Our Rick Owens SS14 Paris Fashion week show was still buzzing as we prepared for a discussion at The Museum at FIT. Our collaboration with Rick Owens garnered billions of hits on the internet in addition to inductions into numerous museums. Towards the end of the discussion someone asked, “What is your connection to fashion?” A smile flashed on my mother’s face as she recalled the stories of my grandfather who as a boy delivered fabric for the family that was transported to New York City’s fashion district.

My grandfather eluded joy, it permeated through his smile.

A Black dandy, tall, hair slicked back under his white fedora which matched his white bowtie and white alligator loafers with tassels which later shifted to high top sneakers with his white suit with red pinstripes, one of the hundreds that filled his four closets in his DC suburb home. My grandmother Dr. Loncie Malloy was his match in life and on the dance floor, they met at a dance in the 1940s while attending Howard University. On the dance floor he remixed the latest moves of the time into his own thing, winding down to the ground and spinning back up with a funky flair in his sharp suit; while my grandmother, often in frilly dresses that sparkled and shined bright like her red hair with blonde hues circled and strutted around him before breaking out into her own flashy renditions. They spoke truth to power, and always found time for joy, it was their medicine.

By the smile on his face, one would never know what my grandfather experienced as a child growing up in the deep south in the early 1900s. He caught his joy from his father who was born the year slavery ended and their faith filled community in North Carolina. His father, William M. Malloy, worked hard to make sure his children attended college and medical school during a time when it was rare as a Black family due to the many systemic blocks, he witnessed an insurrection and more.

Laurinburg’s’ Black community created their own oasis. The community worked together to create ways to connect and celebrate.

Our family home in the early 1900s was a place of respite. Not only did community leaders gather to drink tea, smoke cigars and discuss politics, they made sure to uplift each other. A new job, a marriage, a college graduation, all accomplishments were the talk of the town. They knew once they stepped across the tracks to another community their joy would be in jeopardy. The lawns were stripped and everyone dressed in vogue showing their status in this wealthy Black community.

Laurinburg Institute, the first Black boarding school was also a place of respite for them, another source of healing joy that allowed them to be children. His best friend and bandmate at the school would become a lifelong brother, John Birks, who would later be known as one of the greatest jazz musicians in history, Dizzy Gillespie.

In the book Black, White, Colored, my mother, Lauretta and I follow the stories of my grandfather with over three decades of research. We wrote this book to not only shine a light on important unknown history and figures but to show ways that we can look back to make a better path forward learning from the resilience and power in collective works and joy. 

Black, White, Colored is currently available for pre-order and will be released via Amistad books on November 18th, 2025.

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