising Endeavors was to raise FS for the Harlem Community Arts Center but that said you know we’re just going to roll with things as they are and I’m
Going to start just by telling you a little bit about how I came to the project and what this book I think represents in the interventions I feel it makes and then um there will be plenty of time for us to discuss so hopefully this won’t just be me talking
At you hopefully you all have questions as as well if I would have known that I was going to do this solo I would have showed these slides so you all can see some images from the book because there are many images of Molly moon in the
Community that she built so how did I come to this project well I was a dissertator at Indiana University and I was doing research at the shamberg center for research in Black Culture in Harem and I stumbled across this this story about Molly moon now mind you I
Was not looking for Molly moon because because I had never even heard of her um and I’m sure I’m not alone many maybe most of you in this room had never heard of her before You’ heard about my book I was looking for another woman actually
Who was a black fashioned model this was 1961 a story that I found and this woman I was looking for actually was the face of a white own wig shop in Harlem that the black nationalist organization that I was studying was protesting against right so they were boycotting this white
On wi shoing Arland which they felt was European Beauty to black women so this woman was the you know the model and face of of that wig store and when I I went to look for her I realized that she was a beauty contestant in Molly Moon’s
Miss Bart fall beauty pageant and I thought wow okay so here’s here’s another segment of Harlem you know same time period seemingly different community of black folks and I just was really taken by the name Molly moon you know I love the alliterative nature of
It um I I didn’t know many black mollies and of course this is pre insecure the HBO show so you know I was like wow God woman named Molly okay so I just kind of tucked away this name and over the years since I had you know completed that
Dissertation and then the book that was derived from it my first book liberated threads um I I just kept finding other small articles about Moon before long I realized that Not only was this woman the ground of Harlem um something of a socialite if you will these events that I was finding
The boart’s ball the beauty pageants other things that the National Urban League Guild had established as F were fundraisers for the civil rights movement and that led me down a path that I had never even thought about before which was fundraising for the movement okay how was the Civil Rights
Movement funded then why don’t we ever ask this question right so to me it seemed like um once I started thinking about it like of course it’s a no-brainer you know if you have large scale marches if you have freedom rids um if you have large scale voter registration drives money is necessary
But as a civil rights histor and even I found that we weren’t asking those questions that maybe the money just appears weird you know like or maybe we didn’t even think about those things like the cost attached to um the the expenses of movement making um maybe we don’t want to think
About who our movement leaders would have had to get this money from whether that would be the CIA or white Elites black Elites you know maybe we didn’t even want to dig into that muck to figure out the answer to that question but I was really struck by it
Uh so I started to piece together Molly won’s life and in so doing started piecing together her Rolodex to try to understand something about who she was and what would it have been like to be a black woman fundraiser in the 1940s 50s and 60s what were the
Stakes of this work what kind of network was required to do this kind of work and let me tell you it left me down a path that was dirty grimy I there was a beautiful side it too me seeing black unity in our communities and you know those sorts of
Things but I was like well when you start following the money you realize like who we other um taking you into people’s bedroom who they was messing with or people thought they were messing with I mean it just got real complicated real quick and then part of me realized like
Ah okay this is why people don’t study this topic right because it does uncover some unsavory things that maybe um movement leaders maybe even their families don’t want folks to know um the government might not want people to know um it’s involvement both in terms of How It’s funding major civil rights
Organizations or not and also in terms of how it was instrumental in steering the movement away um from certain kinds of political organizing Grassroots organizing radical organizing um and then there’s also this piece with the philanthropic foundations and corporations right that they don’t want people to know necessarily the extent to which
They were involved what that looked like and they’re most certainly not going to open up their books just to show you um what kinds of ways they are contributing to the movement for better and For Worse okay so it’s been a long journey I’ve worked
For more than 10 years on this book and I’m so proud that it’s finally out in the world um I’ll say a few things about Molly moon and then I’ll I’ll share a couple key discoveries that I have made through writing this book so Molly moon was born in Hattisburg Mississippi in
1907 she was born into a family of Strivers these are people who did not have much economically her parents were had her at a relatively young age um her mother finished middle school and then didn’t complete High School which wasn’t necessarily um unusual for a woman of of
Her mother’s generation but Molly was most certainly encouraged to go on to complete high school as well as college so mly attended the Russ College secondary school where she um received her high school diploma of course the school that idb Wells attended um and I’m sure she would have known about the
Legend idb Wells as a student um at the school and then she leaves there and she goes on to mahary Med Medical College where she earned a degree in Pharmacy she her first husband was also a pharmacist in fact he was one of her professors at M they kept his little
Romance secret U while she was a student and so after she graduates in 1928 they moved to New Orleans where they joined the New Orleans Creole Elite um this man he has deep ties to New Orleans family they were he came from a home owning black family so unlike Molly Moon’s
Family his family was definitely a New Orleans Elite family and and Molly moon stepped right into this life as a you know a woman of New Orleans Society um she had joined alpha alpha sority as an undergraduate at M and he was an alpha so they were this you know Alpha AKA
Couple again business owners um and but this marriage ends in something of a scandal I’ll let you read the book to get the tea on what the Scandal is but the point of it is is that Molly moon becomes really disaffected by by the black bisi and the restrictions that it
Placed on black women such as herself so after her marriage falls apart she moves to Harlem this is around 1930 and she joins a community of other people who are searching right both searching for personal change and evolution but also seeking solutions to mass poverty in the community they are
You know framing themselves as new negro intellectuals um artists who are reimagining the you know visual representations of Blackness and black communities and black liberation so some of her friends included Langston Hughes zor new hen in fact and zoral hon lived in the same building in the San Juan
Hill area of New York City Dorothy West the writer Some of you might be familiar some of you might even remember the the TV miniseries that I think Oprah some other folks did alberry started it called the wedding so that was a based on Dorothy West
Novel um so she and Dorothy were running buddies they were the best of friends also Luise Thompson who’s later Lise Thompson Patterson um who was also really close to with Langston Hughes County Cullen Claude Mckay like all of these people were part of her Social Circle and in 1932 she travels with a
Group led by Louise Thompson to Moscow and they they go there with the intent to develop a racial propaganda film about the horrors of Jim Crow segregation and labor exploit exploitation across the US South now the film is never made but they’re transformed by this trip on one hand you
Know as as African-Americans getting to travel abroad and experience the kind of social freedoms they couldn’t at home I mean this was you know personally transformative but then also politically you know some many of these people who were part of this cast about 22 of them they weren’t officially linked to the
Communist Party USA but a lot of them were shaped and informed by communism and socialism especially as they sought to find solutions to poverty and economic exploitation in the United States as the the the nation is spiraling into the depths of the Great Depression so once
This film is busted up Molly moon leaves m and heads to Berlin where I frame it like she she thinks that she’s going to Parlay this Limited film experience she has into maybe a career on on the stage or on screen the Josephine Baker of Berlin right um now
This never it doesn’t really quite happen that way instead she becomes a hostess at a cabaret in Berlin you know a drink right so she had these Big Dreams she land in this Cabaret um and and it’s through that time when she’s there also that she takes classes at the
University of Berlin she becomes almost fluent in German she connects with other um black intellectuals of the day like Len lock who is moving through Berlin also the writer Jesse faett um her brother is is there and so she becomes really close friends with him and so she
Starts hosting these political salons in her apartment in Berlin and she returns to the state now with this deep commitment to social justice work um she thinks she’s going to become a high school biology teacher but those dreams are quickly thed um once she has to return to Gary Indiana where her
Mother has relocated to help her mother and her stepfather because they too like most African-Americans have been hard hit by the Great Depression eventually she’s able to return to New York City in the late 1930s and she finds a career in social work and that’s a career that she
Would continue um until her death working for of the New York Department of Welfare she ends up marrying what will become her third husband I didn’t say anything about her second husband you can read the book to find out about him but her third husband is one of the
Leading black public intellectuals of the day his name is Henry Moon excuse me in fact he was on that trip to Moscow and um and in fact Morty um he had dated Dorothy West right so as I told you Molly and DOR were like running buds so um they end up having this
Undercover romance right none of their friends really know they’re dating that this they become more than friends but he’s this leading public intellectual he’s a journalist for the Amsterdam news um he’s fired because he tries to get you know the writers to to organize as a labor
Union but he finds work in the white house so now now you have Molly moon who’s working in social work in New York City with her you know startic group of friends which is now extended to include people like the sculptor Augusta Savage um Romy Bearden the the artist um
Charles Austin I mean the list just goes on and on and most of these people have ties to the farle right they they have um political connections and ties Molly moon and Henry Moon do as well even though they have different views on communism Molly is is pro socialism
Henry doesn’t really you know he don’t really see for them like that um but despite that fact they were able to use their two perches in New York City and DC to create this larger political cultural Community which included members of the so-called black cabinet fd’s black cabinet which of which Henry
Moon is a minor administrator so he is becoming friends with people like um Robert weer who ends up becoming like the first director of Hud um and Mary mlau bth Frank horn who is the uncle of Lena horn so these people are really comprised their Social Circle and they
Use their apartment in DC and also Molly’s apartment in New York City to host small fundraisers um to to take in people on of the left wing who might have been displaced um because of their political beliefs and so forth so it’s out of this political M that Molly moon begins to
Develop her stance on fundraising as well and her one of her first initiatives is to raise funds for the Harlem Community Arts Center the center I just frankly feel like we don’t know as much about as we should and when I was first wrapping this book I had two
Chapters on this this art center and my editor was like girl chill out right like too much on the art center so I had to cut a lot of this stuff but it will make its way into my next book project um but I really love the that Center
Because we can see how the New Deal drastically underfunded this black Arts Center and how Molly moon and others including Lana Robison who was married to Paul Robison um Bessie Bearden romy’s mom who was an activist in her own right ala Douglas who was married to the
Artist um Aaron Douglas like she was organizing alongside a lot of these women and out of that comes the National Urban League Guild which is the fundraising arm of the N the National Urban League that Molly moon established in 1942 right so that just gives you a
Sense of her political Journey um so what things about fundraising did I learn or did I uncover um through writing this book okay I’ve already said it was messy child it was messy right so clearly I learned that it that it’s it’s it’s messy but why is it messy okay so one of
The major things that I learned was that um as mly Moon began fundraising for the National Urban Le this put her in a whole different conversation in terms of who she’s raising monies from so because of her own political leaning she’s always been committed to raising funds among the black working class the
Emerging black middle class but now she is being placed in conversation with the Rockefellers with the javines the Vanderbilts all these big moneyed families the National Urban League also is on the radar of local and state politicians in New York City because remember they’re headquartered there at this
Time and um so now she’s moving in spaces with all these people and in many cases she’s the only black woman in a lot of these rooms that she’s now navigating so one of the things that I’ve um uncovered through finding a newspaper clipping called um NAACP
Denies two letters exist was that the NAACP and the Urban League are pitching to the black community you know Capital campaigns to raise money major fundraisers they’re sending one letter and then to this wealthy white elite they’re sending sending a whole different letter right because they’re
Trying to do what I call in the book mobilize the the white elite the Park Avenue Elite that’s how I language it in in the book so they’re starting to host separate events that are catered to this money Wy Le they’re giving these people seats on their board and um they are excluding
Survivors um Family survivors of lynchings um at a time when the organizations appear to be agitating for an anti- lynching bill um and so and all of these events are happening in Midtown Manhattan and if anybody knows New York City geography especially in this time period which by this point we’re talking
About the late 1940s and early 50s this is an area that African-Americans weren’t readily welcomed right that you could even be um attack both in terms of microaggressions but also through outright VI facilities navigating in this area so the black press is now calling out the end of lap and the Urban
League for what they see as these practices courting this money leag now I didn’t go into a deep dive into the NAACP records but I did spend a lot of time in the National Urban League records and what became very clear to me was that they were telling the black
Public no this isn’t true we’re not courting this money um we’re not seeking white people wealthy white people on our board but in fact they were right and that the ties Run Deep I spent a ton of time in the Library of Congress papers going um the Library of Congress going
Through the National Urban League papers and seeing the extent to which they were taking donations from everybody from tww to PepsiCo to General Electric to every bigname money family from The Rockefellers and the melons on where the fields you know all these people um but they’re doing so covertly and they even
Have this they establish the secret Fund in order to accept these monies now there’s a whole set of reasons why they’re doing this um that you can read the book to learn more about those things but what this does is it begins to set up a couple of
Dynamics one is a dynamic that political scientist Megan Francis caus movement capture right where once you start taking money from these foundations and corporations often times they are given this money with restrictions so they’re telling you how the money can be can be spent and on what kinds of
Social issues and mostly they were interested in funding education and youth programs right not because they cared about black children but because they were invested in this idea of um helping you know the the degenerate black youth right giving them something else to do to prevent crime okay so this
Was some of the languaging that they would use around this issue okay so we have this movement capture on one hand and on the other hand um the other issue is that it sets up this pipeline of support where now these major black civil rights organizations have to apply
For Grants from foundations like the field foundation and the tonic Foundation to help fund whatever local initiatives that they’re doing on the one hand maybe this doesn’t seem like a big deal but it becomes a major deal on the other side of brown B board the because um with the passing of
This this legislation which at least legally ends racial segregation there is a a barrage of attack against the local end of La ACP in Urban League chapters most of whom are more radical than the national headquarters right so it’s a two-pronged attack on the one hand these newly established White Citizens
Councils launch all kinds of economic reprisals against these organizations forcing the local community chess to banish these organizations from the chest so that means that they can’t get the kind of local funding that say any of you in the audience would have given to the community chess to support local
Organizations that you were passionate about the other um punch of this is that then the KKK and other white vigilante groups are enacting vigilante violence right so not only are we going to you know are the White Citizens councils going to strangle you economic ically we’re going to burn out your
Buildings we’re going to bomb leaders homes we’re going to execute you know assassinate local leaders we’re going to run you out of the state okay so this creates a deep um problem within these organizations the movement is expanding the need for Grassroots organization is amplifying the calls for an immediate
Into segregation or even louder but now these organizations are bankrupt they are having to fire their staff they can’t put on the kind of programming they need they don’t they they’ve lost a lot of their their fundraisers because to be associated with the movement meant that you could lose the um you couldn’t
Get a loan for a car or a Home college students who were attending state funded universities could be expelled from school from being involved in the movement and even if you weren’t involved directly but someone in your family was this was grounds for you to be attacked by both the White Citizens
Councils and the clan so again the larger impact is that the national headquarters of organizations like the National Urban League have to turn even more to this moneyed white elite to get more money to fund movement right and so that gives them even more control over
The direction of the movement and so for me this was really eye openening to see exactly how this was playing out and to spend time not only in the records of the black uh civil rights organizations but also to spend time in these Foundation records excuse me to see which of these
Organizations they’re funding and how and to actually read some of these applications for Grants so just like I mean I know we have some academics in the room and maybe others of you who work for nonprofits how you apply for funding and you have to you know submit an
Application you have to make a case for why you need the money you have to explain who you are and and you know what your purpose is and how long your organization has been um how long you’ve been doing the work or how long you’ve been in your field
Well they these local affiliates of the National Urban League and NAACP were having to do a similar thing and so when you go through these records you can see how they’re telling you we got booted out of the community chess we’ve been attacked by White Citizens councils I
Mean all of it is laid out here and this creates this very very paternalistic relationship where not only do they have to supplicate these you know Grant granters for money you have to show a timeline for Horizon you know a timeline Horizon in terms of like how are you going to use
The money and how long will you need the funding but if you’re too successful at whatever work you’re doing in your community then they’ll say okay well then you no longer need our funding right and so you could see just in the applications people dancing this fine
Line right I could see when Whitney Young is head of the National Urban leing letters that he’s writing to Stephen Curry are the head of the conic foundation and he’s trying to you know create this relationship with him so that we can keep this flow of money
Going and there’s a point where the ton Foundation says oh you all have been so successful in your initiatives that you no longer need our money he’s like whoa whoa whoa no we do we do still need your money right so there’s all these tensions and so I was able to see that
Dynamic and how it plays out with something large scale like say the March Washington where the tonic Foundation alone gives um the Council of United civil rights leadership which are people like Whitney Young Roy Wilkins Martin Luther King Dorothy Height and others they give them $1.5 million in 1963
Figures right so a a lot of that money comes from these foundations okay and it’s it’s around this time too that King starts to shift away from you know shift toward an anti- capitalist Poor People’s approach to movement making and so he and of course the younger people people within cor and
Snick hate seeing the movement go in this direction another person who spoke about this at the time was Malcolm X so if you revisit his speech message to Grass to the Grassroots you can hear him talking about Stephen Courier and tonic and and how um how they were the the the
Jesse James the James Brothers of the movement right these people have basically stolen the movement and how King and others allowed it to happen right so go back and revisit that speech beyond the house negro field negro Paradigm he’s saying a lot more in that speech about the fundraising issue
Around the movement so that’s another thing that I I did I learned while writing this book and then a third thing was just that none of this had to go this way right on the one hand um there was definitely a major funding issue and a funding need Molly moon and
Members of The Guild were trying to combat some of this Atlanta for example had a very strong Guild and the guild here was established around 1950 when there’s a guild movement an expansion because of the dynamic that I was just explaining about how the you know anti-black violence against these
Headquarters um and local affiliates of of major civil rights organizations were happening running them out of the city but if you had a guild it just looked like a bunch of you know C tpping black women organizing maybe doing bourge ladies who lunch activities on the surface but really they were doing this
Clandestine fundraising and they could help keep the money flowing to the movement and give it to cities where it was most needed so Guild chapters were established in places like Atlanta um Lille um New Orleans was another major city in this Matrix Indiana where I’m from Indianapolis had a strong chapter
Fort Wayne that’s actually my hometown had a chapter Grand Rapids Providence of course New York City Philadelphia Phoenix Arizona I mean there start to be these Guild chapters pop up across the country and the guild women are the ones who are connecting black churches um other social groups fundraising um organizations that are
You know much smaller in local communities I mean they are the network that’s trying to mobilize the black community to give to support the movement and again doing so often times in a very clandestine way to avoid these you know attacks from White Citizens councils and other antiblack
Organizations so the women start to amass so much power that they’re seen as more effective in many ways than the male leadership of these organizations and for those of us who understand massage W and how you know Jan Pro works these women were hit with that that double pronged attack of racism and
Sexism okay so by the time we get to the March on Washington Molly moon is a much older woman and she’s basically pushed to the sidelines of the movement um and this is part of the way that we we lose her in the archive she starts to
Be presented as like this Grand you know who just host these beautiful parties but not necessarily as a power broker who is vastly important to this Dynamic of fundraising and really this middle person between this big dollar donations that’s happening and the Grassroots on the ground fundraising within black
Communities so I I really wanted to you know examine that dynamic how africanamerican communities were trying to combat this notion of movement capture and how they’re doing that the kind of approaches some people felt like well we should just raise up our own black millionaire class right now we we
We have enough black millionaires that you know we we have more money collectively than some small Nations so and then you had other people in the black press were saying no that won’t work because black capitalism won’t save us right so I’m charting like all these conversations within our community
People trying to find Solutions to this fundraising crisis then the other layer of this and this is where I’ll end is also a piece of of black joy that I was trying to put together right because Molly moon you know she did know how to throw a good party I’ll say that about
Her when I found some of these pictures of her Barts ball which was her annual fundraiser ball it was very clear that people came to have a good time that it was something that people travel far and wide to attend and these were costume balls they were in the spirit of West
Indian and Carnival and also in the spirit of the drag balls that were popular in Harlem in the 1920s and 30s so she takes inspiration from there and then the early Falls you can see people drinking and having fun wearing their costumes and that became a way to level
The class playing field of people who attended because that was always Molly Moon’s goal now as Lester Granger who’s the head of the National Urban League before Whitney Young and then Whitney Young his successor start to use the Boar’s ball as major fundraiser um it starts to steer away from that more
Grassroots tradition that West Indian tradition and more toward a suit and thae event in the book you’ll be able to see a picture of Muhammad Ali at one of these balls wearing his tuxedo so people would come dripped out in their Furs and their diamonds and evening gowns and the
Black press even lamented this this used to be an event where you know domestic laborers could could dance with titans of industry but now it’s becoming more of a stuffy event and it moves downtown it makes that same move to Midtown you know at the wall of ptor some see people
See this as progress right that Molly moon has busted down the color line but in any case what I was fascinated by was the role of this as a joy project right of how dancing and rry and eating and drinking um and how Molly moon was really trying to cultivate an
Environment of black luxury and Leisure even if just for one night for people um and so I wanted to hold that intention with both her earlier politics which were very anti- capitalist um to now what this ball had be become and also the fact that many people saw this as a
Furlow if you will in fact I found a newspaper article that said this there was a fur for weary Frontline movement workers that they would come to the ball and dance and eat and this was a way to experience a sense of Joy before they
Knew they had to go out on a picket line or uh participa in a boycott or you know a freedom right where they knew for sure that they would be arrested so this book tries to do a lot you know in terms of this hidden history or this under told
History unstudied history around African-Americans and fundraising um and this this role of of money in racial Justice and Racial equality where um and and so I really hope that as you read it that for one it’ll be informative historically but that it will also be entertaining I mean um I had written
This early draft of a thing that I called tea and shade a methodology right because I’m reading all these black newspaper and they will tell it they will tell it exactly like it is so I try to bring that Spirit of you know reporting into the book and how it’s
Written so that hopefully it it reads more like a novel than like a Stay book history book um so yeah this is just you know my way of Shing some opening remarks about this book and what it is and what I think it does and how it
Tries to both tell the story of this black woman and her rise her love relationship with her husband who you know by the time the book ends I mean he’s become the publicity director of the NAACP so there like this movement power couple um but also again this fra
History around fundraising and the ways that we have done this work and how this looks in 2020 right in the 2020s um of course I was writing this book why we were living through this and post the murder of George Floyd so there are a lot of parallels that I think fill in
History that we need to know move forward so I would love to hear questions comments anything else from the audience we’re gonna invite folks to just come on up to this microphone if you’re not able to give it to you we didn’t read thank you for your presentation very exited
Very a different look when we think about the Civil Rights you talk about the whole luxury celebration and these beautiful comp that took place with question she prend to talk about to cont I wonder that even when we talk about you know the whole G how to
Gender you all have also analyed Mar wom CES CL the class because when I also as well because when I think about this you know talk about this one of the welln sh of the di di you know lot of people don’t lot of these wom and so we talk about where
The world went and how make it to women on the ground who you know got F and forther speeches what they did the research look at know women who could have whispered of the leaders you know you know M you know Washington Mahal and who was also at the was you know
Um whether so the the role of some of these women you know up there and how they also could inite to you know remove certain that they comp good image your face thank you yes thank you for that question and that’s the thing about this book for one
I want to make sure make it clear that this book is not um a celebration of the elite in that way and that it’s just like oh look at look at the amazing things that Bouie black people did right this what I do try to do is take um a
Cross-class analysis right because and I try and I do that for a couple reasons one is to get at some of these very things that you’re addressing right to understand the Dynamics within the black community as it relates to money and wealth and respectability and so many of these
Other issues but I also felt that the historiography had tended to focus on those intra racial class tensions so much that we had let the extremely wealthy white folks off the hook right we weren’t really investigating that philanthropic element of it as well so I wanted to look at that more well-rotted terrain
Around int racial class politics while also examining what’s happening um with the between those major leaders and the foundations as well and so with mly Moon I take what in um the studies of economy is called a middle out approach where you look at somebody who represents that
Middle tier um as a way to analyze what’s happening from a bottom up from from the bottom up and also from the top down right so that becomes a way where you can take a more holistic view of these Dynamics so most certainly there were class tensions um there was you
Know backbiting between within the black community there were conversations around who was the you know more appropriate face for various movement initiatives I mean we always hold up Rosa Parks as a classic example of Biz versus Claud Hoven um so yes there are parts of that in the
Book there are also ways that I’m I’m looking at people like Georgia Gilmore who was um a domestic labor a cook in Montgomery Alabama but who was a major fundraiser for the Montgomery Bus boy cop right right and that’s a name that we often times don’t know I also look at
Um the variations within the urban leag guilds I mean some guilds like I would say the New York Guild was probably you know the members who comprised that were you know tended to be educated black women with college degrees and so forth but I also look at the Oklahoma City
Guild which was a lot of laundresses um maybe some teachers um but definitely a a beauty culturalist in the Atlant a chapter was also a lot of beauticians um women who did not necessarily have college degrees but had other kinds of vocational training so each of these guilds took on a different
Dynamic and what starts to happen excuse me though is that the guild comes to be seen in in certain circles as so a social club right so even though Molly moon herself even though she was a member of Al Al Alpac Kappa Alpha at a certain point she ends
Her she you know ceases to renew her membership because her politics are such that she doesn’t want to get involved in the classism of that so she doesn’t join like the Jack and Jill or the hillbillies or any of these other social clubs the girlfriends um but the the urban leag Guild begins
To be seen as an organization like that so a lot of younger women who see the the potential work of the guild and how it could benefit them you these women are more radical or militant in their politics they see the guild as a a LST
Space too right and so I also chart that the the transformation in the guild from something that’s seen as this more radical vehicle that comes out of leftwing protest into something that you know by the early 1960s is seen as just as as elitist as the links for example
In certain chapters not all chapters they’re all very different so those Dynamics are definitely there and I think that um in order to have a real accounting for this um I had to express all of as many different class perspectives as I could in the book um to show the stakes and
How black people across the class Spectrum were interpreting this movement and this issue around fundraising so thank you for that for hi Hi how are you I’m um thank you for coming out tonight so quick question so right now the utility of uh affirmative action that’s being Tak a
Look at and center of that right now is fearless fun and is say it again Fearless fun are you familiar okay so it’s essentially a fun black like fun okay so every and uh so what can they take from your book right that um you spoke about in here that could uh
You know lessons learn that could be applied in that situation um just one your thoughts yeah oh okay so not speaking to Fearless specifically while I’m familiar I don’t know all the ins and outs of the of their Dynamic and so I’ll take that as a launching point
To talk about something that hopefully won’t get too wonky um in terms of like tax law but one of the things that struck me as I was doing this research and looking at the present moment as well thinking about what happens when our Justice organizations are beholden to a 501c3
Status right so already that means that you can’t be a protest organization with a 501c3 status um so it means that in order for you to get certain tax breaks and in order for the people who donate to your organization to get certain tax breaks there’s a way that you can’t you
Can’t engage in in protest right and this of course is the case for the National Urban League Whitney Young tries to push this as far as he can without jeopardizing their 501c3 status the nacp is a 501c4 organization which allows it to be a protest organization and and then they establish
A 501c3 fund arm so when organizations take on this kind of structure it limits the work that they can do and it also creates a certain model in terms of how money should flow in and out of it another one of these things that happens to our organizations that that they say
Let’s create a fund strategy now mind you nothing in this country was designed for Black Folk right all of these systems are built on um Jim Crow Logics they’re built on racial capitalism so when we try to then make our Justice work fit into these structures it’s
Never really going to benefit us right or the benefits that we could see are limited or they they’re never going to be longterm benefits right and so when people started to then say okay well then let’s establish a fund then you start taking on the logic of big philanthropy right of Foundations
And what is what is at the core of that logic the accumulation of wealth right so now you’re going to bring in all this money into the fund and then you’re going to start doing it out to who you think should get it when you think they
Should get it in what amounts and so when that starts to happen your organization is taking on that the structure of the fund right and it becomes I think to the detriment of movement work right so we have to have some of our organizations sure I mean
I’m not going to attack people for why they might choose one of these structures or the other and you know we can get into that at a different time point but for the sake of this conversation I’ll say we have to have some organizations that are free from
These structures because it it limits the work when we adhere to them I mean one of the big things we saw happen to BLM once they establish that BLM Global Network fund which was essentially this right we’re going to create a fund arm we’re going to take in
Millions and then what does the instant critique become you’re mismanaging the funds you’re misappropriating the funds the funds aren’t going where they need to go that your local chapters aren’t getting the money I mean it creates all of these dynamic dyamics do I have any easy solutions as to what we should
Do I don’t right because but what am I I’m a historian my job is to tell you this is what we’ve done before this is what worked and this is what happened right and and this is this is one of the challenges and so I think that in
Speaking to black women who are working in the nonprofit space today what I have learned is that the history that I tell in this book is almost identical to the history that’s happening today right to what’s happening today and and it’s not as we know and I don’t have to say
This to anyone in this room we already know this it’s not because of a lack of imagination on the part of black women right or black people generally speaking we’re always using tools of mutual Aid um very horizontal community community networks suu giving traditions and other non-western traditions of fundraising
And you know Community generosity um and we’re bringing those things to Big philanthropy and to you know these more established Financial ways of thinking about raising funds and accumulating wealth but the systems are so rigid that they won’t change right so it’s not that we’re not doing the Innovative work that
Can make these systems change but the system itself is so rigid and because of this you know um because of the political economy or the way that the government is so closely intertwined into um big philanthropy and so forth I mean it’s it’s it’s really hard to break
Down that system because they have reason to want us to so I mean sure you can establish your fund and I’m not going to not people I know I know people who have like these cestine funds and they raise all this money and then they give the money to organizations and so
Again this is not me trying to just say oh how terrible on you to do this I’m just trying to help us think structurally about what it means when we try to move our community Justice work into these structures that were never meant to you know work in our service ever historically
Sure so to your research and um what my next project um well I really want to be in Sation and rooms with people who especially people who work for philanthropic organizations nonprofit organizations who in in a lot of these organizations in 2020 who said they were pledging to
You know um anti-racism you know I would love to talk to some of these people and you know share my research to um if you really say that you’re about change here’s some ways that this could look um to uh Advance um the conversation Beyond just lip service you know like this is
This is some of the work we would have to do so I definitely want to be in part of those conversations I mean we’re coming up again against another election cycle um I think that this issue of fundraising is always critical when we start uh entering in those election
Years I mean while I was doing some of this research just you know rather informally since it wasn’t necessarily the time period I was studying but I was looking at Stacy Abrams and you know her organization and black bers matter and all the millions of dollars that they
Were raising just to you know protect our right to vote and I’ve realized that over you know the time period I’ve studied to the present I mean we’ve raised more than a billion dollars just to try to protect something that should be our Civic right um so I want to be
Participating in those kind of conversations as well hi Dr and are you can you hear me well here’s okay so y’all don’t clown me I can hear you well but well no I can’t hear you all that well but it’s not because you’re not speaking loudly it’s
Because I thought I was gonna be cute and I wear my glasses so I cannot see your lips moving so it’s making it harder for me to hear you so that’s why I’m like huh what’s your question say that again well I’m you should have wor some fly fly
Glasses I have a couple of questions for you so one is what was one of your most surprising finds and then my second question is more of a serious tone so I know you’re into pop culture and um about close who was another black um
Billionaire or on his way I think he is there now it’s Diddy Diddy this story has really been troubling me um and it’s just getting uglier and oh my goodness I just figured out who this is I can tell that’s land somebody my name my name is Dr Rob
BR I’m a professor at the University of Pittsburgh and I live here in Atlanta and um I’m living here in Atlanta so of course I’m taking advantage of all the great things here right and so just a few months ago Diddy was here he was at the invest Fest here that earn your
Leisure does and so I went and um of course the place was packed out it was thousands of people I think it’s was like 10,000 people there and you know it’s mostly black and so and people were literally standing up the entire hour that D was being interviewed like
Standing up recording everything so he’s revered right and then literally like I think this is like day four for me or something and it’s just like every day the news headlines get ugly so tiing this to your book is that one of the things that was surprising to me um in
Terms of civil rights history years ago was when I found out about how some black women were being sexually assaulted by black men while they were on the front lines and so I want this my second question is was there anything like that that took place concerning the
Class levels because you’re this double burden of racism and sexism but your class doesn’t always protect you from sexual assaults either so I wanted to know did you come across any ugly stories like that with even upper class black um women being subjected to things like that but the first question was
About something very surprising to you in your search um yeah okay so the reason why Dr Brooks here is like girl you can’t tell who I was because we went to grad school together so we’ve been friends for a very long time so once I heard the voice
I was like oh that’s my girl so thank you for both for both of these questions and of course Dr Brooks also writes about class in the African diasporic context as well so you know she’s been an important thought partner for me while writing this book both in terms of
Direct conversation but also in terms of you know reading her book as well that deals with a lot of these issues and you know how class gets represented in literature and other forms of black cultural production across the Gasper so the first part I guess I can answer that two part using one
Story um so one of the surprising things that I found was that Henry Moon Molly’s husband’s first cousin is Chester hes yes so they you know they were raised together I think I think M I think Henry’s mother is Chester heim’s Aunt um so their first cousins they’re
Raised very closely in Cleveland of course you know for those who know Chester Heim story they both were supposed to move on to become part of this educated black Elite he you know is kicked out of college goes on to prison becomes one of our most significant um
Novelists of that time period um and while he’s trying to get his career off the ground he moves to New York City and he moves into Molly and Henry’s home um in Harlem which this is also a surprising thing I realized that I had moved into their building too like while
I was writing this book like had had no clue I had moved into their building on their floor on their wing of the hallway right so the way I believe in African cosmology Molly moon and I are neighbors right so so he moved into that building where
They would host all these events and gatherings in fact when um ify hollers let him go was published it was Molly who threw his book party in that apartment they had introduced him to Richard bride and um Ralph Ellison other people who were their friends who came
To their parties and things at their house and all the while he was writing this book called pink toes and the main character is named M Mason and this book is a satire of this very issue of philanthropy and the movement taking money from White philanth white
Philanthropist and in the book M Mason is a mad right who is trying to solve the race Problem by Sleeping with being in bed with rich white folks and selling um black artists like the Chester heimes character in the book to these white bids right these white donors okay um
And I mean he ain’t wrong like there’s a lot of the a lot of the class analysis in there is not wrong like it’s it’s it’s smart right but also could you imagine if you took your cousin in he was in your spare bedroom writing a book
That dogged your wife I mean oh my goodness okay so I say all that to say that this book is it but when he writes it at first the US Publishers won’t touch it because King and Roy Wilkins there’s a Roy Wilkins character there’s a Walter White character um there’s Paul robis
And character all these major figures are in this book um with thinly veiled names if you knew them you would know who they were in the book so they won’t touch it but by the time we get to the mid 1960s when you have a a uptick of like
You know young radicals who are really castigating all these leaders then they’re willing to publish it and so mol moon really Bears the brunt of this right so she experiences this kind of sexism where she’s basically been called a hoe in this book right and that people are saying this
About her publicly they’ve already accused her of having an affair with her Rockefeller so she’s experiencing this sexism within the National Urban League and the male leadership does nothing to stop it right um and she ends up suing over this issue you read the books learn more about that
She sues for a million dollars in 1965 figures so to answer the question the second question no I didn’t find find uh stories in the Press about this you know or or stories in their personal letters about sexual socks but we have to believe that these things happen right
Um if we think about it like even in the context of the horrific stories that about Diddy that we’ve now um heard through you know cast casting our own testimony through the legal documents what we can see is that of course there’s this toxic mix of power money Alcohol and Other Drugs
Right so if you think about these events that that they’re hosting a lot of these fundraisers they’re either in people’s homes or they’re at hotels or other venues and people are getting liquored up people have money and influence you can it’s it’s the it’s the perfect toxic
Cocktail for sexual assault to happen um a lot of these people though if they did write about these things in letters maybe they chose to not um make those letters part of their papers that they deposited so a lot of history unfortunately is lost without people giving their own personal testimonies as
To what happens so that’s why I think that the case that Molly moon files at least gives us a window into the sexism of the era because it was definitely known that Whitney Young was a philanderer and that you know there’s there’s a story of him embracing SE
Several modelesque looking women at a National Urban League conference and saying you know having them around his arms and saying this is the real black power right like me like I’m just black B power right like you know so that was part of his Persona so you
Know so you could just imagine what’s happening behind close door so thank thanks for Com um I got um and I mean I guess this is more of a comment um I’ve been a fundraiser in New York City I’ve been a nonprofit I understand how the money flows and for me I feel like the question I have is did they have to raise this m knowing
The structures right so you think you what you said about with young ego and I almost feel like a lot of the different structures was never to benefit the the commun I got out of nonprofit because of my understanding of how the money flows and where the money is coming from um
Because I didn’t feel like the people were ever going to ever win with this structure and so for me I think when you think about knowing your fundraising for programs that are only enabling the community to still kind of fall into these structures oppressive structures versus forcing political change through
What we’re seeing now with some of these organizations that color change where you’re demanding certain things like you know political people people in um PS that really have influence over the laws and policies you know from what I understand and you know the federal government the only way that they’ll in
That that there’s research behind it and then they determin what that research is this is why the gun lobby is the way that it is it’s because under funded defunded and this is a lot of the reasons why we don’t have the change that we need from a policy perspective
And so I don’t know what your perspective is around the fact that like these people were really taxing their own people for their own ego I don’t know if you agree or disagree another one of my good friends y’all um great questions and great yes
The the short answer is yes I do agree right so one of the questions I’ve been asking myself is like you said do we need all this money right and the part of the reason why I’m asking this is like sure like if anybody watched the movie Rus has
Anybody watched Rustin on Netflix right okay so there’s this amazing scene in Rustin where you know he’s rattling off the people on his staff who have helped organize this March in Washington are rattling off um what all they have like we have 600 chartered buses 40 chartered
Trains six chartered planes we you know we have 20 whatever 24 po quarter potties 8 880,000 box lunches like they’re saying all so on the one hand yes right it takes money to secure all those things right on the other hand though all of these organizations have been tasked with
Fixing a problem that they never created right so we’re we’re having to Bear the brunt of the cost of racial Justice for some things that we didn’t even build right you know margins are so SL actual amount of money that actually gets to the yes exactly exactly right so so there’s
All of this so so right so do we need this do we need all this money why it why are we bearing the brunt of fixing a broken system in this country why are we as black people even having to do this um and it gets more complicated of
Course on the other side of brownie board um what this looks like as we start to integrate but right a lot of the money is not getting to the communities who most needed um so I’ve been thinking about like what does it mean to be a well-funded Justice organization and is
That an inherent contradiction of terms right that um and and so so then but is it that we want Justice organizations to be broke you know what I mean like it’s it’s this it’s a it feels like there’s a a catch 22 here I and that’s what in the
Book I’m trying to map historically like how people navigated that there was a lot of ego involved in this for sure and there was also um you got to see the the shift in the mindset so from the Lester Granger years I mean he’s the head of
The National Urban League with all these economic reprisals which again kicks off this grant funding system where people are applying to these foundations to get money for their local affiliates um that starts to happen under his watch his strategy is to get all this money from corporations but to do it
Covertly Whitney Young says no we need to be public about the fact that we’re taking all this money from corporations and Foundations because this is our biggest asset for one of the reasons that you mentioned which is it will help support this research that we’re doing around poverty discrimination in the
Workplace and Healthcare and education because if we produce that research then it’ll help us secure government funds which is exactly what they start doing so you can see in their ledgers where they weren’t getting any government money to the point where you know during lbj’s Administration they get government
Money and then during Nixon’s Administration they get even more government money it’s in large part because of the social science-based research that they’re doing um so you can see the mindset and the other piece of this is if we get corporations on board by making them afraid of the black radicals you can
Deal with us reasonable Negroes or you can deal with them crazy black radicals over there right so they’re using this as a scare tactic um for for you know white corporations and such um and because they’re saying if we can win over Corporate America then we can get a
Few black people into jobs and then they’re going to help you know that trickle down whole trickle down Tri Justice right um so you can watch this play out in the documents right you can literally watch it play out so that’s why I said these things didn’t have to
Happen this way it’s a set of choices that produce a certain set of outcomes and then the larger thing that I try to expose in the book is but with excuse my language a bun but with a shitty set of possibilities right like there was never
A good choice that we had you know so um I I want I wanted to explore both of those things so yes no I agree with you I think that this is what I hear from a lot of other black women who work in the nonprofit space and then also hearing
Them talk about the disparities between people who are working for nonprofits like color for change color of change for example um who might not be making a bunch of money at all and in some cases when these nonprofits you know you have black people and other people of color
Who are living barely above the the poverty line themselves versus the people who work for these major foundations who are getting you know six figure salaries right and are living a different kind of cushy existence so there’s also disparities within this world um that a lot of people I’ve
Spoken to have addressed as well so yeah I mean it’s on the one hand it makes me really frustrated like part of the challenge of being a historian is knowing all this history you know what I’m saying and then when you see people get excited about a thing and you’re just kind of
Like we don’t been here before child I hav seen how this one plays out right you know so it’s it’s really hard it’s really hard do you think the money still the um I do different branches now different Nam but yeah do like if you
Look if you look at if you look at um butin like a National Urban League or an N ACP annual conference and I’m not just ragging on these two organizations but I mean they’re they’re two with the longest history so we can chart them over time right which is why they come
Good examples of this kind of thing but when you look at you go to those events now you see everything and who’s sponsoring it and then you go in those Library of Congress ledgers and you look at those donor books so I found books they have like dozens of these books
They’re about this big they let you know who the donor was what they gave when they gave when they were last contacted how much they expect a donor that makes x amount of dollars per year or a company that earns x amount when you look at those ledgers you see the some
Some of the similar names as today right so um and the National Urban League has continued in the in the Whitney Young tradition of let’s make it public who we’re getting all this money from and that and we’ve also and it’s not just again with these organizations we’ve
Also just seen a shift broadly speaking with people wanting to Big up who their sponsorship is right people who want to be in business with major corporations and want to have sponsorship um in the book I call it Racial equality capitalism but there was also a book that was recently published by a
Sociologist and I’m I’m blanking on the name right now but um it’s about a similar thing where she’s studying contemporary um the Contemporary moment in how these corporations are funding black the black Arts so if you go to a performance at Alvin ay for example and
You look at the program booklet and you can see all these corporate corporate and philanthropic Foundation sponsors so she’s talking about like how our cultural production makes these companies look Progressive right how it makes them look like they are on The Cutting Edge of Justice work when we
Really know they’re not and so I could see a similar Dynamic playing out in the 1950s and 60s that I named Racial equality capitalism we know you’re a historian we might rightor thank you so much thank you to everyone for your beautiful questions um your hand uh we really appreciate you
Pivoting at the last minute to just uh offer that beautiful lecture to everybody um we’re GNA invite folks to get your book signed in the lobby U if you already have your book you’re going to get in line on the left that’s going to be where the signing is if you need a
Book or if you’re thinking of folks who you want to buy this book for um for a holiday present this a great holiday um you can get in the line on the right bu books and then just get over to the left sign but um thank you once again we just all Yes apprciate it see still works oh
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