Book review: ‘Our Secret Society: Mollie Moon and the Glamour, Money, and Power Behind the Civil Rights Movement’ by Tanisha C. Ford

The One Percent has everything you do not. A fancy house in a posh place. Designer clothing, fast cars. Friends in high places that know how to get things done. And money, they have lots of that. The One Percent has it all, and more – and as you’ll see in “Our Secret Society” by Tanisha C. Ford, they once wanted you to have it, too. Mollie Moon knew what it was like to struggle. Born in 1907 in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, she and her mother lived in a boardinghouse meant for migrants when Mollie was a baby. Later, Mollie’s new stepfather moved the family to Gary, Indiana, where Mollie witnessed “economic instability” caused by mill shutdowns. When she was ready to attend college, her mother hoped Mollie would become a pharmacist, which was “one of the most prestigious careers a Negro … could have in the 1920s,” but that wasn’t what Mollie wanted. As a young woman, she left Gary and moved to New York City, to Harlem, hoping to “make a deep social impact.” There, she met some of Harlem’s elite performers and thinkers, whom she joined in Moscow, then on to Berlin. Rising Nazi influence forced Mollie home...