Amina Dickerson, who could best be called the ”high priestess” of the Carnaval but who officially is called the president of the Du Sable Museum of African-American History, was brushing on eyeshadow, double-checking dinner reservations, joking with the Carnaval king and-in case that wasn`t enough for a woman who had 650 guests strolling up her front walk-talking about why she decided Chicago needed this hot-as-a-jalapeno party.
”Everywhere in the world they have created Carnaval, a celebration of customs linked to black culture,” said Dickerson, a 34-year-old Hyde Park resident whose resume includes 10 years as an administrator of African art at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington and whose reputation at Du Sable suggests that she is exactly the dynamo needed to help the struggling museum thrive.
”When I came to Chicago, everyone said you can`t have Carnaval in Chicago because it happens in February and it`s a little cold here for a street festival. We said, `Carnaval is a state of mind.`
”For a few hours you can be somebody else. Through the music, the dance, the food, the gaiety, there is a transformation. You`ll see, after it starts it just kind of goes on its own magic.”
Indeed, though the setting was the brick plaza in front of the Du Sable Museum in Washington Park on the South Side, it could have been a street in Port-au-Prince or Santo Domingo, the capital cities, respectively, of Haiti and the Dominican Republic, the Caribbean countries celebrated in the theme of the third annual Carnaval Ball.
The $125-a-ticket ball is the biggest fundraiser of the year for Du Sable, an institution that takes its name from Haitian-born Jean Baptiste Point Du Sable, who in 1770 was the first non-Indian to settle in the stinky onion field that would become Chicago. The museum, founded in 1961 by educator Margaret Burroughs, houses more than 800 works of art from the era of Roosevelt`s Works Progress Administration and the 1960s black arts movement, and its library holds more than 10,000 volumes on African and African-American life, history and culture.
The $60,000 raised this year will help pay for museum operations, but Dickerson said she would like to see corporate underwriting ”like (Marshall) Field`s doing the Lyric or the symphony or one of the other powerhouses in town. It`s tough to get that in the black community. If we did, we could make $100,000 or $150,000.
”But I`m patient,” said Dickerson, looking out her office window at the assembling crowd. ”It`s a process. We`re getting better every year.”
(Dickerson said she was most proud that among other improvements, she had more than 10 minutes to get dressed this year. Last year she never did get her eyeshadow on for the ball.)
Besides the money, Dickerson said one of her objectives is ”to bring people back to the South Side. Washington Park is a very special place in the black community. People remember growing up here, playing here. We want to dispel all the myths about the South Side being a place you get mugged.
”We had people calling, asking, `Is it safe?` ” she said, somewhat incredulous. ”Of course, it`s safe.”
Outside Dickerson`s window, a scarlet ribbon was unspooled across the plaza, an aisle for the coronation of the Carnaval king and queen. As guests dressed in ostrich feathers, bejeweled masks and various costume exotica waited for the pagaentry, they fueled themselves on Caribbean canapes, codfish balls and skewers of pork, pineapple and peppers.
In Carnaval`s short history it has gained a reputation as ”the last great party of the summer” and attracts the creme de la creme of the black community: The guest list was heavy with CEOs and those with clout at City Hall.
”This is the social event of the season,” confirmed one of the guests, Monroe Anderson, press secretary to Mayor Eugene Sawyer. (Curiously, the fire- eaters dance after dinner was dedicated to the mayor, although because of scheduling conflicts he could not be there to accept the dubious honor.)
Just past twilight, when the strings of lightbulbs twinkled around the plaza, the coronation began. Rev. Dr. Gessel Berry, pastor of Bethany United Methodist Church in Highland Park and officiator of the ceremony, was first to launch down the football-field-length aisle.
He was followed by two young girls in floor-length buttercup taffeta gowns strewing confetti, and a court of two men and five women chosen for their impressive community-action records. Etta Moten Barnett, who appeared on Broadway in the original ”Porgy and Bess,” led the procession and melted the crowd with her incandescent smile and spry step.
The queen, Bettiann Gardner, cochairwoman of Soft Sheen Products Inc., and king Jacoby Dickens, chairman of Seaway National Bank, strolled across the carpet wearing all the trappings of royalty. Both earned their crowns through years of community service.
Among other things, Gardner is chairwoman of the board of the New Regal Theatre, a multimillion-dollar restoration of the former Avalon Theatre; and she established the Bettiann Gardner Family Learning Center in the Robert Taylor Homes of the Chicago Housing Authority. Dickens chaired Mayor Harold Washington`s 1986 re-election campaign, is a commissioner of economic development for the City of Chicago and serves on the board of the Chicago Urban League, to name a few of his civic posts.
She wore a 10-foot gold lame and rhinestone robe, trimmed in the skins of more than a few ermine, on loan from New Orleans` Mardi Gras. He wore a more modest purple velour robe, with a fake fur collar. ”Hmmmm, I guess we know who rules the throne in this court,” Dickens had joked earlier upon seeing his spartan threads.
By night`s end, when the canopied tent was ringing with Caribbean sounds and most of the guests were dancing madly around the dinner tables, the magic of which Dickerson spoke was palpable. This was not your ordinary black-tie ball.