The main goal in joining a social club was to "be somebody" within the community.
Treated as inferiors in the outside world, an appearance in the Society Notes gave African-Americans an opportunity to be respected in their world.
African-Americans knew that if their name was in the paper, virtually everybody would see it. This is because in Charlottesville's black families in the 1930s, there was a "whole ritual around reading the newspaper," and "gossip columns were one of the favorite things" to read.