[Banner for] Lou. Ky. Menelek Club

[Louisville, Kentucky]: [Menelek Club], 1929. Good. Felt banner measuring 11" x 26½" at its tallest and widest. Good: patches of soiling and fading with a few small holes; lacking one tassel.

This is a pennant for the Menelek Club of Louisville, an African American social club that began in 1926. According to an oral history given by an employee of the Louisville Leader, a weekly Black newspaper at the time, the club was named for Menelik, the claimed first Emperor of Ethiopia and son of King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba. The members were the city's Black leaders, professional and business men. They made charitable donations to the city and were active in civic affairs. We found only one mention of a Menelek club in a newspaper after 1929, but we believe that this 1932 article referenced a physical place and not the social club.

Henry Allen was the founder and first president of the club. He and his wife Bessie were the first African American social workers in Louisville, and managed the Kentucky Home Society for Colored Children. Bessie Allen also ran a nonsectarian Sunday school and opened the Booker T. Washington Community Center. Horace Leon Street served as Menelek Club president in 1929. Street was a top officer for the Mammoth Life Insurance company, Kentucky's largest African American-owned business. He was also the first husband of Mae Street Kidd, the noted multiracial businesswoman, civic leader and member of the Kentucky House of Representatives.

A few newspaper accounts found online conveyed the popularity of the club as well as its "reputation for high class entertaining." The club also played a large role at the "Lexington Colored Fair" of 1927 and 1929, with varying accounts deeming a day of the fair "Menelek day" or "Louisville day." The group traveled in a 50 car motorcade to parade through the streets of Lexington, led by a Louisville community band. They were esteemed guests at a grand and well-attended reception, "the social climax" of the fair, which included "scores of society leaders" from Nashville, Cincinnati, Indianapolis and other places.

Rare paraphernalia from a little-known, though quite important in their day, group of African American leaders and professionals in Kentucky.