Black Hollywood’s Fete for United China Relief

that time Hattie McDaniel, Clarence Muse, Billie Holiday & the Nicholas Brothers hosted a fundraiser with Anna May Wong

Last summer while I was preparing for an event at the Los Angeles Breakfast Club (LACB) — a fun and kooky group that has been meeting weekly at the crack of dawn for nearly 100 years — I received a request from the group’s archivist. Did I know whether Anna May Wong had ever attended an event at the club?

This question sent me down a research rabbit hole, as most innocent questions about Anna May Wong do. I immediately ran a search on newspapers.com. One result in particular caught my attention: a United China Relief benefit hosted by the NAACP in May 1942.

“NAACP China Relief Fete Nets $7,000,” California Eagle, June 4, 1942

I’d never come across this entry before in AMW’s frenzied schedule of United China Relief fundraisers in the late 1930s and early 1940s. As I write in my book, AMW threw herself into the war efforts in the years leading up to and during WWII, hosting countless Bowl of Rice fundraiser galas, signing autographs in exchange for donations, auctioning off her personal wardrobe, and making propaganda films from which she donated all the proceeds. She was even sworn in as an air raid warden in Santa Monica.