Our Secret Society

May 1, 2023

Ford's Our Secret Society tells the story of Mollie Moon, whose fundraising efforts as founder of the National Urban League Guild helped support the Civil Rights Movement. Prepub Alert.

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Starred review from August 28, 2023
Historian Ford (Liberated Threads) sets forth a riveting portrait of the “doyenne of Harlem society,” Mollie Lewis Moon (1907–1990), charting her rise from “leftist social worker to famed African American fundraiser.” Born into poverty in Hattiesburg, Miss., Mollie’s family eventually relocated to Gary, Ind., where she briefly worked as a pharmacist. She moved to Harlem in 1930 and became politically active in leftist causes. In 1932 she joined friends in Moscow as a member of the cast of Black and White, a film about the horrors of segregation in the U.S., which was never completed. Upon returning to New York, she reconnected with castmate Henry Moon, who became her third husband. After landing a job with the N.Y.C. Department of Welfare as a caseworker in Harlem, she was recruited as a fundraiser in 1941 by the Harlem Community Art Center; soon after, she inaugurated her “signature” Beaux Arts Ball, a costumed “inter-racial get-together” that attracted such celebrities as Langston Hughes. She founded the National Urban League Guild (a “hip and stylish” fund-raising branch of the League), hosted “star-studded” dinner parties, and connected with wealthy civil rights supporters, including Winthrop Rockefeller (a partnership which fueled rumors of an affair). Frank in its handling of intimate details, this deeply researched account documents the bohemian partying, high-class social connections, and far-left politics of the early civil rights movement. It’s a vivid behind-the-scenes snapshot of a dazzling era.

November 1, 2023
A fluent study of the role of wealthy individuals in the funding of the civil rights movement of the 1950s and beyond. "Political intrigue, compromise and confrontation, beautiful gowns and luxury hotels, protests and violent uprisings"--all are part of the story of civil rights, writes Ford, a scholar of Black historical fashion and culture. At the center was Mollie Moon (1907-1990), a committed leftist who lived for a time in the Soviet Union as a "New Negro" activist. Disillusioned both by the "two competing agendas" of the Communist Party--one fomenting revolution, the other trying to secure diplomatic recognition by the U.S. government for the purposes of commerce--and by the racism prevalent in the U.S., Moon went to Germany just in time for the rise of Nazism. She then moved to New York, where she married and became a founder of what is called "Black internationalism." Trained as a pharmacist, she later became a federal government employee and, in the aftermath of the Depression, found herself and her husband "becoming civic leaders who were deeply invested in electoral politics." Moving easily among white power brokers, the Roosevelt administration's "Black Cabinet," and the African American community, Moon was well positioned to become an ambassador for civil rights to the powerful. She organized balls, fashion shows, dinners, and other fundraising events for the Urban League and other organizations. In the more militant 1960s, Moon and other Black civic leaders came under criticism as having "become so caught up in the trappings of the upper class that they were of no use to the people," which helps explain why her contributions have since been overlooked--even if, as Ford writes, "the reality is that movements cost money." A welcome addition to the literature of civil rights, casting light on a little-known corner of the struggle.

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