Fashion in the Civil Right Movement

A mother and daughter at an Ebony Fashion Fair in Denver, Colorado, 1978.

Kenn Bisio Getty Images

The glamorous Mollie Moon sauntered around the Grand Ballroom at Manhattan'southward famed Waldorf Astoria hotel as she made minor adjustments to the decor. It was October 4, 1959. Moon, the founder and president of the National Urban League Guild, was preparing to bring the Ebony Fashion Fair to New York for its Big Apple premiere. A pharmacist by preparation and a veteran fundraiser, Moon paid meticulous attending to every detail of the events she hosted, considering she believed guests could feel her level of care. The Waldorf, with its Art Deco luxury, had hosted European monarchs, diplomats, and New York's white upper crust. Why should the Black American guests Moon was hosting on tonight wait anything less than the regal treatment?

Moon, wife of the former NAACP public relations manager, Henry Lee Moon, understood that Black Americans were generous givers who loved to dress up for a good cause. Give them an opportunity to show out and the money would show up! Ticket prices for the fair ranged from $three.l to $12 (roughly $25 to $100 today) and came with a subscription to either Ebony or Jet magazine. Proceeds from the NYC prove would become to the National Urban League, the interracial ceremonious rights arrangement Moon'southward gild supported through savvy fundraising campaigns and volunteer piece of work. In cities from Washington, D.C., to Peoria, Illinois, powerbrokers similar Moon hosted Ebony Manner Fair events to fund local nonprofit organizations, racial justice causes, and HBCU scholarships.

Mollie Moon, left.

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The idea for the Manner Fair originated in New Orleans in 1956. Jessie Covington Dent, an accomplished pianist, a socialite, and the married woman of Dillard University president Albert W. Paring, reached out to media mogul John H. Johnson of Johnson Publishing almost cohosting a fashion show fundraiser for Flint-Goodridge Infirmary. That outset show was such a success that Johnson and his married woman, the fashionable and cosmopolitan Eunice Johnson, decided they should get in an almanac touring fundraiser. Ripping "Mode Fair" straight from Ebony magazine's monthly cavalcade of the same name, Ebony Mode Fair took shape under the leadership of Johnson Publishing's home services managing director, Freda DeKnight. The rebranded traveling fashion extravaganza launched in 1958 with the theme Ebony Fashion Off-white Around the Clock, featuring the wares of American and European designers, a few models, lively music, elaborate stage props, and colorful commentary by DeKnight.

Give them an opportunity to prove out and the money would evidence up

Ebony Style Off-white was the perfect fundraiser. "It was ready-made," Joy Bivins, curator of "Inspiring Beauty: 50 Years of Ebony Fashion Fair," explains. "For the organizations, they don't really have to do annihilation but bring the evidence. It's a packet bargain." And for the attendees, the shows created an opportunity to "get together and do what rich people do with each other: prove off! Just information technology had this philanthropic aspect to information technology that, in many ways, fabricated information technology okay," Bivins says. The shows also gave exposure and brought new clientele to Blackness ready-to-wear designers and milliners who were struggling to launch their careers due to Jim Crow racism and cronyism in the mainstream way world.

A model at the Ebony Manner Fair in Denver, 1979

Denver Post Getty Images

By the fourth dimension Moon brought the upshot to NYC in 1959, it was among the hottest Blackness social events in the country. That year—with an Effectually the Globe theme—the tour expanded to 51 cities in 31 states. Moon supervised as DeKnight and the Mode Fair team transformed the Waldorf Astoria'due south Grand Ballroom into a Black traveler's paradise, replete with stage props that included hat boxes and luggage with the names of European destination cities fancifully written on them.

Press coverage that ran in the Amsterdam News and the New York Age played upward the exclusive nature of the consequence, dubbing the two-hour show a "i night only matter." Information technology was a massive testify that featured 200 garments and more than 400 accessories personally selected by DeKnight. The models swayed and sashayed beyond the stage in haute couture garments by Arthur Jablow, Martier Raymond, Maggy Rouff, Harry Young , and others. With more than than iii,000 people in omnipresence, the standing-room-only upshot was a roaring triumph. Information technology farther cemented Moon's status as the grande dame of Blackness social and borough life in New York Urban center.

Models at the Ebony Fashion Fair, Denver, Colorado, 1979

Denver Postal service Getty Images

Fashion show fundraisers like the Ebony Way Fair were ubiquitous in the Blackness community during World State of war Ii and well into the Black Power motility era. The Mode Fair reflected the Johnsons' particular brand of Black cultural elitism, evident in the mink stoles, silk chiffon dresses, hand-beaded gowns, and dripping diamonds that were on display during the shows. But whatever oversupply, regardless of income, taste level, or political leanings, could find a mode bear witness that catered to their interests and supported causes they could throw their difficult-earned money backside. Designer to the stars Zelda Wynn Valdes directed a show for Harlem's Salvation Army, much to the please of the neighborhood'southward elderly and infirm population. The Black Nationalist arrangement African Jazz-Art Guild & Studios toured its Naturally fashion show down the Eastern Seaboard and through the Midwest. Naturally'south Afro-sporting Grandassa Models wore African-inspired dresses and pantsuits, which they had designed and sewn themselves. Other community shows featured local folks—from maids to transit and postal workers—who modeled clothes from their closets. Styling out in garments of their own choosing affirmed that they were much more than uniform-wearing laborers. Churches, youth groups, sororities, and fraternities all found a sense of Black pride and Black economic self-assist through fashion shows.

A model at an Ebony Fashion Fair sponsored by the Links in 2004

Helen H. Richardson Getty Images

Any oversupply, regardless of income…could detect a way prove that catered to their interests

Moon and her contemporaries demonstrate how Black women accept defined and redefined the contours of American philanthropy. "The biggest misconception is that Black women don't requite and that they're non involved in philanthropy," says Tyrone Freeman, writer of Madam C.J. Walker'southward Gospel of Giving and assistant professor of Philanthropic Studies at the Indiana University Lilly Family unit Schoolhouse of Philanthropy. "The truth is, Black women are on the leading edge of generosity in their community." Philanthropy for Blackness Americans has never been the province of the rich or even of the middle class. Blackness, customs-based giving circles and common assistance societies can exist traced to the Caribbean area and West Africa in the 17th and 18th centuries, Freeman explains. Enslaved and gratis Black women'due south philanthropic efforts helped to fund the abolitionist movement, the Black Liberty movement of the 1950s and 1960s, and the Blackness Lives Affair move today. Studies take also shown that Black Americans give a larger percentage of their disposable incomes to nonprofits than other races. Thus, giving was foundational to Blackness life long before exorbitantly wealthy white capitalists became the confront of modern philanthropy.

A model at the Ebony Fashion Fair, Denver, Colorado, 1979

Denver Post Getty Images

Reflecting in 1982 on her career as a philanthropist and lifelong civic leader, Moon wrote, "Neither I nor my family had sufficient income to make pregnant fiscal contributions to this cause [Black Freedom]. We did, however, take commitment, free energy and fourth dimension to contribute." Bake sales, chicken dinners, galas, card parties, trip the light fantastic-a-thons: All those fundraising events helmed by Black women—who were non generationally wealthy—were their hazard at Blackness world making.

A model at the Ebony Fashion Fair, Denver, Colorado, 1979

Kenn Bisio Getty Images

Black women were giving and raising money to create the world they wanted to alive in. Ebony Fashion Fair was a vehicle through which they could perform this women-centered freedom dreaming. The Way Off-white ran annually through 2009, raising most $lx million in its 51-year run. Moon and countless others whose names take been lost to history were the visionaries who kept the touring bear witness in circulation. At the time of her death in 1990, Jet reported that Moon had raised more than $three one thousand thousand through the National Urban League Guild, which, under her leadership since 1942, had grown to nearly thirty,000 volunteers in fourscore guilds nationwide.

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