Aiken Lecture featuring A’Lelia Bundles in conversation with Ernie Suggs

Online ticket sales close at 5pm EST on the day of the event. Tickets will be available at the door prior to the event start time. Dubbed the “joy goddess of Harlem’s 1920s” by poet Langston Hughes, A’Lelia Walker was a dazzling cultural icon whose legendary parties and Dark Tower salon helped define the Harlem cultural scene. After inheriting her mother’s pioneering hair care business, A’Lelia became America’s first high-profile Black heiress and a patron of the arts. Joy Goddess takes readers inside her New York homes, where she hosted luminaries including Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Paul Robeson, Florence Mills, James Weldon Johnson, Carl Van Vechten, and W.E.B. Du Bois—figures who shaped African American history and culture during the Roaring Twenties. Drawing on extensive...