 I'm a 2017 New America fellow and I have the tremendous pleasure of discussing a fantastic new book from 2023 fellow Tanisha Ford called Our Secret Society Molly Moon and the glamour money and power behind the civil rights movement. Dr Ford is a professor of history at the. Excuse me at CUNY Graduate Center in New York City. She's the author of three books in addition to our secret society liberated threads black women style and the global politics of soul which is one of my favorite books to teach the memoir Dressed in Dreams a black girl's love letter to the power of fashion and she co edited Kwame Braithwaite black is beautiful a visually stunning look at black power style. She's a regular contributor to the magazines that we love. The New York Times the Atlantic L harbors bazaar. She's been awarded for her research by some of the most prestigious institutions including the Smithsonian Museum of American history, the Radcliffe Institute at Harvard University. And she has graced us with her presence today to talk about an incredible book. I want to dive right into this because this book is a contribution across so many different areas of study across so many genres. So I want to first congratulate you, Tanisha, and ask you how you discovered Molly Moon who was the society woman who helped fuel the civil rights movement. First of all, thank you, Marsha. Thank you for doing this with me. Thank you, New America for just just for being a great supportive community and for helping me bring this book to life. Molly Moon is a force, and I'm so honored that I have been able to tell her story. I first found Molly Moon in the archive I was actually a graduate student at the time it feels like forever ago but maybe it wasn't all that long ago. I did research at the Schomburg Center in Harlem where I currently live. And I found this name Molly Moon I wasn't looking for her I was actually looking for another woman who was a part of the dissertation that became liberated threads. But once I found that name Molly Moon I quickly became enamored with this woman I wanted to know more about this woman who had this name Molly Moon that just sounded so good as it like rolled off my lips. And then I realized that she was not only a party planner and hostess. She was also someone who raised funds for the civil rights movement and it was when I started to collect other elements, not just newspaper clippings where I initially stumbled upon her but also when I started reading her personal correspondence and that of other of her peers who came of age with her in the early 1930s. I started to realize that this story of how the movement was funded is one that hasn't been told, and at least not to the degree in which I felt it should be and that Molly Moon was the perfect vehicle through which to tell that story. It's fascinating about looking at the history of civil rights, even though we have more nuance and sophisticated interpretations of the events. Some of the nitty gritty bureaucratic stuff has still not risen to the surface. And so what Molly Moon does is essentially she makes sure that the door stay open the light stay on that the movement can continue to expand its goals. What's interesting is her early life, her early political ideology is an unlikely place for her to start considering what a socialite she becomes. Can you tell us a little bit about the story opening in the Soviet Union in the 1920s. I can most certainly do that so when the book opens in the 1930s as you mentioned Marsha, and I chose to start the story there because it was once I started to realize that she was a part of that cast along with Langston Hughes Dorothy West Louise Thompson, Lauren Miller and others who went to the Soviet Union to make this racial propaganda film called black and white which was to expose the horrors of Jim Crow segregation in the United States and labor exploitation. I was like, wow, Molly Moon was there. Okay, like this to me seemed like a fitting place because I had also found correspondence from Paulie Murray the famed civil rights attorney who labeled that generation, which she was a part of and in that trip to the Soviet Union, but Paulie labels them the depression generation people who came of age and came into their political awakening during the lowest points of the Great Depression. And so this group of largely black intellectuals, artists, social workers, etc, went to make this film, because they wanted to find solutions to the extreme racial disparities in the United States during the depression era. It was never made, but it was such a political awakening. And it was also an opportunity for these people to travel abroad at a time period where many African Americans did not have the luxury of travel to places like Europe, for example. So I wanted to really think through like how Molly would have been shaped by this tremendous experience to live in Moscow and later in Berlin where she moves after the film goes bust, and how this shaped her politics how it shaped her identity as a woman who had you know, proclivities like who loved to party and, you know, enjoy a good glass of champagne and so for me it was those elements that formed the basis of her identity as a fundraiser. This book does so much because it's a biography of a person who's integral in the civil rights movement, but in many ways I think it's about an intellectual maturation process or a political awakening that, you know, this group of black leftists, they all kind of scatter in different directions. And she's pulled to a kind of activist work that because it's feminized, it's not recognized. And so can you tell the audience a little bit about how Molly and women like her that cohort, how they get active in black politics in the kind of, you know, at the moment where the red scare is putting a lot of pressure on this group to disavow communism where they are starting to have a second perspective on communism as a result of World War Two. So, you know, how do women fit into this moment in black political organizing. What I love about this book is it takes us into the spaces that are typically overlooked in studies of civil rights movements. So, one of those spaces is the Harlem Community Arts Center, which was a major cultural institution, part of the New Deal administration's community based arts program initiative. And it became like a beacon of possibility for the black arts, where issues related to economic justice and artistic production were seen as, you know, integral and interrelated. And Molly Moon, this becomes like her first fundraising initiative before she really even takes on the labels fundraiser. She works closely with the Harlem Community Arts Center. Now, many of these people were a part of her cohort of friends and colleagues who had left leaning politics. So, the fundraising that she's doing alongside women like Alanda Robeson, Bessie Bearden, who was an activist and also she's also the mother of artist Romare Bearden. Also Douglas who was married to the famed artist Aaron Douglas. Like these women are part of her political circle, but they also have connections with people. And at this point Molly has connections with people in DC where her husband Henry Lee Moon is has a position in the White House. And they also have connections in New York City as well. And so Molly is tapped to lead this committee, because she has these political and social connections. And so when she forms this group she's forming it with other people, women primarily who have a similar political outlook as her own. The center is established by Augusta Savage, who's also one of the Moon's personal friends. But at this point Augusta has stepped down and Gwendolyn Bennett is now the head. So I was able to see how black women are creating the kind of arts institution building that become essential to the movement in ways that we don't necessarily think about when we focus on marches and freedom rides and so forth. All things that are important, but the kind of organizing that the women are doing around, you know, servicing the black community, particularly black youth is an element that was really important for me to establish. So, Molly, although they are unsuccessful in keeping this woefully underfunded center open. Molly is able to use the connections that she's able to further establish through her work with the Harlem Community Arts Center to form an organization called the National Urban League Guild at the behest of her friend and fellow social worker Lester Granger who's now been elected the new executive director of the National Urban League. So he gives her free reign to basically craft this vehicle that will then serve as the fundraising and volunteer arm of the National Urban League as it moves into this new era, post World War two. This is a major step in Molly's career as a fundraiser and what I really enjoyed writing and researching about this moment was the way that she's able to build and establish the Guild in New York City first, but that guilds then are formed across the United States, each with their own tone and tenor their own bent on fundraising, held by mostly black women, some of whom are teachers, some are our beauticians. Others are social workers, I mean it really runs the gamut in terms of black women and their, their professional engagements, but these women then are the base of so much economic institution building within the National Urban League. So you have this woman who comes from a deep commitment to the black left, who creates this vehicle for a major civil rights organization that by the time we get to the early 1950s has multiple chapters in cities and all the major cities across the United States. One of the things that I found really striking about the story is it's talking about race relations as they kind of ebb and flow in various directions. So you start with this group of black intellectuals who are living in a pretty kind of multi ethnic world because of their commitment to leftist politics, then the period after World War Two, a different group of white allies emerge, very different than their, you know, Trotskyite friends. These are incredibly wealthy people in New York and one of the things I appreciated throughout the book is you put numbers on the page and I'm thinking people made that kind of money back then, or they had access to this kind of resources. And so how does Molly facilitate the entry of white philanthropists, people who are from the legacy families, you know, the great industrialist and countless, how do they become part of the story. So, Molly, she makes it very clear, I found a piece of an article that she was quoted in in the late 1940s that the National Urban League Guild is an outgrowth of the work that these women were doing with the Harlem Community Arts Center and I think there she makes her politics known as the front and center that this this organization has a leftist bent unapologetically so right. But once she starts to really work with the Urban League which of course of long standing civil rights organization that you know it's established in the first decade of the 20th century, and Molly moon is part of the end of this volunteer effort and the fundraising effort behind it which means that now she is placed in conversation with the Urban League's major donors, people like the Rockefeller families. The Javits is, I mean the list really goes on and on but also local and national politicians. These people are coming to Urban League events people who are heads of major media corporations and publications are also sponsors of the National Urban League corporations like Pepsi co General Electric, I mean they're all giving to the Urban League and so this really elevates Molly's public profile but it also means that now she's, she's taking money from people outside of her left wing circle. These aren't just people who have, you know, similar progressive or radical even politic these are, you know, racial liberals people who believe in within the system people believe in the power of interracial organizing and so forth. And I found that for one it meant that she publicly, I see a shift in how she's articulating her politics by the time we get to the 1950s. But mostly it means that she has to figure out how to craft events that speak to the, the political and civic issues that are of concern to the major philanthropic foundations and corporate foundations, but that also don't specialize or displace working class and working poor African Americans communities that very early on in her career as a social worker that she made deep commitments to. So it was interesting for me to watch like how she's on the one hand, hosting a card party for during the Black Journalist Week, you know where all the black journalists are coming into New York City she's hosting a card party event for them, you know, and helping to plan parties around the bars and restaurants and Harlem, but then she's also hosting major art shows where art from celebrities is going to be auctioned off that appeals to these big dollar donors. And so I wanted to think, how would she have thought like being in oftentimes the only black woman in these rooms, you know where she's dealing with philanthropists and trying to translate the black community and black causes to them, and also trying to help everyday black people understand like why maybe we should take money or why we should take money strategically from these people. And so I wanted to, in the middle chapters of the book, really ground Molly's own experiences within this larger conversation within the black community about whether or not we should be taking white money. And what are the, the trade offs of doing so and political scientists may give me Francis gives us an amazing language of movement capture to help us understand what their fears were that they were afraid that if we allow, you know wealthy white philanthropists both individual donors and family foundations to come in and give us all this money then they'll steer the movement in a direction that is beneficial to them but may not be beneficial to us so one of the major concerns was that they would take a more gradualist approach to integration. So that was, you know, a major concern or that they would steer the movement away from things like grassroots organizing and more toward things like voting right voters rights which of course were extremely important. Youth education and youth programs, again extremely important, but how could they make sure that money and resources were getting to every day working for African Americans who needed the resources and programs within their community. So that that whole tension was really one of my favorite things to write about in this book in that I felt like by mapping this history in the mid 20th century, it could help us understand the current moment that we're living through where we're having similar debates about, you know, about, you know, taking money from outside donors or even around, should we raise up a black, you know, capitalist class, who could then be the donor base which is also something I explore in this book, where some people are like we need to raise up our own millionaire so that we don't have to take money from the Rockefellers we need to have our own millionaire black business people and rely on them, because they understand our needs and so they believe some people believe that black capitalism was the panacea. Other people were saying no, even black capitalism won't save us you know that capitalism at its root is part of the major problem. We need to hold all these things in tension and not try to flatten out any of these debates but to say that all of these debates are we're just as we're just as alive and well in the mid 20th century as they are in 2023. One of the beautiful things about this work and before I ask this question folks please remember that you can also ask questions. Dr Ford a few more questions and then we'll jump in but I haven't known you your whole life but I am assuming that fashion and style have always been very important to you based on your other writings, including dressed in dreams and liberated but you do such a great job, like the luxury and the glamour of the moment isn't lost in the real toughness of this work you do a beautiful job of balancing Molly's life so that we understand that both are possible and I think that one of the things that's so exciting about our generation of historians is that we understand stories of struggle are not kind of one note that people are living lives where they are joyful and they're having fun, and they're making all sorts of bad choices that they kind of regret that they kind of don't and then they go back and they make more, and they're also deeply troubled by what's happening in the world and they're deeply engaged in politics, and you show this woman who is so stylish, and who is so creative, and you know you talk about the spaces that she in enters you know from the hotel Teresa to the wall door for story like she is in these iconic places in New York and as a New Yorker as someone who loves style. Can you tell us a little bit about what that is like writing about someone who was so glamorous in her time. It's very clear to me, even in my my earliest research on this book that Molly moon was definitely a style icon in Harlem she regularly made the society pages best dressed list. She had other fancy beautiful friends, I mean she was the first person to bring the ebony fashion fair to New York City. I mean she she she loved style. She did love luxury, but not out of some very frivolous pursuit of luxury I think for one it was deeply tied to the fact that she was born in the Jim Crow South in 1907 she's born in Hattiesburg Mississippi, and you know her family she's born into a working class family. They don't have a lot they definitely benefit from mutual aid networks that help keep their family afloat in fact when Molly and her mother flee Mississippi they moved to Cleveland Ohio and they move in with Molly's aunt and her husband and their family. So she understands mutual aid and the power of that very, very acutely. But like many of us who weren't born into much, but you see that much that there are other people in the world who seem to have all the things and they seem to have access to so many things. You know, you, you want to desire you have a desire for those things and that attaining many of those things became a way for African Americans in the Jim Crow era to perform a sense of citizenship right that like if I can't if I can't get a home loan from the bank or I can't get it all alone. If I could buy a fur coat that can be an investment piece or if I could buy a nice watch that could be an investment piece. And so part of the logic was black people deserve luxury too. I think that the luxury should not just be a thing that's set aside for for white folks and definitely not just elite white folks and so this week I think becomes part of Molly's politics and so I tried to really show how she's juggling her commitment to socialism and anti capitalism with her own desire and with her belief that black people should have access to nice things and her events really reflected these politics that we could fight for freedom and fight for our right to full enfranchisement while also having a good time while also fighting and black joy and black leisure that that these are these things to our birthright, and I found this article, I believe it was in the Amsterdam news, it ran around 1961, where they are, the author is is really praising Molly moon and the women of the world for the work that they do they liken the movement to a frontline battle and saying that the activists are on the front lines that they are battling and that Molly's annual signature fundraiser the Bulls Arts Ball becomes a respite right for the soldiers on the frontline and the women of the guild deserve to be honored as activists alongside any other frontline activists because they have their shoulders to the grindstone are really doing the work to fight for the movement by creating spaces where we can retreat. Right like this becomes I think they even described it as a furlough for you know these frontline activists workers and so that she's bringing the joy into the movement and the joy is what's going to sustain us in the hardest and you know most exhausting work of the movement of getting free. And she kept I found this article clipping in her own personal archive so this was something that she would have seen and would have said yes, they get it, they get the work that we're doing. They get the importance of this this work that you know many people have trivialized even people within the National Urban League didn't fully appreciate the work that the women of the guild were doing but this article seemed to capture it. And I, I thought that it was important to note that that here's a black woman who didn't come from much but wanted to give black people a taste of everything, even if just for one night at one of her events. When you talk about the ways that Molly Moon was really part of New York society and I would say across the color line in many ways. It also makes her incredibly vulnerable and I do. I'm not going to spoil it for the audience you have to read this book, but there are some scandals. There are some very public things that she deals with. And you write them both respectfully but with just enough scandal feel around them to get us to the next chapter, immediately right what happens what happens, but it's about. But what I think at the heart of it is about when women step up in these ways. And when women have power, even if they try to veil it or put it in a beautiful gown at a ball, people are threatened they recognize what she has. And, you know, what are some of the ways that, you know, this book, from your perspective is also a book about like the, the perils of leadership right, because this is not unlike a lot of the great scholarship we have about how the men in civil rights movement we're always fighting with each other. But there's a way that when, you know, women are engaging in fights it's read differently but this is about power. And so how do you think, you know, Molly presents another way of us thinking about power during this time. So, Molly was definitely a power power broker and she used her position within the Urban League, very strategically. In fact, after reading about her reading her own letters interviewing people who knew her. It was clear to me that she was a major strategist, and that was something of course that people tried to diminish by just painting her as a beautiful face I mean she was well into her 60s and people are still calling her beautiful and beguiling and I'm sure she was I mean based on the photos. She was a gorgeous woman, you know, but it became a way to freeze her, both in terms of like an earlier time period of her life, you know where she was a much younger woman. So that, you know, I think even mentioned this in the book that similar things are done to people like Josephine Baker like where Josephine Baker is you know, a senior citizen but yet we're still, you know, sitting around photos of her and a banana skirt, you know, like, so she's frozen in a particular moment that happens to Molly moon as well, but it becomes a way to also try to diminish her as a woman who pours tea for the men. You know, or a woman who is doing work in service of men, and people didn't use that as a metaphor to describe the work of Molly moon and largely the work of the guild and the women of the guild very strategically pushed back by saying we're going to organize so that our work within the National Urban League is not seen as just this volunteer work of the ladies lunch crowd that we are all power brokers in our own communities. And when we come together we build a very fortified power base. We have ties to local and state politicians to radio and TV media. They very strategically used their networks and their ties to help bolster the movement. So I wanted to show that this is what I call like satin glove power right like you you see us as just the help meets of the movement in fact Lester even describes them as you know like the help meets of the movement very biblical scriptural language just to describe you know the woman the role of the woman as in support of her of her man. But Molly then gets up and says right behind him like oh no. In fact, we are power brokers right and they amass so much power that male leadership within the Urban League is like whoa we don't even we don't even know what to do with these women in the guild. So I wanted to to show that kind of satin glove labor labor that often is goes undiscussed when we talk about movement building to show how central it was and of course she did Molly moon did play pay a social price. There's a social price tag on having that much power and like you said you know we won't spoil it all but I did want to take like a. This is a blog where I called it the tea and shade of methodology right like we're using the source material of the society pages as a way to think through like how our society editors and others writing about Molly moon, you know, how are they both trying to clarify the work that she does for audiences but also how are some of them even trying to undermine it right like how are they. You know making her body her very body of target of disdain you know writing about her weight loss and weight gain what today we will call fat phobia I mean there are editors were writing about her in these ways. And so I wanted to, like you said, respectfully right about this, but not shy away from it because I want readers to understand the stakes of movement work for black women and that that work that the stakes weren't just being arrested which of course that's that's terrible you know, the arrest of Rosa Parks is one that definitely stands out in the movement history or you know assassination which of course was also a very real threat. We, you know we lost so many major leaders, Martin Luther King Medgar Evers Malcolm X I mean the list just goes on of people who were major figures of the early civil rights movement who were assassinated. But in addition to those forms of repression for one's political beliefs, there are also these other forms of everyday attacks against one's person that women like Molly moon experienced and I wanted to. And following the money make that kind of social attack clear because I think in our social media age where those of us who have social media platforms and use them to speak out around issues, some of which might be controversial some of them might just be like which kind of jell of rice do you prefer or do you like your your grits with butter and salt or with sugar right like you'd be attacked for even these things on social media so I wanted people to understand that like, even in this pre social media mid 20th century era, there are stakes for taking a public stance around issues that people care about. Well, I think that you do such a good job of helping people understand the continuity over time, in terms of, you know, our perceptions of women where their power comes from how they get attacked, how people's reputations are called into question. This is a good time folks if you have any questions for Dr Ford please put them in the chat and before we move on to the audience questions. I have two more lingering questions. One is about Molly moon and her legacy and the other is about process. And so, when we think about the ways that you know the shifts in the 1960s, the perspectives about is interracial cooperation even possible. Through these legacy organizations like the NAACP, and the Urban League can they speak to young people. You know, Molly moon gets kind of caught in this moment, where there's generational tensions, and there's some real class divides about what direction will the movement be next. And one of the things that I was really heartened by is that for the people who knew and understood her importance, they didn't let her fall by the wayside that the women came back. And in many ways I think, within the organization made sure that her legacy wasn't going to be lost. But I think for many people, this is maybe their first encounter with her and her story. What are the ways that, you know, you see this project is kind of, you know, of making sure that Molly doesn't get further kind of sidelined the ways that she was during her life. What does this book do for that. I want Molly moons name to be a household name. I want people to know her and to think about her when they think about movement organizing. And just big picture that's been my goal as a historian, you know, whether it be my work with the remembering all of this collective to, to gather the memory to make people remember that they had forgotten that they remembered all of more as you know the activists in Jamaican Board activists in the UK. The work that I've done around fashion and the dress body to help people understand like how important clothing was for movement activists and how they incorporated it into their activist strategies. I mean, my work is work that is very consciously about taking these stories that have fallen to the margins of our history and recentering these, these folks, and mostly for me that includes focusing on black women non binary films and so forth like that need that we need to know because these are people who are fighting for our democracy for our freedom for our right to have joy for our, you know, our right to, you know, experience leisure and luxury and everything else in this world that we want, you know, like, this is what I am committed to doing as a historian with Molly Moons legacy in particular I mean there's there's so many things for one, her style of fundraising her style of hosting galas, like the National Urban League and the NAACP these major organizations, all have fundraiser galas, and many of them continuing that kind of mask costume tradition that Molly Moons introduced in the early 1940s when she hosted the first bullsards ball which for her definitely came out of a West Indian carnival tradition and also the queer drag ball scene and Harlem in the early 1920s I mean these are the things that informed the way she shaped that that costume ball, but also I mean the way she platformed mutual aid networks she says this when she's when finally just mere months before her death the National Urban League creates this Molly Moons volunteer service award, and when she gets up to award the inaugural moon award to her friend Helen Harden who's been doing this work with her in the Guild for decades by this point. She says we have given millions of dollars to the National Urban League with no strings attached and for me as someone who it by that point become something of an expert on you know the rise of the nonprofit sector of the United States I saw this is a really key thing that she's saying here. She's saying, unlike many of these foundations and corporations from whom you are like touting the fact that you've received money. They have strings attached they have you know certain conditions and terms things that they need you to do in order to accept this money. We've given you this money with no strings attached and for me that was her articulating a black grassroots model of philanthropy. So that is something that I really want people to understand that, even though she was in the room with these wealthy philanthropists and she did take money from these people as well. She also was over what I would call the the black freedom financial grid, right which connected churches and social clubs and sororities and fraternities to help move money across the country to black communities and need, even when there wasn't this big, you know this big national spotlight on them on the movement. And I think her her Molly Moons remarks about the importance of giving money to our communities with no strings attached is one that I want people to walk away from the book understanding about Molly Moons legacy. Oh, what a beautiful, beautiful contribution. And my last question is also a question from the audience process. Before we started I said how did you finish this book during and beyond and when you look at this beautiful book. Read the book, look at the beautiful photographs. Oh my gosh. And then go to the notes and understand that Dr Ford had to manage archives and a lot of places with a lot of different types of materials we can tell us a little bit of your process from proposal to publication day. Yes, I can do that. I'm happy to do that because what first and foremost allows me to do it to thank my research assistants, who have helped make this book possible. I mean, in many ways we academics we get to stand in front of the audience and receive all the glory and the praise for the success in the book. But these books don't happen alone and oftentimes the support team behind the book or a bunch of graduate students who are, you know, just struggling every day just to make ends meet on the stipends that they are given by the universities that they attend so I want to thank my research assistants I've had a chance to thank them in person for everything that they've done to make this book happen. And also it gives me a chance to thank organizations like New America, like who helps, you know, support this book with resources that allowed me to take time off of work to finish the book to get this book out in the world so many thank them into my editor who Patrick Bass at homicide who just allowed me to write the book that I wanted to write you know so when I started off with this book you know I had been by the time I got the book contract in 2020 I've been working on this book in some way shape or form since 2010 when I first encountered Molly moon in the archive. And originally it was going to be a book that was about hosting I was you know I'm deep into material cultural studies and so I really wanted to focus on how these women hosted big events you know the kind of flatware in China and you know what kind of keepsakes they had and did all this history around the water of Astoria and other hotels to try to understand you know like the material life of hotels I mean I was deep in my material culture bag. Once I started to realize that Molly moons events were fundraisers in the book started to shift in tone so when I proposed it I proposed a book about Molly moon as a civil rights fundraiser. And that you know that she was hosting all these amazing beauty pageants and fashion shows and and galas to support the movement. Once I started to read her personal correspondence I realized to that there was this story of this larger generation again the depression generation as poly Mary terms them. And that that was an opportunity for me to tell an even larger history about like major shifts in the civil rights movement conversations about race class and gender. And so what I ended up having to do then was to create a multi layered book where I use source material like personal correspondence newspaper clippings I think I had thousands of newspaper clippings when it was all said and done. And then I was doing that material culture approach and doing the work that I had initially started doing around hotels and, you know, other materiality of fundraising. But also, you know the black love story of Molly and Henry moon I mean that was another layer I mean there were just all these layers that I had to have research for, and then I had to figure out like how to put all of these things together. And so I did a personal story the institutional history the movement history. And so I drafted this thing. So many times I can't. I don't trust me, I completely get it. I had to lay the foundation for all of those layers, which is a part of my signature style as a historian I would say like I like to create a lot of texture. So it's about using my eclectic array of source material to create these various textures that will then lay on top of one to create that create their own kind of fabric, if you will. So I had to create that kind of analytical texture, but then I had to go back and create like a narrative arc and a narrative structure and you know so I was studying suspense novels and you know all sorts of things to figure out like how do you create that done done done done like in the book like what kind of you do it and you and you totally capture it because it's written it feels like a diary entry. At some point it feels like surveillance right like you use you use place and date, and sometimes I'm okay this is Molly chronicling her day. This is someone watching Molly Molly this is someone who's trying to keep track of what she's doing and there. And I think in many ways are a lot of love stories in this. You know, someone asks about Molly's romantic and personal relationship there's a relationship with her husband, but I think that there's like a real like love of community, and you see it in her her relationships with other women you see it with, with, I think this is about a like a relationship with New York. That's really beautiful. But could you tell us a little bit about how her romantic and personal relationships shaped her activism. Yes. This is getting so good thank you for the audience question so on the back of the book I have like this quote from Molly moon that you know it's all over the book it's on the back of the book is you know it's the opening of the book. At an early age I became aware of my obligation to participate in organized efforts to level the onerous barriers which locked me and my people in a ghastly cultural political and economic ghetto. Neither I nor my family has sufficient income to make significant financial contributions to this cause. We did, however, have commitment, energy and time to contribute and I love that quote because that to me speaks to what you're saying about her love of community and how this is a you know a love story to and about the black community that you know we have factions we are not a monolith there are so many different political ties and leanings that I explore in the book and you know class differences and class antagonisms and all those things but at this at the end of the day though this book is about how black people were central to their own fight to get and stay free. Right so that quote to me really encapsulated this love story that it's not about you don't need wealth to be generous. Every day working poor working class of black people out give even people who in higher, you know tax brackets right so I wanted to really highlight that. And at the same time to talk about you know the Molly's love of life, you know, like she loved life, you know she she lived a very joyful life she was everywhere all accounts I've read people called her like effervescent and charismatic and those sorts of things and of course, her key romantic love is with her husband Henry moon whom she marries in 1938. He is her third husband, and you can read the book to figure out like what these other two jokers were like but anyway like Molly Molly Mary's Henry Lee Moon in 1938 and you know he is the love of her life and they stay married until Henry passes away in 1985 so what I love about their union is today we will call it a power couple. But back then I mean these were two people who were public figures, deeply committed to the movement who use their platform Henry as a journalist first but then also as the publicity director of the national of the NAACP. Molly as a social worker and then major fundraiser for the National Urban League, they use that their their power base to support one another and I love that Henry wasn't intimidated by Molly. He wanted her to be prominent and to be successful and to be. He wanted her to pursue every dream that she had right and he was not intimidated by her ambition, and he knew how to play the foreground and the background and she did to and so they were just a beautiful partnership. I wanted to make that story known about the moons, even just a cute aside I listened to David levering Lewis's interview with Henry Lee moon that's part of his, you know he did as part of his book when Harlem was involved. I listened to that interview this was in I think the interview was sometime in the 1970s so by this point I mean Molly and Henry have been married, you know, for for for decades, and you can still hear the love between them, you can still still hear like the the reverence for one another, as he's asking Molly Oh well, what do you think about this or she's asking him can I fix you something to drink or you know she's chiming in but also stepping back to let him you know be in the interview and it was just a gorgeous dance between the two of them. So, yeah, I think the black love piece is definitely here. A lot of people in the audience were curious if there any modern mollies today are there people who are doing that kind of work in that style and organizations that are that kind of remind you of this story. Well, you know I was asked this the other day, and I think I literally tried to think about like, who are you know the women like one of the women I interviewed for the book is sherry brown, Brahman, who, in fact she when I interviewed her she told me about how she was like Molly moon, of course at this point Molly moon was, you know, up in age, and sherry represented that new generation who was breathing life into the National Urban League and into the art, artistic and civil civic life of New York City in the late 1970s early 80s. So definitely a figure like sherry Bronfman. Crystal McCrary is someone else that comes to mind in terms of like these individual figures. Crystal McCrary is married to Ray McGuire, and she also was the basis the real life basis for the Lisa Todd wexley wexley Yeah, the sex of the city reboot right so there's women like that but beyond those figures. I think the present day Molly moons are the black women money movers who are working in the nonprofit space, many of whom are woefully underpaid for the work that they're doing to bring services to black and brown communities. It's women who are active in organizations from the National Urban League and the NAACP, you know, to things like black voters matter you know like women who are taking this mutual aid approach to fundraising, moving money across the black freedom and social grid forming these networks across organizations, both civic and social, like those are the women who are doing the work and they are a part of what I've tried to map as a long black organizing tradition and the role of fundraising, and this kind of grass roots philanthropy in that long tradition. Thank you so much. So many elements of Molly Moons life is there any kind of lingering question or aspect of her life that was difficult to uncover. You know, it. When Molly and Henry were living apart I mean them living apart while it was a strain on their marriage they lived apart from 1938 to 1942. I'm not a historian, because it meant that they were writing letters or the frequency with which we write text today right I mean like just so many letters, and I was able to use those letters to understand how they saw one another. How they saw their work, how they felt about people within their social circle when no one was watching so I got to have that interior view into Molly Moons life. And once they move under the same roof, and you know just as we're, you know, going into the deepest years of World War two. They stopped writing to one another because they're living together and then also because of the second red scare I mean there's so much government repression that a lot of people in their social circles stop writing letters to one another as well and some of these people are less you have burned, you know their personal documents to avoid persecution. So what that means is that in that time period, I just lose so much of the thread of Molly's interior life and so I have to use the sources that I have in order to try to triangulate to recreate those moments. I just wish I did have more of her own voice. Once we move into the height of her career as a profession as a semi professional fundraiser right I say semi professional because she was never paid for this work and I think that's one as to think about because the volume of money that they are clearing at these events are amounts that would be impressive today. Yeah, organizations, I mean, just hundreds of thousands of dollars on these major events and this leads to another question from the audience of all of Molly's parties which one would you have liked to attend the most. And I want to know what you're going to wear to it. Yeah, so I have said that I would have wanted to attend one of the early bozards balls like the first one 1940 I wanted to be at that first ball I wanted to see what it was like I mean the accounts that I was able to read in the press. Black people in revelry you know just enjoying themselves decked out in their costumes again the thing was modeled in the style of West Indian Carnival you know so we can think about people people playing mass and and how they would dress up and how the costume subverted, you know, racial hierarchies class hierarchies. And so I was able to find I don't know if I can show some of these images. I mean, that is very minimal fabric in some of these. I even found a story in jet magazine where it shows Molly trying to woman off of the dance floor because her she's too scantily clad. And she's like what like even even here like a lot goes here but but man you just literally have pasties on and just something that's barely covering your butt like you. And so I love I would definitely would have been at one of those early balls like by the time they become a major fundraiser vehicle for the National Urban League. They become more corporate and people become wasn't moves to the water for Storia from, you know, uptown here in Harlem. People come in their drip I mean they got their diamonds they got their furs you know and it really. In many ways, much to my own chagrin at least it reifies the class hierarchy in ways that I'm like oh man I think Molly tried to keep the costume portion of it alive because that's what helped to create an equal ground between the domestic workers and subway transit workers who were coming to the ball and the you know extremely wealthy like the costumes were the great equalizer so once people started coming decked out in their tuxedos. And you know reified the class hierarchy in certain ways and even I found coverage of journalists black women journalists who bemoan this fact, but she still tried to keep that that energy there, but definitely the first post arts ball please sign me up for that one. Next we wrap up I have two more questions for you that come from the audience. What do you hope readers will come to understand from Molly story about the way that culture informs and shapes and enables fights for rights and dignity today. Yes, yes, yes, I love this because that's one of the pieces that really has got me going on my next book which will be an experimental biography of. A sculptor and institution builder Augusta Savage like I got in the history of the Harlem Community Arts Center so much so I had two chapters on this and my editor was like, you really need to pair this down because it's becoming its own institutional history. And I'm like you're right but I want to really use that piece because what I realized and thinking about not only Molly Moons engagement with the Harlem Community Arts Center but when I looked at that board it was people like a Philip Randolph. So a lot of the work of the brotherhood of sleeping car porters people don't realize yes it was around labor organizing, but they saw the connection between labor and the black arts. And so the black arts and efforts to build the black arts are really a crucial part of this history of the civil rights movement both in terms of creating institutions. Like the Harlem Community Arts Center the South Side Community Arts Center in Chicago, but also building gallery spaces and art centers and art faculty at HBC use across the country that was another piece of this black people who are part of that growing black class black millionaire class who are using their second homes on places like Martha's Vineyard, Sag Harbor the Hamptons, Idlewild Michigan as art galleries and collection spaces like that was an important part of this history. So I really wanted to think about the role of the arts in an era that predates the black arts movement right a lot of the times think about like the arts piece enters the conversation in the mid 1960s around you know the black power era. So we really trace this long history of the black arts from the Harlem Renaissance, of course, through the black arts movement and beyond and so this piece this book helps to fill in that gap of that the interstitial space that typically falls outside of our focus on black arts and the integral role the arts played in the larger black freedom movement. There's nothing more amazing than when someone finishes an accomplishment like this and they're excited about the next thing. And so I want to I want to congratulate you on that and my final question for you also comes from the audience. How did writing this book impact you as a black woman historian, and as someone as an, and I would also add as a New Yorker and as someone from the Midwest and as someone who loves style and fashion. How do you think Molly Moon story has impacted you personally. I love this book so much is the hardest book I ever written. And I've been writing it during a pandemic, during a major racial upheaval in this country, I mean it. It was gutting it was gutting to write this book. So I really held on to every piece of joy in the archive I could find. Oh, a beautiful gown here a party here, you know, I just even a salacious bit of gossip. Oh, I was sipping tea in my room. You know, here's my this is my office like I'm in my office like, like, oh, like this is juicy, you know, and it allowed me to connect with friends just to share bits of things that I was finding and so I really appreciated finding a piece of a space of refuge, even in the archival materials that I was uncovering. And it did help to that, even when I couldn't touch people or be in their homes. One of the things I could do was walk outside of my door and walk around New York and literally map the places oh Molly held an event here. And this is where this you know organization was headquartered so and so lived in this house, like you having the space here it, it really gave the book a kind of spatial awareness in ways that I do see how it could read to people as a love letter to New York City because I do love living in New York I've been here for a decade now and I've been here myself something of a New Yorker. But I also even took field trips to Westchester County I explored, you know the Rockefeller grounds and the Rockefeller archive. I found Gordon Parks is old home and I mean just so many things that I was able to do just because of my proximity to this, the city and the, you know, the spaces in which I'm living even during the peak of the pandemic. So I am forever changed by this book. I do want to take a break from writing really archive heavy books like this, you know which is why my Agusta Savage will be more experimental. I'm going to find another way to like another method for that book, but I now that I've done a book like this, I would totally do it again I would totally write a very research intensive book like this again. Dr. Tanisha Ford congratulations on the publication of our secret society, everyone go get a copy and continue to follow Dr. Ford's work in major publications town and country The New York Times you name it she's there not unlike Molly moon. And thank you so much for joining us for this conversation.