"Once Upon a Time in Harlem" documentary introduces audiences to Chicago journalist Gerri Major

At the height of the Harlem Renaissance in the 1920s, the city bustled with activity.

People recited Langston Hughes’ “Weary Blues” poem on street corners. Duke Ellington delivered electrifying performances at the Cotton Club. A'Lelia Walker, daughter of millionaire Madam C. J. Walker, drew an enviable guest list to salons at her townhouse.

There to capture it all was Gerri Major, a glamorous journalist and Chicago native whose columns covered the Black upper class until her death at 90 years old in 1984. Nicknamed the “Harlem hostess,” she wrote for several newspapers before becoming a senior editor at Ebony and the society editor at Jet magazine.

Major is a central figure in “Once Upon a Time in Harlem,” William and David Greaves’ critically acclaimed documentary playing in select Chicago theaters in November. The film, featured in the Black Harvest Film Festival running Nov. 6-15 at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago’s Gene Siskel Film Center, captures a party attended by Major, composer Eubie Blake, painter Aaron Douglas and more than 20 other Harlem Renaissance luminaries at Duke Ellington’s home in 1972.

Carl Van Vechten Papers/Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library

Major’s body of work is a detailed chronicle of Black life, history and genealogy, but she has remained an obscure figure — until now.

“She was an important journalist in terms of just raising the profile of what was happening with the people during that time,” said Liani Greaves, who is David’s daughter and one of the documentary’s producers. “The purpose of our film is to tell those stories to insert the renaissance into the cultural memory of the nation.”

Also a fashion icon, Major has a dress featured in the National Museum of African American History and Culture’s collection. She is a regal presence in “Once Upon a Time in Harlem,” adorned in gold necklaces and bracelets and green rings that match her flower-patterned dress. In the documentary, she converses warmly with the other guests, including other Chicago natives: librarian Regina Andrews, historian Nathan Huggins and activist Louise Patterson.

Major also reminisces about throwing her own lavish parties at her home on West 139th Street, the cultural mecca known as “Strivers’ Row,” as well as her career.

She describes herself as a “helpful journalist” rather than a “great journalist.”

“If I had a choice of saying something that would hurt our people or keeping quiet, I would keep quiet,” she says in the film. “If I couldn’t do something that was going to give us a boost up, I was never going to give us a boost down.”

Courtesy of Neon

Born Geraldyn Hodges in 1894, her exposure to Black socialites began in her childhood in the Douglas community area. She was given a debutante ball at 18 and earned a bachelor’s degree in philosophy at the University of Chicago. But her early life wasn’t without struggle, especially as one of few Black women at the college.

“We were humiliated and put down and crucified, but we stuck it out,” she says in the film.

Before moving to Harlem, she married Dr. Henry Binga Dismond, the first of her three husbands, and taught at Stephen A. Douglas Elementary School. She also participated on a commission to investigate the Chicago Race Riot of 1919.

Besides reporting for the New York Amsterdam News, Pittsburgh Courier and other outlets, she worked as a publicist, radio announcer and writer with New York’s public health department.

In 1953, she joined the staff of magazines Ebony and Jet, owned by the Chicago-based Johnson Publishing Company. She traveled frequently, covering the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in England, writing about a dictator in the Dominican Republic and overseeing the company’s Paris bureau. Her column for Jet, “Gerri Major’s Society World,” ran until her death.

Courtesy of Neon

Together with Doris Evans Saunders, she wrote the 1976 book, “Black Society,” tracing the evolution of the Black upper class from the 1700s to contemporary times.

William Greaves initially sat on the “Once Upon a Time in Harlem” footage while continuing to shoot more content about the renaissance. After he died in 2014, his family worked to restore and release the film.

David Greaves, William's son, said it was important to share the stories of Major and others in the documentary at a time when Black history is being removed from schools and other institutions.

Seeing the film is “an act of resistance,” he added.

Major also felt her life was a lesson for younger generations.

“They have to remember that there are those of us who are now old, who have struggled, and worked hard, and had little to work with, had little sympathy, had no civil rights, had nothing, and we struggled and went ahead and worked and some of us died doing it,” she says in the film.

“And if they cross us all off, they’ve lost a great thing.”

Contributing: Justine Tobiasz