Malcolm on Harlem Rent Parties
Courtesy of the New York Public Library
A Rent Party, prequel to the modern-day house party, was at-home social gathering typically hosted in urban communities as a way of raising money to pay one’s rent. These fundraising events were commonplace during the 1920’s. Below is a paraphrased excerpt of Malcolm X discussing his personal experience with Harlem Rent Parties.
“Little basement dance halls with ‘For Rent’ signs on them. People offering you little cards advertising ‘rent-raising parties.’ I went to one of these—thirty or forty Negroes sweating, eating, drinking, dancing, and gambling in a jammed, beat-up apartment, the record player going full blast, the fried chicken or chitlins with potato salad and collard greens for a dollar and a plate, and cans of beer or shots of liquor for fifty cents. Negro and white canvassers sidled up alongside you, talking fast as they tried to get you to by a copy of the Daily Worker: ‘This paper’s trying to keep your rent controlled . . . Make that greedy landlord kill them rats in your apartment. . . This paper represents the only political party that ever ran a black man for the Vice Presidency of the United States. . . Who do you think fought the hardest to help free those Scottsboro boys?’ “
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