​Progressive Dinner Party

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Progressive dinner parties and other gatherings in basements or backyards provided ideal venues for dating and making social contacts in the 1930s. Notice there appears to have been a deliberate effort to match the number of young women and men at the progressive dinner party Jane attended (there are 13 of each gender mentioned in the newspaper clipping). Ensuring the balance of women to men would have been crucial for date parties of this sort since partygoers were encouraged to pair off at different points throughout the evening in an effort to make as many social contacts as possible (Fass). This can be evidenced in the use of date cards, on which young women kept track of the different men they spent time with during an event (see exhibit f.).

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Curiously, many of the young men attending the progressive dinner party were not from Kings Mountain, while nearly all of the young women were. (The young woman not from Kings Mountain, Martha Plonk, appears to have been visiting relatives.) All of the young men in attendance, with the exception of one, were students from Lincoln Memorial, a university in Knoxville, T.N. that still exists today. The young men from Kings Mountain who also attended Lincoln Memorial likely invited the others to the date event in their hometown.

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It is interesting that the young men did the traveling to Kings Mountain, while the young women played hostesses. I can’t help but guess that this reflects the tighter constraints on women — it was much more acceptable for young men to take car trips with friends than women (Fass) (also see exhibit b., for restrictions on women and automobiles) — during this time period. The young women assumed the traditional roles of cook and hostess, preparing the food and welcoming the young men into their homes.

 

Notice too that the idea of the “progressive dinner party” may be a subtle indication of the affects of the Depression on the partygoers’ wallets. There was a clear effort among the women to share the duties of providing food and entertainment, all of which took place within private homes rather than public venues. If the young men were to take the women out to a restaurant or perhaps a dance hall, they would be forced to spend money. (‘Going Dutch’ was not how dates were typically conducted in this time period.) Such a dinner party reflects the sentiments expressed by Dorothy Dix, who writes that guys always “appreciate a girl’s going light on their pockets” (exhibit g.2). She adds, “girls would have more dates if they would do a little of the entertaining at home” (exhibit g.2). Dix’s advice, it seems, was right on point since hosting this progressive dinner party allowed a group of small-town girls to enjoy a date party with young men from a college over three hours away whom they might never have otherwise met.