They Are Educated, Sophisticated and Independent Sisters of Today

On By thewriterfredIn Black Culture, Black History1 Comment

With Woman’s History Month coming to a close the last day in March, I thought I might do one final story about my beautiful sisters. The first of March I featured the great Lena Horne under the heading, “A Woman of Dignity and Integrity,” a couple weeks later it was A’Lelia Walker, the daughter of millionaire businesswoman, Madam C. J. Walker, and the “Most Fascinating and Flamboyant Lady of the Harlem Renaissance.” Today, we have some very dynamic sisters following in the footsteps of not only Ms. Horne and Walker, but also Harriett Tubman, Sojourner Truth, Ida B. Wells-Barnett and the list goes on. I call them the educated, sophisticated, independent sisters of today. They have taken different roads to success but share one classy attribute and that is a non-compromising love for their heritage and culture. I am pleased to share with you, these beautiful sisters who are, as Nina Simone described, “Young, Gifted and Black.”

TRACI 2Traci Harden is an Atlanta based creative artist who specializes in graphic design. She is owner of Onyx Creative Arts, a graphic and fine arts studio specializing in layout and design for books and periodicals, logo/collateral/typography layout and design. Traci also specializes in advertising layout and design, and original fine arts and illustrations. She launched her business in February 2007 after watching then Senator Barack Obama’s press conference when he announced he would run for president. “Watching a future president’s thoughtful leap into the abyss gave me the courage to do the same and open a business,” she said in a recent interview. A native of Atlanta, Traci has seventeen years of experience as a graphic designer and fine artist. She received her Bachelor’s Degree in Fine Arts from Spelman College and has done additional post graduate work at the Art Institute of Atlanta. Traci freely gives of her time to causes she believes in. Some of the groups for which she volunteers her time are: Adult and Children with ADD/ADHD Awareness and Advocacy, Straight for Equality (LGBT), Center for Visually Impaired-Atlanta, Recreational Reading, and Bridging the Tech Divide. Traci is a successfully independent Black businesswoman who loves her husband of 21 years and her two children. Traci is a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority.

RLawsonRhonda Lawson is the award-winning author of Cheatin’ in the Next Room, A Dead Rose, Putting It Back Together, Some Wounds Never Heal and Twylite. Besides being a prolific writer of an outstanding series of novels, Rhonda is also an Army journalist who has travelled the world and is now stationed in Belgium where she works as an American Forces Network station manager. Her work has appeared stateside in various Army and civilian publications, including Soldiers Magazine, The Seattle Times and The Army Times. Rhonda began writing at the age of 12. “I just love to write,” she says. “Today I still write purely for the love of it.” Unlike some authors who emphasize entertainment over content or profit over passion, she readily acknowledges that she has something to say and is doing so via her writing. “I want to touch people with my stories. All of my books have a message.” Rhonda holds a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Communication Studies from the University of Maryland, a Masters Degree in Human Relations from Oklahoma University and is currently working on her Doctorate in Business Administration with an emphasis in Organizational Leadership. Rhonda is a successfully independent Black woman with exceptional writing skills, who loves her daughter whom she appropriately named, “Beautiful.” Rhonda is a member of Zeta Phi Beta Sorority.

TMoffettToschia Moffett is undoubtedly one of the most gifted young Black women in America. She graduated from Duke University Summa Cum Laude with a double major in Political Science and English, and with a double minor in History and Musical Theater, and then graduated from Northwestern University Law School by the age of 23, with a Juris Doctorate and a Masters in Public Administration. She served as a prosecutor in Cook County, Illinois and then became a corporate attorney with Dell Corporation for the past fifteen years. She is also an independent military contract attorney. Not only is Toschia an accomplished attorney at law, but is also a polished writer. Her novel, You Wrong for That, has been well received by book clubs and within the literary world. Toschia’s artistic talent has no bounds. She is an outstanding singer, director of plays and an actress, having performed in a version of Dream Girls for the troops at Fort Hood, Texas and the Killeen community. She is also an organizer. Back in 2005 she recognized the need for authors to collaborate in doing book signings and established the Divine Literary Tour. Approximately 25 authors, belonging to Greek Organizations, traveled to various cities for book signings. The Tour eventually grew into presentations on the image of Blacks in literature, movies and television. In an interview on KROV 91.7 Community Radio in San Antonio, Texas Toschia exclaimed, “Enough is enough. The perception of Black women has been tainted and distorted for centuries and it is now time for us to step forward and take control of the images portrayed of us on television and in movies, and in books and magazines.” Toschia is a firm believer that we as Blacks must begin to tell our story our way and for that reason has teamed with Prosperity Publications to help move the company forward as a major player in the publishing world. Toschia is a successfully independent Black woman of many talents who is dedicated to her husband and two children. She is also a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority.

AWinsteadAntoinette Winstead is a brilliant young sister who received a Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree from New York University in Film/Television and a Masters of Fine Arts from Columbia University with a concentration in Film. She is currently a tenured full Professor at Our Lady of the Lake University in San Antonio, Texas. She teaches courses in film studies, television history, screenwriting, directing, acting, and digital film production at both the undergraduate and graduate level. Antoinette is a scholar with a strong emphasis for research in the area of horror film, television, and literature, specifically the portrayal of race, gender, and social class in horror and how this genre reflects cultural changes and societal anxieties. Her additional research interests include the use of heroic journey in science fiction and fantasy film, television and literature. Recently she has further expanded her interest in researching the politics of film production, specifically the production of genocide films. Antoinette is a committed sister who is willing to reach beyond the walls of the university and bring her knowledge and talent to the community. She has written several plays that have been performed at the San Pedro Playhouse, Jump Start Theater, and the Continental Café, all in San Antonio, Texas. She has directed over a dozen plays, most notably, Miss Evers’ Boys, Steel Magnolia, and A Raisin in the Sun. Professor Winstead is also an accomplished poet. Her poetry has been published in such journals as The Poet Magazine, ViAztlan, Inkwell Echoes and Cross Currents and in the anthology, A Garland of Poems: A Collection from Ten Female Poets. Antoinette is an independent Black scholar and teacher, dedicated to her family, her students and her culture.

The outstanding and talented sisters, featured in this article are only the tip of the iceberg of the number of Black women who believe that they can make a difference in this world, without compromising their principles or further endangering the image of the Black woman. They are representative of the positive image that Nina Simone had in mind when she sang “To Be Young, Gifted and Black.”

The Most Fascinating and Flamboyant Lady of the Harlem Renaissance

On By thewriterfredIn Black Culture, Black History, Black Literature1 Comment

A'Lelia WalkerOne of the fascinating and flamboyant ladies of the twentieth century was A’Lelia Walker, daughter of Madam C. J. Walker. Out of the many personalities that had a very profound effect on the most dynamic period in African American cultural history, the Harlem Renaissance, A’Lelia stands out as the shining light that illuminated for over ten years. She was the first lady of Harlem, the hostess to the most sensational parties at her Villa Lewaro, or at her two attached townhouses on West 136th Street, located in the heart of Harlem. She was a statuesque lady of class and fortune, standing over six feet tall in her high heels and plumes. Her silk dresses and ermine coatees, paisley beaded shawls and sable muffs, and silver turbans set off her well-modeled head and cocoa complexion. (Steven Watson, The Harlem Renaissance: Hub of African-American Culture, 1920-1930, Pantheon Books, New York, 1995, page 140). Her fashionable clothes and expensive jewelry were purchased from the most prestigious shops in New York and Paris. Langston Hughes wrote in his autobiography, The Big Sea, that she was, “The joy goddess of Harlem’s 1920’s.” (Langston Hughes, The Big Sea, Hill and Wang, New York, 1993, page 245) The Renaissance’s white patron, Carl Van Vechten, wrote to a friend that, “She looked like a queen.”

She spared no expense in making her places of entertainment as luxurious and exquisite as money could buy. Her most lavish parties were held at the Villa, her cream-colored Italianate mansion fifteen miles up the Hudson River. Verner Woodson Tandy, the first African American architect in the state of New York, designed it. It is where she would spend many weekends with special friends and acquaintances. Rumor was that she always insisted on company there because her mother died in the mansion, and she could not stand to be alone. The year Madam C. J. Walker bought the Villa she declared it as a symbol for her race. “It is not for me; it is for my people so that they can see what is possible no matter what their background,” Madam C. J. Walker explained.

After her mother’s death, A’Lelia furnished the Villa with a twenty-four-carat-gold-plated piano, sixty-thousand-dollar Esty pipe organ, Hepplewhite furniture and Persian carpets. The great Enrico Caruso who was often a guest named the Villa. Often on Sunday afternoons, she invited talented and unknown musicians, who were black, to perform in front of largely white, rich and influential audiences. It allowed young artists the opportunity to perform before very well connected men and women, who could help in their career growth. Carl Van Vechten was a frequent guest at the recitals.

If her most elegant events were held at the Villa, her most widely attended took place at her salon in Harlem. According to Richard Bruce Nugent, in the fall of 1927, A’Lelia converted her two townhouses, at 108-110 West 136th Street into a place where writers, sculptors, painters, music artists and composers could meet, drink champagne, eat caviar and discuss their art. She originally hired Aaron Douglas to design the interior but when he failed to produce art satisfactory to her, she turned to Manhattan decorator Paul Frankel. To her complete satisfaction, he decorated one side of the wall with framed texts of Countee Cullen’s “Dark Towers,” and the other side with Langston Hughes’s “Weary Blues,” with Aubusson Carpet and Louis XIV furniture.

Her guests entered the townhouse through long French doors and stepped onto the blue-velvet runner that led into the tearoom. Once inside the townhouse, the guests included all social classes, whites and blacks, royalty and racketeers, lesbians and homosexuals, writers and singers. Her list of invitees, one observer reported, “Read like a blue book of the seven arts, and her parties provided an Uptown counterpart to those Carl Van Vechten threw Downtown. (Watson, page 141)

She would extend several hundred invitations to her parties; however, unless you went early there was no way of getting in. According to Hughes, her parties were as crowded as the New York subway at the rush hour—entrance, lobby, steps, hallway, and apartment a milling crush of guests. (Hughes, page 244) Ethel Waters often showed up late at night and sang for the guests and entertainers from a Broadway show also made their way to the festivities. It was a grand display of the kind of good times that bolstered the image of Harlem as the party capital of the world, and a place where the pursuit of pleasure had no use for color lines. (Aberjhani and Sandra L. West, Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance, Checkmark Books, New York, 2003, page 342)

A’Lelia Walker was both admired and disliked by friends and distracters. There were many who resented her wealth and others who considered her uneducated because she never attended or graduated from college. Her reasoning powers were said to be slight. “She made no pretense at being intellectual or exclusive,” Langston Hughes observed. Some considered her flighty and, “After seven minutes, conversation went precipitously downhill,” it was said. (Carol Marks and Diana Adkins, The Power of Pride, Crown Publishers, New York, 1999, page 71).

The goddess of Harlem, the queen, died at the age of 46. According to the Amsterdam News, over 10,000 admirers attended her funeral. She went out in style; buried in a five thousand dollar silver and bronze casket and dressed in a “gown of beige and gold lace over lavender satin, with apple green satin slippers and an imported necklace of genuine amber Chinese prayer beads.” The service was under the direction of Reverend Adam Clayton Powell Sr., and the eulogy was read by educator Mary McLeod Bethune who spoke in her “great deep voice,” of A’Lelia’s mother, “Who in old clothes, had labored to bring the gift of beauty to Negro womanhood, and a great fortune to the pride and glory of the Negro race—and then given it all to her daughter, A’Lelia.” (Ibid, page 76.) Her passing, according to Langston Hughes, represented the beginning of the end of the “gay times of the New Negro era in Harlem. (Hughes, page 247) To the scholars and admirers of this fascinating period in our cultural history, A’Lelia Walker will always remain an icon of distinction and class within our race.