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Paul R. Mullins lavishly furnished their new home with Oriental Modupe Labode rugs, gold-leafed furnishings, a Chickering grand Lewis C. Jones piano, a Tiffany chandelier, and original art Michael E. Essex (Bundles 2001:143; Dudley 2006:82). Alex M. Kruse For some ideologues (including black and G. Brandon Muncy white observers alike), Walker’s home threat- ened the ideological link between poverty and blackness, undercut preconceptions about black Consuming Lines of Difference: women’s labor and materialism, and destabilized The Politics of Wealth and certain perceptions of a “respectable” black middle class rooted in social and labor discipline, Poverty along the Color Line family heritage, and patriarchy. For many people of color, though, material wealth had long been ABSTRACT a consciously political statement that defined consumption as a consequential citizen right, and Commentators on African American life have often focused on affluence as a reflection of African America’s poverty, evaded recognition of African American wealth, and ignored the ways genteel affluence and impoverishment were suitability to those rights. Madam Walker’s home, constructed along turn-of-the-century color lines. Documentary business, consumption, and philanthropy made research and archaeology at the Madam C.J. Walker home in her a role model of “respectability” for African Indianapolis, Indiana, illuminates how the continuum of wealth American women in Indianapolis and throughout and poverty was defined and negotiated by one of African the country. But she and other black commen- America’s wealthiest early-20th-century entrepreneurs. The project provides an opportunity to compare the ways in which tators certainly did not ignore poverty, railing wealth was defined and experienced along the color line in against racist labor and social barriers, counsel- the early 20th century, and how such notions of black afflu- ing the poor on social and material discipline, or ence shaped racialized definitions of poverty and materiality. championing respectability in the face of poverty. In these discussions the tension between wealth Respectable Wealth and the Color Line and penury was a powerful mechanism framing African American materialism. In May 1911, Sarah Walker moved into her At the outset of the 20th century Madam new Indianapolis, Indiana, home, apparently Walker stood at the heart of such tensions. Born determined to appoint it in a manner befitting in 1867, Madam Walker spent most of her life as one of America’s most prominent entrepreneurs. a laundress and domestic saddled by significant Billing herself as “Madam C.J. Walker,” Walker poverty. After securing exceptional wealth she began selling her hair-care products and services devoted much of it to philanthropy, supporting within two days of reaching Indianapolis in Feb- a host of causes targeting impoverished African ruary 1910, and her business rapidly increased Americans, and she could well have found its profits. After renting a home on North West many living in Indianapolis’s near-Westside. Street in the heart of an emerging African Ameri- Madam Walker’s home sat directly beside much can neighborhood, she and husband C. J. Walker more modest alley residences that differed quite purchased the commodious neighboring residence radically from their neighbor’s palatial house. for $3,500.00 (Indianapolis Star 1911a:5). The Madam Walker’s 12-room home had internal couple had a housewarming at their new 640 plumbing and steam heat, while her neighbors North West Street house less than two months almost universally were using outhouses and after its purchase, and the local paper noted that pump wells, and along North West Street most the 150 guests found a “beautiful and recently residents continued to heat their homes with remodeled home ... decorated with palms and wood or coal. In 1910 Walker advertised space cut flowers. Music was furnished by a harp- for boarders at her home, much like many ist” (Indianapolis Star 1911b:34). The Walkers of her wealthy and working-class neighbors,
Historical Archaeology, 2011, 45(3):140–150. Permission to reprint required. Paul R. Mullins, et al.— Consuming Lines of Difference 141 underscoring that “Mme. C.J. Walker has thrown the very racialized ideologies they aspired to open her beautifully furnished home to the undermine (Dossett 2009:93–95). Some newly up-to-date traveling public. Her home is modern, affluent African Americans confirmed their including heat” (Recorder 1910:4; Bundles entrance into bourgeois society with ostentatious 2001:105). wealth; others avoided “excessive” shows of In 2009, archaeological excavations at Madam commodity wealth; and some championed Walker’s home examined the ca. 1912 factory she a notion of “respectable consumption” that built in her backyard and the neighboring homes. maintained existing class, status, and patriarchal This paper raises two issues, one focused on the distinctions in African American communities. A ideological relationship between race and wealth, wide range of politics ran through all of those and the other a question of what black wealth consumption patterns, but all of those political “looks like” and why it takes certain forms. The perceptions of consumption were linked to the former question of how race influences the social color line. meanings of wealth is a nearly universal issue The second issue around which this paper for scholars examining 20th-century America, if revolves is how scholars define impoverishment not much of the 19th century as well. Madam and wealth. For archaeologists, defining wealth Walker moved into the North West Street home is minimally a methodological challenge, but at the very moment the neighborhood became this also raises complicated questions about universally black, a rapid 10-year transition in how 20th-century Americans and contemporary which white residents left the neighborhood to archaeologists alike should view black affluence. be replaced by African Americans. During that Madam Walker’s short five-year occupation of transition, particular definitions of blackness the Indianapolis home left frustratingly little became ideologically linked to poverty, and the archaeological material culture that can be tightly relationship between race and materiality would dated to her residency, and in large part this eventually rationalize urban renewal projects is because her occupation of the home was so that profoundly transformed urban America. brief. Many of the home’s consumer goods were After World War II Madam Walker’s former very expensive commodities, however, unlikely neighborhood was part of a broad swath of to appear in archaeological deposits even over the near-Westside that was labeled a slum to long occupations. This raises a methodological legitimize widespread black displacements, quandary of how to interpret such affluence in and subsequent commentators have tended the absence of many archaeological artifacts and to project that picture of a universally black precisely what such affluence might have “looked and poor community back onto the whole of like” in archaeological assemblages, which nor- the 20th century. Rather than accept black mally represent everyday material culture most poverty as an appropriate rhetorical lens to clearly. Despite this challenge, excavated artifacts view 20th-century African American experience, are never analyzed in a vacuum separate from this paper examines how observers constructed, other resources, and a rich range of resources negotiated, and evaded recognition of black documenting Walker’s Indianapolis house and two affluence like that of Madam Walker. There subsequent New York homes provides an espe- certainly was genuine impoverishment in cially detailed material picture of her most costly Indianapolis’s near-Westside, but Madam Walker goods. These records certainly do not provide a was simply a prominent example of the many picture of Walker’s entire material assemblage, affluent African Americans who undermined but the fundamental archaeological implications shallow presumptions of widespread black revolve around how Walker’s consumption illu- penury. African American consumers often used minates the ways affluence was defined along commodities to demonstrate their readiness for the color line. Those definitions of affluence full citizenship and repudiate racist caricatures, took many different material forms in African and Madam Walker embraced the most costly of America, reflected in a vast range of archaeologi- goods. African Americans materialized numerous, cal patterns, but they almost always responded to often-conflicting visions of consumer wealth that dominant ideological visions of racialized poverty. were complicated by class, social, and gendered Consumer goods were points of contestation over interests, however, and sometimes lapsed into the definition of white and black, and for many 142 HISTORICAL ARCHAEOLOGY 45(3)
African Americans that debate revolved around was promoted to the cook kitchen, and from there I defusing poverty stereotypes, underscoring African promoted myself into the business of manufacturing American wealth, and demonstrating that afflu- hair goods and preparations (Bundles 2001:136). ence was not exclusive to whites. As a sign of her success, she invoked her new factory and most recent material acquisitions, pro- “Ambitious to Be Conventional”: claiming from the convention floor that “I have Affluence along the Color Line built my own factory on my own ground, 38 by 208 feet. ... I own my own automobile and In 1911, Mary White Ovington’s (1911:171) runabout.” Walker saw such consumption serving study of African Americans in New York City broader activist interests, however, arguing that advanced a novel thesis on black materiality and “my object in life is not simply to make money civic identity, concluding that “[f]ew of New for myself or spend it on myself in dressing or York’s citizens are so American as the colored, running around in an automobile. But I love few show so little that is unusual or picturesque.” to use a part of what I make in trying to help This picture of a mundane black materiality broke others” (Bundles 2001:136). dramatically from xenophobic depictions of blacks, Walker’s declaration at the National Negro venturing that African America was committed Business League convention voiced material to embracing the prosaic behavioral and material ambitions and philanthropic interests shared dimensions of citizenship. Ovington (1911:171) by most of her audience, but much of that believed all significant ethnic distinctions had audience was likely unsettled by racialized been quashed from African America, insisting that poverty. For many of her fellow entrepreneurs the typical African American New Yorker was and established black elite, impoverishment “ambitious to be conventional in his manners, and residential segregation cast genteel black his customs, striving as far as possible to be like families, newly moneyed elite, and poor urban his neighbor—a distinctly American ambition.” In newcomers into the same neighborhoods and the face of that prosaic picture, though, Oving- risked upsetting established social and material ton struggled with the social meanings of black hierarchies (Gaines 1996:180). When Madam affluence. On the one hand, Ovington (1911:188) Walker arrived in Indianapolis’s near-Westside in divined activist implications in African American 1910, she found a community that was quickly wealth, suggesting that affluence drove many Afri- becoming segregated along the color line, like can Americans to combat racism more assertively. most other northern cities into which Southern She argued that “[a] comfortable income and the African Americans were migrating. De facto intelligence to enjoy the culture of a great city do residential segregation forced Madam Walker not bring to the Negro any smug self-satisfaction; and working-class African Americans to be only a great responsibility toward the problem neighbors, and inevitably this shaped how she that moves through the world with his dark face.” and other African Americans defined various On the other hand, though, she argued that some forms of wealth and poverty, divined its foot- African Americans considered affluence to signal ing in racism, and chose to negotiate racially acquiescence to racism. Ovington (1911:187) based impoverishment. Not all of her peers argued that in the eyes of African American were eager to become philanthropists for the neighbors “material success sometimes means a race, instead seeing themselves as social and departure from the aggressive to the submissive behavioral models, or actually desiring insular- attitude.” In effect, black consumer affluence was ity from the African American masses. Madam won by bargaining with and even accepting certain Walker, though, spent the last nine years of her dimensions of racist inequality. life exceptionally affluent, and with that wealth Madam Walker certainly viewed her own wealth she materially championed a host of African as a platform from which she could advocate for American causes targeting the poor, women, and impoverished African Americans. In 1912 Walker education, even as she embraced ostentatious arose at the National Negro Business League material affluence. Walker approached wealth as convention and acknowledged her heritage as a a visible material refutation of racist caricatures, woman that came from the cotton fields of the South. embracing conspicuous material culture but I was promoted from there to the wash-tub. Then I seeing it as an example to African America that Paul R. Mullins, et al.— Consuming Lines of Difference 143 would “inspire them to do big things” (Bundles like Kentucky. In 1900 there was not a single 2001:235). Many other African American elite African American living in the homes alongside would materialize their affluence in quite dif- Abel and Harriet Davis, but in the subsequent ferent forms, but all were compelled to define decade whites moved out nearly universally, and affluence in direct relation to poverty and in a handful of rear lot lines became home to alley reference to the color line. structures that increased the residential density. Madam Walker made some architectural Residential Segregation and the Color Line changes to her new home, but the house was distinguished less by its scale and architecture Through the late 19th century the spacious than its household material culture. The home’s homes along Indianapolis’s North West Street domestic goods included many exceptionally were all residences of whites, who included costly commodities, so the question is how the people born throughout the country, as well as meaning of these specific things and the broader a more modest number of European immigrants. symbolism of black affluence were constructed Most of the homes, including Madam Walker’s by a range of commentators along and across the future residence, were built in the 1870s. The color line. Walker’s North West Street home had home at 640 North West Street first appeared drawing rooms with Oriental rugs and a Tiffany in the city directory in 1874, when it was the chandelier; the dining room featured a massive residence of Abel and Harriet Davis. The Davises oak table, china cabinets, and stylish new wall- were both born in New Hampshire, where Abel paper; and the library included a grand piano had been a farmer and produce dealer until and a painting by William Edouard Scott (Dudley about 1867, when he and Harriet first appear 2006:82). Any of these goods would have been in Indianapolis’s city directory. Indianapolis had quite uncommon in any Indianapolis household, rapidly expanded in the mid-19th century after and some are particularly noteworthy. The Scott railroads and the National Road arrived, and in painting, for instance, was among the most the 1870s it again mushroomed as local industry distinctive pieces of material culture in Madam and railroad business grew anew after the Civil Walker’s new home. Born in Indianapolis, the War. Many newcomers like the Davises were African American artist William Scott attended drawn by entrepreneurial possibilities, and Abel the Chicago Art Institute between 1904 and Davis was the co-owner of a grocery store in 1908 and subsequently trained under Henry O. Indianapolis until his death in 1906. In the 1880s Tanner in France (Leininger-Miller 2000:12–13). and 1890s their neighbors included both relatively In 1913 Scott had an exhibition in Indianapolis prosperous merchants and working-class people, at the studio of his mentor, Otto Stark, and an ranging from shoemakers and carpenters to sev- anonymous group of African American residents eral seamstresses who were apparently working purchased the painting Rainy Night, Etaples, from the North West Street homes. None of those and presented it to the Herron Art Institute in neighbors was African American. Indianapolis (Leininger-Miller 2000:13). It is not When Madam Walker moved into 640 North clear if Madam Walker were part of that group West Street in 1911 she would find only two or commissioned the painting that graced her white neighbors in her block, and both would library, but artwork was among the costly decora- leave within two years. This underscores that the tive goods, and patronage of an African Ameri- transformation from a white to a black neighbor- can artist almost certainly would have made the hood happened very rapidly between 1900 and painting even more symbolically important. 1910. In 1900, just under a third of the near- Madam Walker’s Chickering piano was made Westside’s residents were black (9.3% of the by one of America’s most prominent piano city’s overall population was identified as black), producers (Kornblith 1985), and because pianos and they were especially concentrated in pock- were powerful symbols of American domestic life ets along Indiana Avenue and north of Indiana and class ambition they were widely consumed Avenue (Divita 1994:55; Thornbrough 2000:4). across the color line (Roell 1994). Like many The Great Migration delivered a wave of black other commodities, their consumption in black migrants to Indianapolis after the turn of the households was often greeted with uneasiness. century, most coming from Southern border states In 1879, for instance, a Vicksburg, Mississippi, 144 HISTORICAL ARCHAEOLOGY 45(3) paper alluded to pianos’ symbolic power when In 1910 William Archer (1910:160) noted in it lamented that deceptive chromolithographs of his tour of African American households that black life in Kansas were making unrealistic “[e]very home, without exception, had its piano, material promises that were convincing African sometimes with open music on it.” Archer was Americans to leave the South for Kansas. They critical of how African Americans secured such took aim at a chromolithograph that portrayed funds, however, and in New Orleans one woman told him that such goods were purchased by a picturesque cottage with gables, dormer windows parents who enlisted their children as laborers. and wide verandas. ... Through the open door of the kitchen the colored wife could be seen directing the She told Archer (1910:92): servants and cooks who were preparing the evening meal. In the parlor, however, was the most enchanting [I]t isn’t always—perhaps not generally—extreme pov- feature, for at a grand piano was poised the belle of erty that makes the parents thus sacrifice their children. the household, and beside the piano where she was Often the children’s earnings will go to pay the two or playing stood her colored lover, devouring her with two-and-a-half dollars a month demanded for a piano his eyes while he abstractedly turned the leaves of her on the instalment system. That instalment system is a music (Journal of Negro History 1919:55). great curse to the ignorant poor.
When Madam Walker built a Harlem home Ray Stannard Baker (1973:62) reached the same in 1916, the house included a player organ conclusion in 1904, arguing that in “the poorer that stretched from the floor to ceiling, as well Negro homes” he would find as a gold-leafed Aeolian grand piano and sev- eral equally opulent gilded Victrolas (Bundles one or two rooms meanly furnished, but having in one 2001:172). Pianos and music were likewise corner a glittering cottage organ, or on the mantel shelf featured in the subsequent mansion she had a glorified gilt clock. ... Often a Negro family will constructed at Irvington-on-Hudson north of pay monthly for a year or so on some showy clock New York City in 1918. The Irvington man- or chromo or music-box or decorated mirror—paying the value of it a dozen times over, only to have it sion, known as Villa Lewaro, had a piano seized when through sickness, or lack of foresight, with a 24-karat gold-leaf finish, a player piano, they fail to meet a single note. Installment houses and a $25,000 pipe organ that was built into prey upon them. the house’s walls (New York Times 1930:27, 1932:36). A significant part of pianos’ appeal was Baker was among the numerous observers who their implication of wealth and social refinement, felt compelled to neutralize the symbolism of and most wealthy African American homes had mass-produced goods in African American house- a piano by the early 20th century (Fitts 2002:6). holds. For instance, William Archer (1910:160) In 1908, W. E. B. Du Bois (1908:65) noted that was struck by the widespread African American Atlanta’s “best” African American homes “are embrace of stylish material goods in Charleston, good-sized one and two-story homes, having South Carolina, noting that “[t]he furniture was bathrooms and water in the house, and in many always modern and in excellent condition, with cases gas and electric-bells. ... The parlors and a great deal of plush about it. Much of it con- some of the other rooms have tiled hearths, and veyed the impression (not uncommon in English there is usually a piano or organ in the home.” villa residences) of being intended rather for A 1917 analysis recognized Chickering’s class show than use.” Archer did detect some material appeals, concluding that “advertisements of the aesthetics that revealed a black unwillingness or Chickering Piano are evidently devised to rep- inability to reproduce stylistic norms. After dis- resent the piano as an article of furniture in a secting wallpaper styles, the apparently universal home which is most sumptuously and tastefully presence of pianos, and similar details that upset furnished. We are left to draw the conclusion for black material caricatures, Archer found that “[i]n ourselves that if persons with such elegant homes the matter of pictures, nicknacks, etc., there was choose the Chickering it must be good enough no affectation of ‘culture.’ Aestheticism ... has for us” (Scott 1917:195). not yet penetrated the negro home. ... The works Nevertheless, by the turn of the century of art are simple to the point of primitiveness, pianos had become more accessible because of and pleasing in so far as they genuinely represent mass production and installment payment plans. the taste of their owners.” Yet Archer concluded Paul R. Mullins, et al.— Consuming Lines of Difference 145 that African American reproduction of American Shortly after the school closed in 1912 (Parrish styles was usually so thorough that it actually 1948:289), Kelly joined the Walker Company rang hollow. For example, he indicated that and became the factory’s forelady as well as Madam Walker’s personal tutor, instructing her [w]hat troubled me throughout my domiciliary visits in speech, etiquette, and grammar. was the sense that (with one or two exceptions) these Most of Walker’s company was staffed by homes were not homes at all. ... They were no more women from modest backgrounds, some of homelike than the shopwindow rooms of the up-to-date whom secured some foothold in respectable upholsterer. If they were lived in at all, it was from a sense of duty, a self-conscious effort after a life of society. Violet Davis Reynolds, for instance, was “refinement.” They were, in short, entirely imitative a former Eckstein-Norton Institute student who and mechanical tributes to the American ideal of the came to Indianapolis in 1914 on Alice Kelley’s prosperous, cultivated home (Archer 1910:162–163). recommendation. Davis began boarding in Walk- er’s home, became the company’s stenographer, Ultimately, African Americans so seamlessly and in 1960 was still the executive secretary of reproduced dominant material style that Archer the Walker Company. Marie Brooks Overstreet interpreted it as exaggerated inauthenticity. came to Indianapolis in about 1920, and she was Many of Madam Walker’s neighbors were a bookkeeper for the company into the 1930s. certainly living in vastly different conditions Flossie Glover was born in South Carolina in than she, but social “respectability” was a com- 1897 and was also working for the Walker Com- plex blend of public behaviors, family lineage, pany as a stenographer by 1920. Glover moved community connections, and genuine material to Indianapolis by 1917, living with her sister wealth. Most of the employees in Walker’s back- Alice and Alice’s husband, lawyer Robert Bro- yard factory, for example, were not especially kenburr, who represented Madam Walker along wealthy or from elite lineages, but many of with Freeman Ransom. Two Ransom relatives them secured genuine status in the community. and another of Flossie Glover’s sisters worked About 40 people working in the backyard fac- in the factory in the 1920s. The most distinctive tory were on the Walker Company payroll until story was that of Parthenia Rollins, who came 1928, when the operation and those employees to work for the Walker Company around 1915, moved from the backyard into the newly con- when she was already roughly 75 years old. structed neighboring Walker Building, which Enslaved in Kentucky as a child, Rollins became featured an Afrocentric art deco theater and Walker’s cook nearly a half century after her professional offices, as well as the operations emancipation. When Walker died in 1919 Rol- of the Walker Company. Virtually all of these lins was named as a beneficiary in the will and employees were women. In 1923, for instance, continued to receive a salary until her death in 34 of the 38 people on the company payroll 1952, when she was buried at the expense of the were women, including former laundresses and Walker Company. domestics, as well as some women from bour- Walker was like many of her neighbors and geois backgrounds. The factory was managed employees who had emerged from genuine by Alice Kelly, who along with lawyer Freeman poverty with little or no formal education yet Ransom was perhaps Madam Walker’s clos- aspired to secure a foothold in “respectable” est colleague. Kelly had been a matron at the society. Exactly what constituted such respect- Eckstein-Norton Institute, where she taught Latin ability, though, was ambiguous. St. Clair Drake and supervised the students’ domestic training at and Horace Cayton’s 1945 Black Metropolis the industrial education school near Louisville, painted an especially complex picture of Chi- Kentucky. The school was established in 1890 cago’s African American elite that probed the in Cane Spring, Kentucky, and Walker probably definition of respectability and assessed the ways first met with her in January 1910 during a visit affluence, poverty, and status were defined within to the campus (Bundles 2001:100). In August the community. Drake and Cayton’s analysis 1911 Kelley visited Walker in Indianapolis, and was one of the most thorough 20th-century in December she returned to hold a reception studies of African American affluence, but they for Walker’s daughter in the North West Street accorded ostentatious material wealth relatively home (Indianapolis Star 1911c:34, 1911d:34). little importance. They instead saw class standing 146 HISTORICAL ARCHAEOLOGY 45(3) most clearly linked to “respectability,” arguing wealth and implied that “respectable” behaviors that “these upper-class people took ‘respect- and standing were not dependent on affluence. In ability’ for granted. They were concerned with this sense, Black Metropolis painted an interest- ‘refinement,’ ‘culture,’ and graceful living as ing picture that vested most status symbolism in a class-ideal” (Drake and Cayton 1945:531). social discipline but never ignored how status The material forms taken by such respectability was determined by the concrete realities of rela- revolved around domestic goods, because the tive affluence. For instance, Drake and Cayton “upper class is ‘home-centered,’ stressing an argued that a stratum of African American ordered and disciplined family life” (Drake and Chicago might be termed middle class, defined Cayton 1945:531). This elite home discipline was by “the way people spend their money, and in reflected in “extreme emphasis on ‘maintaining a public behavior [emphasis in original]” (Drake good home,’ with fine furniture, linen, glassware, and Cayton 1945:662). This group had genteel china, and silver much in evidence” (Drake and ambitions but was constrained by factors includ- Cayton 1945:530). ing poverty, education, or social associations, Drake and Cayton did not evade recognition of and that definition might well describe many of poverty, but they did not detach it from African the women who worked for Madam Walker. For American affluence and those they defined as this group Drake and Cayton did emphasize at “middle class,” a cross-class approach that ulti- least one dimension of materiality. For the middle mately dissected complicated class relations and class, “‘having a nice home’ usually becomes tensions within black Chicago. They argued that a consuming passion—nearly always a primary the Great Migration’s flood of Southern newcom- interest” (Drake and Cayton 1945:663). They ers displaced the city’s previous 19th-century argued that, especially for Southern migrants, elite, who had been bound by “social ritual and a “real estate is a potent symbol of stability and concern with ‘culture’” and were formed by fam- respectability” (Drake and Cayton 1945:663), ilies that had long lived in Chicago (Drake and but as with their assessment of elite standing Cayton 1945:543). Drake and Cayton (1945:543) they did not accord ostentatious consumption a saw 20th-century migrants (like Madam Walker particularly significant position. and many of the women who worked for her) as Drake and Cayton did identify a circle of a stream that “resulted in the expansion of the newly affluent African Americans who were business and professional classes who gradually intensely committed to conspicuous consumption, displaced the Old Settlers as the ‘cream of soci- but this materialism was among the central rea- ety.’” That interpretation complicated established sons they did not qualify as “respectable.” Their analyses of the Great Migration, recognizing that materialism was focused primarily on entertain- it delivered entrepreneurs who became affluent ing, throwing private parties and formal dinners and ascended to elite status, and was not simply featuring rare foods and fine clothing, and the composed of the South’s most impoverished apparent desire for public material visibility was citizens who continued to be marginalized in the viewed warily by Chicago’s established Afri- urban North. can American upper class. Drake and Cayton Drake and Cayton believed that social standing (1945:550) argued that these affluent African had relatively little to do with relative affluence Americans who had embraced conspicuous mate- and was instead invested in social discipline. rialism “have the money, but they are keenly They argued that for the elite “[i]t is not poverty aware that there are some things that won’t that outrages their sensibilities, but lack of public buy.” They implied that wealth alone could not decorum—what they call ‘ignorance,’ ‘boisterous- buy some measures of educational, social, and ness,’ ‘uncouthness,’ ‘low behavior’” (Drake and family status. Cayton 1945:559). Drake and Cayton (1945:559) The symbolic threat African American con- concluded that the elite saw such behaviors as sumption actually posed was quite different “a drag on The Race,” intimating that the elite from one community to the next. Occasionally, saw themselves yoked to other African Americans though, African American materialism clearly by race. This had been a common complaint posed more than a symbolic threat to white of black elite since the 19th century, but it privilege, and these conflicts almost always inelegantly evaded recognizing the privileges of revolved around moments African Americans Paul R. Mullins, et al.— Consuming Lines of Difference 147 began moving into what had formerly been completion, the New York Times (1917:SM4) exclusively white neighborhoods. Jesse Binga, indicated that “[p]lans for furnishing the house for instance, moved to Chicago in 1893, opening call for a degree of extravagance that a princess an African American bank in 1908 and managing might envy. There are to be bronze and marble real estate, which made him quite wealthy. Binga statuary, sparkling cut glass candelabra, paint- purchased a home in a white neighborhood, and ings, rich tapestries, and countless other things it was bombed five times in the year spanning which will make the place a wonder house.” February 1918 to February 1919 alone (Chicago For instance, the paper noted that “Mme. Walker Commission on Race Relations 1922:125,536). A likes music,” describing the complex piping 1920 Chicago newspaper article rooted such vio- system that channeled the home’s organ music lence in African Americans’ propensity to con- into every room (New York Times 1917:SM4). spicuous materialism and the inference that such The mahogany bedroom suite was ivory-enam- consumers were advocating for full civil rights. eled, ceiling murals were found throughout the The paper argued that “[t]he Negroes innate house, a book dealer counseled her on a mas- desire to ‘flash,’ to live in the present, their sive collection of books for her new library, and inordinate love for display has resulted in their statuary was scattered throughout the home. The being misled by the example of such individuals mansion came to be known as Villa Lewaro, an as Jesse Binga. ... In their loud mouthing about acronym using the first two letters of daughter equality with the whites they have wormed their Lelia Walker Robinson’s names. Her daughter course into white neighborhoods, where they are eventually auctioned the home and its contents not wanted and where they have not the means in 1930, when a visitor indicated “the walls are to support property” (Chicago Commission on lined with handmade tapestries, bronze and ivory Race Relations 1922:122; Drake and Cayton statuettes, and a large figure of a jaguar spring- 1945:178–179). African Americans’ expensive ing at a horse” alongside a massive collection of dining goods or clothing rarely produced vio- ivory (New York Times 1930:27). lence, but advances into formerly white neigh- Keen to deflect criticism that the house was borhoods were greeted by violence throughout overly extravagant, Madam Walker wrote her urban America. Drake and Cayton (1945:206) lawyer Freeman Ransom that “Villa Lewaro was argued that over 30 years after Binga’s home not merely her home, but a Negro institution was bombed the rule remained that “Negroes, that only Negro money had bought” (Bundles regardless of their affluence or respectability, 2001:235). She argued that the mansion was wear the badge of color. They are expected to intended as a statement “to point to young stay in the Black Belt.” Negroes what a lone woman accomplished and to inspire them to do big things.” In 1910 Scottish “A Degree of Extravagance”: visitor William Archer penned a prescient African African American Affluence and Ambition American travelogue that wrestled with this sym- bolic role of wealth in African America. Archer Madam Walker’s Indianapolis home was utterly acknowledged that in his travels he witnessed sig- restrained in comparison to the two New York nificant wealth among African Americans, and he homes she lived in over the final three years recognized the profound symbolic importance of of her life. In 1916 Madam Walker moved that affluence. He suggested that in recurring tours from Indianapolis to Harlem, though her busi- of grand African American homes, businesses, and ness remained based in Indianapolis. Under the public spaces “[t]here was something impersonal direction of African American architect Vertner about it all. It was not the men but the race who Woodson Tandy, Walker remodeled a Harlem boasted. It was not ‘I,’ nor ‘he,’ but ‘we’” (Archer townhouse on West 136th Street, converting 1910:159–160). Archer suggested that such wealth neighboring structures into one larger building was greeted with widespread African American with a newly installed Georgian facade. In 1917, pride, much as Madam Walker hoped. she commissioned Tandy to design a massive The genuine transformative potential of black mansion at Irvington-on-Hudson, a home into consumption was disputed by African Americans which she eventually moved in June 1918 (Bun- from the turn of the century onward. A 1941 dles 2001:234). As the Irvington home neared study, for instance, concluded that the “purchase 148 HISTORICAL ARCHAEOLOGY 45(3) of expensive automobiles is certainly exagger- ated among colored groups ... [because] these Madam Walker was among the many African economic symbols have higher social value Americans who viewed their affluence as a than in most white communities” (Davis et al. demonstration of bourgeois ambition in the face 1941:243). The 1941 assessment suggested that of racism, but their affluence took much of its “[m]ost of the symbols of status in our society symbolic power from the ideological foil of pov- are denied to colored persons. In the South and erty and simplistic ideologies of wealth as white- in most areas of the North, even those colored exclusive. Poverty sometimes loomed in such people who have the economic means are not discourses as a confirmation of certain African allowed to share in most of the activities which Americans’ suitability to middle-class standing; serve as symbols of economic and social status in other hands, it served as a rhetorical rallying for the parallel white groups” (Davis et al. point that championed African American solidar- 1941:244). This position was skeptical of the ity; and in still other hands it fueled a genuine genuine power of black consumption, suggest- commitment to eradicating the impoverishment ing that even when they were in possession of inflicted on many African American communities. these most desirable commodities blacks were Poverty operated in these discussions as both still denied the citizen rights that for white a material reality and an ideological representa- consumers went with them. tion, and both profoundly influenced the way Madam Walker certainly did not refute the in which African American wealth was defined commitment to African American wealth as a by white and black observers across classes. show of consumer and civic citizenship, but her On the one hand, poverty was a concrete mate- simultaneous embrace of consumer affluence and rial experience, and few African Americans had unwillingness to ignore structural impoverish- the opportunity to ignore impoverishment and ment foresaw the direction that was taken in its clear basis in racism. The proximity of the African American consumer activism from the wealthiest and poorest members of the African Depression onward. By the 1930s an increas- American community alongside each other on ing number of African Americans came to see North West Street underscores how difficult it laissez-faire capitalism as structurally committed was for African Americans to ignore the con- to racially based impoverishment and unlikely nection between racism and impoverishment or ever to surrender racist and class privileges reduce poverty simply to a rhetorical abstraction. willingly. Increasingly fewer African Americans In this context, black wealth often was viewed were willing to tolerate poverty or see consumer as a refutation of racist stereotypes—especially materialism as a path to black citizenship. In those linked to poverty––and an entreaty for 1936, for instance, Ralph Bunche (1936:65) full consumer citizenship. On the other hand, argued that New Deal programs targeted an poverty was an ideological representation that ambiguously defined middle class, which was was wielded to discipline the residents along “captivated by the lure of the American Dream,” North West Street as they and other Americans without addressing structural injustices, con- measured themselves against ambiguous mate- cluding that “the Negro middle class exists, rial and social norms. Many visions of African in the main, only psychologically.” By 1957 American wealth aspired to an idealized notion Franklin Frazier (1957:26) launched an even of affluence that was secured by extremely few more devastating attack on African American Americans of any background, romanticizing the materialism, arguing that a black middle class genuine opportunities available to any citizen had “accepted unconditionally the values of the and perhaps overestimating the power of African white bourgeois world: its morals and its canons American consumption to unseat racism. of respectability, its standards of beauty and By any measure Madam Walker was excep- consumption.” It is not chance that many Afri- tionally wealthy, but any assessment of African can American civil-rights protests were staged American affluence was inevitably tied to the in public consumer spaces, striking blows for color line and never utterly distanced from black consequential consumer privileges and citizen poverty stereotypes. Rather than focus on purely rights alike in one move. economic measures of wealth reflected in a mate- rial assemblage, Madam Walker’s consumption Affluence, Poverty, and the Color Line Paul R. Mullins, et al.— Consuming Lines of Difference 149 demonstrates how affluence and poverty were Amy Warner, and Glenn White for their help utterly social concepts embedded in class struc- throughout the Walker site research and fieldwork. ture, gendered ideologies, race, and a host of These folks bear no responsibility for any of the contextually specific factors. For Madam Walker, shortcomings of the final paper. much of the social meaning of her affluence came from its implicit contrast to poverty, and References in the case of Walker and many newly wealthy African Americans their affluence was a model of Archer, William respectability for their African American neigh- 1910 Through Afro-America: An English Reading of the Race Problem. E. P. Dutton and Company, New York, NY. bors, reproducing dominant genteel ideologies while their consumption unabashedly embraced Baker, Ray Stannard conspicuous wealth. 1973 Following the Color Line: An Account of Negro Citi- The power of that model—and the purview zenship in the American Democracy, reprinted from 1904 edition. Corner House, Williamstown, MA. of racism––was clear in December 1915, when Indianapolis’s African American YMCA passed Bunche, Ralph J. an official decree imploring Walker to maintain 1936 A Critique of New Deal Social Planning as It Affects her home in the city and not move to Harlem. Negroes. Journal of Negro Education 5(1):59–65. The decree indicated that the members, “real- Bundles, A’Lelia izing the great loss her removal would be to 2001 On Her Own Ground: The Life and Times of Madam the city and state, beg her to reconsider it and C.J. Walker. Scribner, New York, NY. live always among us to the end that we may be conscious of and influenced by her beautiful Chicago Commission on Race Relations 1922 The Negro in Chicago: A Study of Race Relations and and useful life she lives” (YMCA 1915); their a Race Riot. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL. entreaty failed, though. In February 1915 Walker had been levied an additional admission charge Davis, Allison, Burleigh B. Gardner, and Mary R. at the Isis Theatre in Indianapolis, a strategy that Gardner 1941 Deep South: A Social Anthropological Study of Caste was typical of the everyday indignities targeting and Class. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL. African American residents, including its most wealthy member. Walker filed a lawsuit arguing Divita, James J. that “she is of African descent, and a member of 1994 Demography and Ethnicity. In The Encyclopedia of Indianapolis, David J. Bodenhamer and Robert G. what is commonly called the colored race: That Barrows, editors, pp. 51–60. Indiana University Press, when she applied for a ticket and admission to Bloomington. said show, she was clean, sober, neatly dressed, and orderly, that she was ready and willing at all Dossett, Kate times to comply with all lawful and reasonable 2009 “I Try to Live Somewhat in Keeping with my Reputa- tion as a Wealthy Woman”: A’Lelia Walker and the rules and regulations” (Indianapolis Star 1915:7; Madam C.J. Walker Manufacturing Company. Journal Suit of the Central Amusement Company 1915). of Women’s History 21(2):90–114. Walker decided that despite her wealth she could not tolerate or evade the everyday racist indigni- Drake, St. Clair, and Horace R. Cayton 1945 Black Metropolis: A Study of Negro Life in a Northern ties she experienced in Indianapolis. Her move City. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL. to Harlem confirmed that no degree of affluence could evade racism, binding her to the many Du Bois, W. E. B. poor African Americans throughout the nation. 1908 The Negro American Family. Atlanta University Press, Atlanta, GA.
Acknowledgements Dudley, Tara 2006 Setting the Ideal African-American Interior: The This research was made possible by a Multidis- Walker Residences and Salon in New York. Studies ciplinary Undergraduate Research Institute Grant in the Decorative Arts 14(1):80–112. from Indiana University-Purdue University, India- Fitts, Robert K. napolis. Thanks to Cynthia Bates, A’Lelia Bundles, 2002 Becoming American: The Archaeology of an Italian Dave Gadsby, Ryan Gray, Chris Matthews, Wilma Immigrant. Historical Archaeology 36(2):1–17. Moore, Thomas Ridley, Suzanne Spencer‑Wood, Frazier, E. Franklin 150 HISTORICAL ARCHAEOLOGY 45(3)
1957 Black Bourgeoisie. Free Press, New York, NY. Suit of the Central Amusement Company 1915 Suit of the Central Amusement Company. Madam C.J. Gaines, Kevin K. Walker Papers, Indiana Historical Society, Indianapolis 1996 Uplifting the Race: Black Leadership, Politics, and
Indianapolis Star Thornbrough, Emma Lou 1911a Record of Transfers. Indianapolis Star 6 May:5. 2000 Indiana Blacks in the Twentieth Century. Indiana Indianapolis, IN. University Press, Bloomington. 1911b News of Colored Folk. Indianapolis Star 2 July:34. Indianapolis, IN. YMCA 1911c News of Colored Folk. Indianapolis Star 6 August:34. 1915 Madam CJ Walker YMCA Resolution. Madam C.J. Indianapolis, IN. Walker Papers, Indiana Historical Society, Indianapolis 1911d News of Colored Folk. Indianapolis Star 24 Decem-
Roell, Craig H. G. Brandon Muncy 1994 The Piano in the American Home. In The Arts and Department of Counseling and Educational the American Home, 1890–1930, Jessica H. Foy and Psychology Karal Ann Marling, editors, pp. 85–110. University of School of Education Tennessee Press, Knoxville. Indiana University 201 N. Rose Avenue, Suite 4000 Scott, Walter Dill Bloomington, IN 47405-1005 1917 The Psychology of Advertising. Small, Maynard, and Company, Boston, MA.