Money Behind the Movement: Bolstering Civil Rights

Tanisha C. Ford, Class of 2023 Fellow, is Professor of History at the Graduate Center, City University of New York (CUNY), and an award-winning writer and cultural critic committed to social justice.

In this extended Q&A from The Fifth Draft — the National Fellows Program’s newsletter featuring exclusive content about and from our Fellows — Ford talks more about her forthcoming book project that uncovers the power of money within the Civil Rights Movement.

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Your fellowship project will be a book that uncovers the secret webs of money, power, and social influence that bolstered the Civil Rights Movement. What inspired the project?

A few years ago, I read Harry Belafonte’s memoir, My Song. He tells an intriguing story about a phone call he received from a leader of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), saying they needed the present-day equivalent of $500,000 to keep their Mississippi-based voter registration drive afloat. Belafonte and his wife Julie set about hosting in-home fundraisers attended by their wealthy friends to raise the cash. He collects $700,000. Belafonte enlists his best friend Sidney Poitier to board a small Cessna with him, to sneak a suitcase with the cash into Greenwood, Mississippi. The clandestine trip was successful, and SNCC can continue its work. My jaw dropped. I realized I knew nothing about how money was raised or by whom. And if I, a Civil Rights Movement historian, didn’t know this — and hadn’t even thought about it — the everyday American didn’t either.

The book will be largely structured around the philanthropic career of Mollie Moon. Who is she and what attracted you to her story?

Mollie Moon is a Mississippi-born activist who founded the National Urban League Guild in 1942. The guild was the fundraising arm of the National Urban League. As the Civil Rights Movement intensified, Mollie established other guilds across the country. At the time of her death, in 1990, she was said to have raised more than $3 million for the National Urban League, spearheading countless voting rights, equal housing and labor campaigns. Her story was different from Belafonte’s, but they were connected in that they relied upon the same network of monied Black and white Americans. But Mollie did it with a level of glamor that I wanted to interrogate. She hosted galas and art shows. Who were these events for? What were the stakes for poor and working-class African Americans? I wanted to know all the things. I’ve devoted years to piecing together Mollie Moon’s story.

This project incorporates what you have described as “visions of black grandeur.” What role do these images play in telling the overall story of Black Americans and the fight for racial justice?

Mollie understood then something we say all the time now: Representation matters. Part of her strategy was to depict African Americans in ways that didn’t overemphasize Black struggle and lack. She was deeply invested in Black leisure and luxury. She believed Black people deserve nice things and should have equal access to luxury hotels, theaters, and high-end department stores. Her fundraising events were designed for working-class Harlemites to experience this form of opulence and then demand that they be treated as full citizens. Of course, this approach was understandably met with backlash from radical activists who believed Moon was merely reproducing capitalist logics for Black folks. My book aims to hold both political perspectives in tension to demonstrate how fraught the fight for racial and economic justice was in the civil rights era.

The central theme of your project is money, something which is often considered a social taboo. How do reservations about discussing money shape our understanding of history? What biases do you hope your book will challenge?

Our favorite stories about the movement grip us because they appeal to our learned belief that social movements erupt organically from seismic shifts in social and political life. In this formulation, money is an afterthought. But there is another, grimier story. Voter registration drives, freedom buses, breakfast programs, and legal campaigns cost cash. Where does the money come from? We have been reluctant to ask, because where there’s money, there’s the danger that someone has “sold out.” Yet without a willingness to dive into this muck, we’re doomed to repeat the same inaccurate crisis funding narratives that have real implications on an array of economic policies. I want to tell a story of African American resistance and fiscal savvy. It is my hope that my book will persuade key white decision-makers that for truly anti-racist economic policies to succeed, they must cede some of their privilege.

“I want to tell a story of African American resistance and fiscal savvy.”

Your project explores the often unquestioned positive status of philanthropy. What implications does this hold for social and political issues funded by philanthropists today?

One of my main goals is to dissociate the term “philanthropy” with “white billionaire.” Dating back to 1990, studies have consistently shown that African Americans donate more money than their peers of other races in the same income bracket. However, histories of philanthropy typically chronicle wealthy families. And this exorbitantly rich 1 percent isn’t as generous as it claims to be. A 2020 study published in the Chronicle of Philanthropy has shown that nonprofits run by women of color receive less funding from high-net-worth individuals, and are even disadvantaged by tax-law. Ms. Foundation for Women’s landmark 2020 study found that of the $66.9 billion given by foundations, only 5 percent went toward funding initiatives for women and girls of color. Despite pronouncements about a commitment to anti-racism, in practice, African Americans are not central to the social change matrix powered by major foundations. This reality won’t change until America has an honest reckoning with its past.

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