All-Night Party

As some of you may have noticed, I’ve been spending a a fair amount of time in recent months in New York City in the 1910s and 1920s, especially the corners of it dedicated to artists, bohemians, and modernists, self-declared and otherwise. Consequently, when All-Night Party: The Women of Bohemian Greenwich Village and Harlem, 1913-1930…

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Maggie Lena Walker Opens a Bank

Circling back once again to the theme of women entrepreneurs, allow me introduce you to Maggie Lena Walker (1867-1934)[1] , the child of a formerly enslaved, illiterate mother who became the founder and president of an important Black-owned bank. Walker was born in Richmond, Virginia, the capital of the Confederacy, two years after the end…

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From the Archives: The Swans of Harlem

As I mentioned in a recent post,  I have been fascinated by ballet and its history for most of my life. So when I began to see notices for a book about the forgotten Black ballerinas who danced for the Dance Theatre of Harlem I was eager to get my hands on it.  It lived…

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