Tanisha C. Ford is fascinated with Mollie Moon and the part she played in the Civil Rights Movement.
Ford is a historian, author and professor of history at The Graduate Center at City University of New York.
She found Moon’s story to be so compelling that she penned a new book about her efforts called “Our Secret Society: Mollie Moon and the Glamour, Money and Power Behind the Civil Rights Movement.”
In her writing, Ford explains that Moon was the founder and president of the National Urban League Guild to help raise revenue for the National Urban League.
Moon’s roots trace back to 1907 in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. Ford says Moon initially studied pharmacy but was lured into the New Negro Movement and moved to Harlem in the 1930s. There, she built friendships with several Black leaders like Langston Hughes and Dorothy West and would even vanguard the “Beaux Arts Ball,” a glamorous social event of New York and Harlem society comparable to the glitz and glamor of today’s Met Gala.
