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By Root 429 0

in Hale’s Ford, Virginia, and received his freedom as a result of the Civil War. The differences in their birth defined the differences in their philosophical positions. Washington felt that agricultural and technical education would give blacks the tools with which to seek jobs in the workforce and that economic acceptance would lead to eventual social acceptance. In this, Washington espoused the growth of institutions such as Hampton Institute (founded in 1868 as Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute) and Tuskegee Institute (founded in 1881 as Tuskegee Normal and Technical Institute) where students were taught trades. Washington was the president of Tuskegee Institute, the home school of the multitalented scientist George Washington Carver, whose research established myriad uses for several traditional African American foodstuffs, such as peanuts and sweet potatoes. Tuskegee did not offer the liberal arts curriculum espoused by Du Bois, but rather had courses of study leading to a bachelor of science degree in home economics, mechanical industries, physical education, agriculture, commercial dietetics, and education, as well as certificated courses in nurse training and special trade courses. As Washington put it, “we shall prosper in proportion as we learn to dignify and glorify labor and put brains and skill into the common occupations of life.”

The debate between Du Bois and Washington defined the class divisions between the citizens of all the new black neighborhoods springing up across the country. At the top of the social spectrum sat Du Bois’s Talented Tenth: educated, cultured, adept in European mores, and often disdainful of the uneducated masses who represented the other ninetieth percent of black society. They too entertained, but not at rent parties; they socialized at teas and debutante balls, soirées, literary talks, luncheons, and cocktail parties. Their foods, like their social style, emulated that of Europe, though they might enjoy fried chicken on occasion, as did Du Bois. They had no need of rent parties, and the pungent funk of boiling chitterlings or ribbon maws would never poison the air of their well-appointed abodes. Harlem Renaissance writer Dorothy West described the fare at one of the cocktail parties of the elite: “Cocktails, little sausages on toothpicks, black and green olives, cheeses with crisp little crackers, two-inch sandwiches, went in continuous file around the room.”

There were few who crossed the great class divide. In Harlem, however, A’lelia Walker was neither patrician nor proletarian. In the community of artists and writers who created the Harlem Renaissance, she stood out. The daughter of Madame C. J. Walker, the first female black millionaire, who had made her fortune from hair products, A’lelia inherited her mother’s sizable fortune and became the Harlem “hostess with the mostess.” She entertained a Harlem high society that she virtually created, inviting blacks and whites, artists, gangsters, and businesspeople into her home. Her Harlem gatherings became legendary. She understood the culinary and cultural class divisions and the insidiousness of Harlem slumming. At one gathering, she is alleged to have fed her white guests pigs’ feet, chitterlings, and bathtub gin and her black ones caviar, pheasant, and champagne.

Dubbed the “Mahogany Millionairess,” Walker gloried in her money and spent it lavishly. In a fit of entrepreneurial zeal, she had a floor of her Harlem brownstone designed as a club and a meeting place for artists and those who followed them. She named it the “Dark Tower,” after the column in Opportunity magazine written by Countee Cullen, one of the Harlem Renaissance’s leading lights. She ran the salon in the grand manner, but she began to charge her guests: fifteen cents to check a hat, a dime for a cup of coffee, and a quarter for lemonade. Sandwiches went for fifty cents. Those who had attended her grand soirées and dined lavishly at her expense were not willing to pay for her hospitality. She had misjudged her friends and the venture was not a success.