Consuming Lines of Difference

140 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

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