Rent parties

CTL-E-1272 · Practice · other · 1920–1949

PROVISIONAL evidence grade of this record

Pay-at-the-door house parties held to raise rent money: hosts charged admission (reportedly about 25 cents a head in Bronzeville), served food and drink, and hired or hosted musicians. Neighbors helped carry furniture back upstairs afterward.

Notes

Merged into canonical KG 2026-10-03 from LIFE-001; source entity IDs: CTL-DR-LIFE-001:CTL-LIFE-E-002; source research type(s): practice.

Sources

Mamczur (2019), peer-reviewed article based on oral histories
Secondary video synthesis
eScholarship article (UC), secondary scholarly
ATUN Newsletter Winter 2024 (squarespace PDF, citing LeRoi Jones/Amiri Baraka, Blues People); Black Enterprise (May 8, 2009)
Drake & Cayton, Black Metropolis (University of Chicago Press, 1945) — scope confirmed via publisher descriptions and scholarly citations

Record CTL-E-1272 · CultureTechLens Knowledge Graph · evidence grade: PROVISIONAL · 5 sources · CTL research: LIFE-001.
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Cite as: CultureTechLens, “Rent parties (CTL-E-1272),” CultureTechLens Knowledge Graph, October 2026. https://culturetechlens.com/graph/entities/ctl-e-1272/

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MLA: CultureTechLens. “Rent parties (CTL-E-1272).” CultureTechLens Knowledge Graph, 2026, https://culturetechlens.com/graph/entities/ctl-e-1272/

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From the Archive

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Children asleep in a kitchenette apartment, Chicago, 1941Photo: Russell Lee, FSA-OWI, Public Domain, via Library of Congress

Children at a meal, Chicago, 1941Photo: Russell Lee, FSA-OWI, Public Domain, via Library of Congress

Children playing in vacant lot in Negro section of Chicago, Illinois, Chicago, 1941Photo: Lee, Russell, 1903-1986, FSA-OWI, Public Domain, via Library of Congress

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