“How Black Women Funded the Civil Rights Movement”

The Visiting Scholars Lecture in partnership with Dr. Tyrone McKinley Freeman, IU Presidential Arts & Humanities Fellow present “How Black Women Funded the Civil Rights Movement: A Community Lecture and Conversation with Dr. Tanisha C. Ford.”

Dr. Tanisha C. Ford will present a keynote lecture about her 2024 NAACP Image Award-winning book, Our Secret Society. This book chronicles the life and impact of Mollie Moon, a Black woman socialite based in New York City who raised significant amounts of money for the Civil Rights Movement through fashion shows and other means.

 Following the lecture, Freeman and Ford will sit down for a conversation about fundraising and activism across American history and the current challenges and issues facing Black women and Black-led nonprofits doing liberation work. A community Q&A and a book signing will follow.

 This event on October 24, from 5 p.m.-8 p.m., is free and open to the public. Registration is required.

 Ford is an NAACP Image Award-winning writer, cultural critic, and Professor of History at The Graduate Center, CUNY. She has forged an international reputation for her groundbreaking research on the history of Black style/fashion and social movements. She earned a Ph.D. in twentieth-century U.S. history from Indiana University-Bloomington.

 Freeman is the author of Madam C.J. Walker’s Gospel of Giving: Black Women’s Philanthropy during Jim Crow. An award-winning scholar, he is the Glenn Family Chair in Philanthropy and associate professor of philanthropic studies at the Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy.

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