The Real Housewives of Detroit?

The Real Housewives of Detroit?  This was quite an enlightening article which gave substance to the meaning of "housewife"; this describes a REAL HOUSEWIFE from a biblical perspective in serving as a helpmate, business woman, an inspiration and representative.  Hope you will enjoy and spread the true meaning of a housewife.  Special thanks to Ebony S. Muhammad for knowing and sharing the history.  Just in case the link does not work:

When you see or hear the word “Housewives” what image enters your mind? Is it one of loud and boisterous women who thrive in the midst of drama? Is it one of catfights, scandals and parties without a purpose? Or is it an image of Black women considered dignified and regarded as the cornerstone of the rise of Black economics? Ironically, the latter describes the original Housewives, affectionately known as the Housewives' League.

During the 1930s Great Depression, Northern Blacks organized and strategized “boycotting some businesses while favoring others.” The launch of the “Don't Buy Where You Can't Work” and “Spend Your Money Where You Can Work” campaigns demanded that White store owners hire Black employees if they wanted patronage and profits from Black consumers. These

Housewives League of Detroit (.ca 1933) 'It is evident that if we do not know our history, someone else can rewrite it and rename it. Why call the show the Real Housewives as if implying there was a previous group of women with the same name but with an obviously different purpose?'

consumer boycotts were a major strategy Blacks used in mass protests against Jim Crow Laws in the South that forced many White-owned businesses into bankruptcy.

The Housewives' League of Detroit was founded in June of 1930 by Fannie B. Peck after she had been inspired by a lecture describing how Harlem housewives had supported local CMA stores (Black owned and operated). By 1935, the Detroit league grew to over 12,000 members who were divided into 16 neighborhood units. Members pledged to support Black businesses and professionals, buy Black-produced products, and help train Detroit's young people for careers in business.

The first Junior Unit of the Housewives' League of Detroit was organized in 1935. According to Mindfully.org, there were six Junior Units of children between the ages of 6 and 15. A High School and College Educational Unit of boys and girls between the ages of 15 and 21 was organized in 1946. These units helped to instill in the minds of our youth and young people progress through self-help and an appreciation of Black-owned and controlled businesses.

According to the Detroit Public Library, other chapters of the Housewives' League included Harlem, N.Y. (1,000 members by 1931), Baltimore, Md. (2,000 members), Chicago, Washington, D.C., Cleveland, and Pittsburgh. In many of these places a mix of working- and middle-class members came together in a notable break with the middle-class-dominated Black women's club movement. Out of these local chapters a National Housewives' League of America was established in 1933 and promoted its own nationwide “Don't Buy Where You Can't Work” campaign.

“Real” Housewives of Atlanta (2011)

Unfortunately, yet interestingly enough the “new chapters” of Housewives do not promote any of the above principles or unified front. My first impression of the Real Housewives reality show was shaped by the first season of the Atlanta segment that did showcase a couple of the women's professional involvements. The two that stood out the most were Lisa Wu Hartwell who owns her own real estate firm, Hartwell & Associates, a jewelry line called Wu Girls, a baby clothing line, Hart 2 Hart Baby along with DeShawn Snow who is the founder and operator of the DeShawn Snow Foundation, a non-profit organization focused on improving self-esteem in teenage girls. Ironically, and it's by no mistake, these two women were removed from the show, while the remaining three continue portraying the negative image described at the very beginning of this article.

It is evident that if we do not know our history, someone else can rewrite it and rename it. Why call the show the Real Housewives as if implying there was a previous group of women with the same name but with an obviously different purpose? This imposter Housewives is not designed to inspire, motivate, unify, initiate, or promote change and economic growth in the Black community at all. If I had to describe its purpose it would be to humiliate, divide, enjoin viewers into senseless and less than dignified behavior, promote scandal and mischief, as well as keep the viewers distracted from the reality taking place around them. Are they teaching the young girls and women how to be business owners, economic producers, and supporters of like-minded professionals? Not at all.

The Housewives' Leagues affirmed, “We emphasize and declare it to be most desirable to own our own business and manage it ourselves, while we recognize as an act of fairness the employment of (so-called) Negroes in businesses owned and operated by other racial groups, yet we feel that the solution of our economic problem is the ownership of business, and to this end we shall confine our efforts.”

We are now being faced with similar circumstances and financial conditions that are forcing us to go and do for self as well as support and promote the businesses of our brothers and sisters. We must create our own jobs, source of wealth and means of exchange if we are to survive the fall of this country's economic system.

(Ebony Safiyyah Muhammad is a Certified Thanatologist specializing in grief and loss. She is a depression and stress management specialist, and is a candidate for her license as a massage therapist

Harlem Renaissance Women: Regina Anderson Andrews

Regina M. Anderson (May 21, 1901 – February 5, 1993) was a multi-racial playwright and librarian. She was of Native American, Jewish, East Indian, Swedish, and other European ancestry (including one grandparent who was a Confederate general); one of her eight grandparents was of African descent, born in Madagascar. Despite her own identification of her race as "American",^[1] she was perceived to be African American by others, and became a key member of the Harlem Renaissance.Born in Chicago, she studied at Wilberforce University, and Columbia University. She moved to New York and became a librarian at the 135th Street branch of the New York Public Library, working under the supervision of Ernestine Rose. She shared an apartment in the Sugar Hill district of Harlem with Ethel Ray and Louella Tucker. The women opened the space to the community, hosting salons, events, and gatherings for artists. Located at 580 Saint Nicholas Avenue, the apartment became known as the "580" and the "Harlem West Side Literary Salon".^[2] Anderson helped to organize the Civic Club dinner of 1924 for black New York intellectuals and writers. Attended by 110 guests, including W. E. B. Du Bois, Jean Toomer, Countee Cullen, and Langston Hughes, the dinner was one of the coalescing events of the Harlem Renaissance.^[2][3][4][5]

Andrews and Du Bois co-founded the Krigwa Players (later Negro Experimental Theatre), a black theater company. The Players produced her plays Climbing Jacob's Ladder (about a lynching) and Underground (about the Underground Railroad).

Regina Andrews was one of ten African-American women whose contributions were recognized at the 1939 World's Fairin New York.

She was the first minority to climb the ranks and become a supervising librarian at the New York Public Library and her struggle to break the color barrier has earned her numerous accolades.^[1][4]

Andrews outlived virtually all of the other members of the Harlem Renaissance. She died in Ossining, a suburb of New York City.

Her husband was William T. Andrews, a lawyer and New York assemblyman.

Here works include:  Climbing Jacob's Ladder (1931, play), Underground (1932, play), A Public Library Assists in Improving Race Relations (1946, thesis), Intergroup Relations in the United States: A Compilation of Source Material and Service Organizations (1959, article), Chronology of African-Americans in New York, 1621–1966 (1971, co-editor) and The Man Who Passed: A Play in One Act (published posthumously in 1996, play)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Harlem Renaissance Women: Gladys Bentley

Gladys Bentley (1907-1960)  born in Philadelphia and ostracized by family, friends and even doctors early in her life because they wanted to “cure” her of homosexuality. She was a 16-year-old renegade when she arrived in Harlem and was an immediate success singing at rent parties and clubs. Unapologetically masculine onstage, she was known for her signature top hat and tails and her gleefully obscene set drew large crowds to her shows at The Clam House, the famous gay club, and other hot Harlem venues of the day. She recorded for Okeh records in the 1920s and was the model for a blues performer in “Parties” a novel by Carl Van Vechten, the Harlem Renaissance legend who took this picture. In the 1950s, Ms. Bentley would denounce everything about her notorious career and declare that she was no longer a lesbian - thanks to female hormone treatments. She continued to perform, but her career waned and, just before she was to be ordained as a minister, she died of influenza at the age of 52 in 1960.

Vintage Black Glamour VBGbook Gladys Bentley Missy Elliott vintage 1930s Carl Van Vechten LGBT music blues hip hop Black History Month  Courtesy of:  Vintage Black Glamour by Nichelle Gainer

Harlem Renaissance Women: Georgia Douglas Johnson

Georgia Blanche Douglas Camp Johnson, better known as Georgia Douglas Johnson (September 10, 1880 – May 14, 1966), an American poet, one of the earliest African-American female playwrights, and a member of the Harlem Renaissance.  She wrote four books of poems, 28 plays and 32 song lyrics.  Plumes was published under the pen name John Temple.  Many of her plays were never published because of her gender and race.  Gloria Hull is credited with the rediscovery of many of Johnson's plays. The 28 plays that she wrote were divided into four sections: "Primitive Life Plays", "Plays of Average Negro Life", "Lynching Plays" and "Radio Plays". Several of her plays are lost. In 1926, Johnson's play "Blue Blood" won honorable mention in the Opportunity drama contest. Her play "Plumes" also won in the same competition in 1927.  Johnson was one of the only women whose work was published in Alain Locke'santhology Plays of Negro Life: A Source-Book of Native American Drama. 

Soon after her husband's death, Johnson began to host what became forty years of weekly "Saturday Salons", for friends and authors, including Langston Hughes, Jean Toomer, Anne Spencer, Richard Bruce Nugent, Alain Locke, Jessie Redmon Fauset,Angelina Weld Grimké and Eulalie Spence— all major contributors to the New Negro Movement, which is better known today as theHarlem Renaissance.  Johnson called her home the "Half Way House" for friends traveling, and a place where they "could freely discuss politics and personal opinions" and where those with no money and no place to stay would be welcome.

She died in Washington, D.C., in 1966.  In September 2009,  Johnson was inducted into the Georgia Writers Hall of Fame

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Heart of a Woman

The heart of a woman goes forth with the dawn,

As a lone bird, soft winging, so restlessly on,

Afar o’er life’s turrets and vales does it roam

In the wake of those echoes the heart calls home.

The heart of a woman falls back with the night,

And enters some alien cage in its plight,

And tries to forget it has dreamed of the stars,

While it breaks, breaks, breaks on the sheltering bars.

Harlem Renaissance Women: Nora Douglas Holt

May 26, 1885 Nora Douglas Holt, singer, composer and music critic, was born Lena Douglas in Kansas City, Kansas. Holt earned her Bachelor of Music degree from Western University in 1917 and her Master of Music degree from Chicago Musical College, the first African American woman to earn a master’s degree in the United States, in 1918. From 1917 to 1921, Holt served as music critic for the Chicago Defender newspaper and in 1919 co-founded the National Association of Negro Musicians. By 1926, she had composed over 200 works of orchestral music and chamber songs. That same year, she moved to Europe and Asia where she spent the next 12 years singing. In 1943, Holt took a position as editor and music critic for the Amsterdam News newspaper and in 1945 became the first Black member of the Music Critics Circle. From 1953 to her retirement in 1964, she hosted a radio concert series called “Nora Holt’s Concert Showcase.” Holt died January 25, 1974.
http://thewright.org/explore/blog/entry/today-in-black-history-5262014

Harlem Renaissance Women: A'Leila Walker (Joy Goddess)

Salonnaire of the Harlem Renaissance, Harlem's Joy Goddess  helped define the Harlem Renaissance. From the time she moved to Harlem in 1913, an invitation to her beautifully furnished townhouse on 136th Street near Lenox Avenue (now Malcolm X Boulevard)  for dinners, dances and recitals seldom was declined. By the time she converted a floor of the house into the legendary Dark Tower in October 1927, she’d been hosting salon-like soirees for more than a decade.

The invitation A’Lelia Walker sent to hundreds of friends when she converted a floor of her 136th Street townhouse into a cultural salon called The Dark Tower in October 1927. (Madam Walker Family Archives)

Through the years, her guests included James Reese Europe, Florence Mills, J. Rosamond Johnson, Bert Williams, Carl Van Vechten, W. E. B. DuBois, James Weldon Johnson, Alberta Hunter, Nora Holt, Lester Walton, Edna Lewis Thomas, Bernia Austin, Paul Poiret, Clarence Darrow and assorted European royalty. A younger generation of writers and artists from Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston and Dorothy West to Countee Cullen, Aaron Douglas and Richard Bruce Nugent also were welcome.Alelia Walker   A’Lelia Walker turns out to be much more a patron of the arts than even I knew when I wrote On Her Own Ground: The Life and Times of Madam C. J. Walker, my biography of her mother. The conventional wisdom is that the Walker philanthropy ended when Madam Walker died. The truth is A’Lelia Walker contributed to many causes and institutions before and after her mother’s death. She spearheaded a campaign for an ambulance for black soldiers during World War I, donated to the Silent Protest Parade against lynching in 1917 and was the leading fundraiser for the Utopia Neighborhood Children’s Center, a building which later housed the 1963 March on Washington planning offices.

When A’Lelia Walker hosted Liberian President C. D. B. King for a Fourth of July weekend at Villa Lewaro, she hired her friend, Ford Dabney, and his Syncopated Orchestra to provide the music.  She regularly hired musicians, photographers, modistes, architects and caterers. She invited theater groups to rehearse in her home and a filmmaker to shoot his movies at her estate at no charge. At various times she let a writer, an actress and a singer stay in one of the apartments in her townhouse rent free. Ford Dabney, whose orchestra performed nightly at Florenz Ziegfeld’s Rooftop Garden during the 1910s, was among the many musicians who played for her parties. She commissioned photographers like R. E. Mercer, James Latimer Allen and James Van Der Zee. And of course as president of the Madam C. J. Walker Manufacturing Company, she was a regular advertiser in black newspapers throughout the country.

During the early 1920s she spent six months abroad. In Paris she stayed in a suite at the Hotel Carlton on the Champs-Elysees near the Arc de Triomphe and was invited to a private showing at Cartier. She attended the opera at Covent Garden in London, witnessed the coronation of the Pope in Rome, toured the pyramids in Egypt on camelback and had an audience with Empress Zauditu in Addis Ababa.  C

Check out more information of A'Leila Walker at her grand daughters website (Alelila Bundles) Quite fascinating.  I cannot wait to read the book.

Harlem Renaissance Women: Augusta Savage

BIOGRAPHY: AUGUSTA SAVAGE

     Augusta Savage was born in Green Cove Springs, Florida in 1892. As a child, she liked to sculpt things out of clay, but her parents strongly opposed her love of sculpting, and it wasn’t until she sculpted a statue of the Virgin Mary that her parents acknowledged and accepted her talent (biography.com). After giving birth to a girl, and surviving the sudden death of her first marriage, Savage moved to New York City to study at Cooper Union Art School (pbs.org). In New York, she was commissioned to sculpt portraits of highly well known and influential African American figures like W.E.B. Dubois and Marcus Garvey, and went on to gain wide recognition of her work, in America and Europe (pbs.org).

"Gamin"

  One Harlem Renaissance themes in Augusta Savage’s life include Determination to Fight Oppression. She fought for equal rights all her life, starting from when her application for a summer art program in France was turned down by the international judging committee because she was black (wikipedia.com). She fought back against the committee, and continued to fight oppression and make great art, and found a way to establish herself in France a little later in life (biography.com).

"The Harp"

  Savage is influential not only because of her beautiful work, but also because of her career as a teacher in the Harlem Community. She created the Savage Studio of Arts and Crafts, which became Harlem Community Arts Center, with her as it’s first director (pbs.com). The center was successful in teaching young artists in Harlem, and inspired other art centers in different parts of America. Many of her students grew into famous artists and activists. She was also the first African American in the National Association of Woman Painters and Sculptors (wikipedia.com).

  I chose to learn about Augusta Savage because I wanted to learn more about female artists in Harlem, and I really like her work. I admire her ability to create amazing work despite intense obstacles.

Original Post Date:  Saturday, March 10, 2012

Harlem Renaissance Women: Sari Price Patton

Repost of Wearable Art 1/25/2012  Winold Reiss: “Sari Price Patton,” 1925. Private collection. © The Reiss Partnership.
I came across Winold Reiss’ painting of this chic young woman at the wonderful exhibition “Youth and Beauty: Art of the American Twenties" at the Brooklyn Museum. I love the Patton’s trendy page-boy haircut and her loose-fitting, low-waisted black silk gown and the yellow pleated ruffled tie and cuffs. She’s fashionable and youthful. She’s also black: You don’t see very many portraits of middle-class black women — or men — in many major museum shows, so I was intrigued.
There is very little info available on Sari Price Patton, but she was the hostess at a popular Harlem salon run by A’Lelia Walker. A patroness of black artists, including Harlem Renaissance writers like Langston Hughes, Walker hosted black writers, sculptors, poets, painters, musicians and their friends at her house, serving food, champagne and gin. She and her friends decided to open a more formal salon, for conversation, poetry readings and art exhibitions, called ”The Dark Tower” (after the Countee Cullens poem). Yet the Dark Tower only lasted a year: partly because Walker had hoped to profit from the enterprise so started charging high prices the artists couldn’t afford. (The writer Bruce Nugent griped that “Colored faces were at a premium, the place filled to overflowing with with whites from downtown who had come up expecting that this was a new and hot nightclub.”*
But the club also lost money because our Sari Price Patton was caught embezzling some of the daily receipts. This was in 1927/1928, so before Reiss painted the chic young woman here.
* From “On Her Own Ground: The Life and Times of Madam C.J. Walker” by A’Lelia Bundles 
Painting from the Brooklyn Museum’s website

    

King Siblings

Sibling rivalry never seems to stop, but this is ridiculous.  How dare anyone want to sale for profit items that were so important to their parents?  Are you so desperate for money?  Go to work, check out new investments, but do not make a mockery of your father's legacy. First and foremost, children are parents most prized possessions, not things; but at the same time children should want to hold onto certain items which were relevant to their parents.  Children should honor the memory of their parents, stop bickering and acting like spoiled brats.  All that your father fought for you ridicule and trivialize with your ignorant behavior.  Shame on you!  You should be able to settle your differences amongst yourselves.  You should not be so desperate for money that you would want to sale 'sacred items' and stealing from the memorial is disgraceful.  Furthermore, what right would any board have to demand for a child to turn over personal items which rightfully belong to the child?  The bible and the Nobel prize medal are both family heirlooms, not to be shared with the world -- they belonged to her father and they are relevant to her.  Bernice should not have to relinquish them to the memorial. As stated, some things are sacred and should not be shared.  People get a grip!Martin Luther King Jr.'s children in court over his Bible, Nobel Prize http://fw.to/WvEc0mg

White Collar Crime

Well, it would seem that the more you steal and break the law the more lenient the judges are. In fact they are so lenient that instead of upholding and enforcing the law they mock it with comments such as 'ridiculous' or 'totally inappropriate' and feel that those who have committed the crime are undeserving of the imposed sentencing guidelines, thereby deeming it necessary to lessen the penalty because the culprits are such 'law-abiding citizens' and no 'real harm was done. The judges will look at their past history: civic duties, military service,board positions, letters from friends and rule that the culprit should not be held accountable for the actual crime committed. No mention of being held to a higher standard because you are in a post which expects you to be honorable and just. I am having a hard time in understanding how these judges feel that no harm was done. Maybe it is just me, but it seems that the more money you steal the safer you are. There is always 'plausable deniability' to hide behind and there never seems to be any mention of RETURNING the ill-gotten gain. Furthermore, judges seem to think that sentencing guidelines are "TOTALLY INAPPROPRIATE" (U.S. District Judge Mark Davis). Disgraced former Gov. Bob McDonnell only received two years on 13 felony counts by U.S. Dist Jdge James Spencer who felt the sentencing guidelines were 'ridiculous'. Wayne Perry was found guilty on 4 counts each of health care fraud and aggravated identity theft and one count of altering records. Judge Davis sentenced him to five years and three months. I am sure that neither couple will serve one prison day. Only in America.