Volume 33 Number 13
Money Raised for Homeless
Through
Rent Party
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Tracy Butts, left, with graduate student Dianna Winslow as Dorothy Parker, writer and critic; and Mark Hall, English, as Jean Toomer, one of the key figures of the Harlem Renaissance. |
The English Honor Society and English Graduate Student Council, working
with Professor Tracy Butts, adviser to EHS, hosted a Harlem Rent Party
on Feb. 20 that netted $743 for the Esplanade House.
More than 100 guests, dressed as Harlemites from the 1920s and 1930s,
enjoyed music, food, poetry, and dance from the period. It was common
during the Depression for a host to hire a musician and invite friends,
and pay the rent with the profits from the cover charge, food, and beverage
sales.
In the spirit of the rent parties, guests made a donation to the Esplanade
House and came dressed as any person who would have been alive during
the Harlem Renaissance, from 1919 through 1929. The music was jazzy (a
torch singer and guitarist), the food from the period (grits, fried chicken,
sweet potato pie) and the costumes were, well, “unbelievable,”
said one guest.
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Cynthia Thompson, left, (Tracy Butts’ friend from out of town, who came just for the rent party), dressed as aviatrix Bessie Coleman. Dolly Solomon, Student Records, came as Madame C.J. Walker, one of the first American women of any race or rank to become a millionaire through her own efforts. Walker was an entrepreneur who developed hair care products and techniques for black women. |
People came as aviatrix Bessie Coleman, Langston Hughes, minor league
baseball player Jesse Lee “Doc” Talley (known as the “Bearded
Babe Ruth”), and several flappers. Mark Hall, English, dressed as
Jean Toomer, novelist/poet, who, according to many sources, started the
Harlem Renaissance in Literature. Hall, a native of Georgia, read a short
piece of creative nonfiction titled “California Haute Cuisine.”
Kathleen McPartland
University Publications
California State University, Chico
400 West First Street
Chico, CA 95929-0040
530-898-4263
publications@csuchico.edu