Our Secret Society: Mollie Moon and the Glamour, Money, and Power Behind the Civil Rights Movement

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. (Oct.)