Straightening Out The Walker Legacy. - Review - book review

In her eagerly anticipated biography of her great-great-grand-mother Madam C.J. Walker, A'Lelia Bundles reveals startling new insights into this legendary Black hair-care entrepreneur

Today it seems that everyone wants to be a millionaire--whether they dream of winning the T.V. quiz show or a state lottery. But in 1906, Madam C.J. Walker, a Black woman one generation removed from slavery, came awfully close to becoming a millionaire through her own hard work and entrepreneurial genius, founding a successful hair-care business, the Madam C.J. Walker Manufacturing Co. in Indianapolis, Indiana. The story of this reputed first self-made American woman millionaire is legendary and enthralling. But who was Madam really--an extraordinary self-promoter, a pioneering womanist or a philanthropic race woman? The answers are revealed in On Her Own Ground: The Life and Times of Madam C. J. Walker (Scribner, $35), written by A'Lelia Bundles, Madam's great-great-granddaughter and veteran network TV news producer (formerly Washington deputy bureau chief for ABC News). For more than 20 years, on evenings and weekends, through vacations and occasional unpaid leaves, Bundles collected and reviewed the Walker family papers, company archives and historical records; interviewed a network of hundreds of witnesses (many of whom have since died) and traveled across the country to trace her great-great-grantmother's journey from the Mississippi Delta, where Madam was born in 1867, through the South and Midwest where she built her legendary fortune, and finally, to the mansion Madam built on the banks of New York's Hudson River, where she died in 1919. Recently Bundles shared with ESSENCE some of the results of her quest to unearth and understand her familial legacy.

ESSENCE: Madam Walker was known in her day as the first self-made American woman millionaire--Black or White.

A'Lelia Bundles: Madam Walker was aware of the powerful symbolism of such an achievement, yet she told a reporter in late 1917, "I am not a millionaire, but hope to be some day, not because of the money but because I could do so much more to help my race." The value of Madam's assets when she died in 1919--her homes, factory, office, salons, apartment buildings and other real estate, furnishings, cars, jewelry and furs--would have been between $600,000 and $700,000. (In her will, she bequeathed $100,000 to various people and organizations, leaving the rest to her daughter A'Lelia Walker.) So although Madam was reputed to be a millionaire in the press, and promoted that reputation by her generous philanthropy, she was not actually worth a million dollars at any one time.

ESSENCE: People who have heard Madam Walker's name, think, Oh, she invented the hot comb. But that's also a myth.

Bundles: Straightening combs were first advertised in the 1880's and 1890's in catalogs for White women. Madam popularized their use among Black women with her Walker Method of hair care. She thought the comb was an improvement over another process promoted by Black hair culturist Annie Pope-Turnbo Malone. The claim that she invented the hot comb probably originated in 1922, three years after Madam Walker's death, when the Walker Company purchased the rights to the patent from the widow of the man who had manufactured hot combs for the Walker agents.

ESSENCE: That brings us to another myth: Madam Walker stole the Walker method from Malone.

Bundles: When Madam Walker lived in St. Louis and worked as a laundress, she met Malone, who had started a hair-care business, the Poro Company. Madame Walker did work, in fact, as an agent for Poro, and ultimately she and Annie Malone became the fiercest rivals for the rest of their lives. Neither one invented "the method" or the use of sulfur and petrolatum. These scalp-healing techniques are centuries old. Malone and Madam were both great at marketing, though Madam was better. She certainly had more personal charisma.

ESSENCE: Why did you spend so much time on this?

Bundles: I wanted to know the truth, and I want people to have the true story.

ESSENCE: So who was Madam? What was she like?

Bundles: Madam was a multidimensional personality. She was driven-sometimes--she pushed so hard she alienated the people who were closest to her, particularly her daughter A'Lelia. Madam was also married four times. But she was the sort of woman who, once she understood she had created any problems, would take a step back and make things right. Both Madam and A'Lelia had tempers, but neither could stand the other being unhappy with her for very long, so they were always doing this dance with each other. It was a real and complex mother-daughter relationship. Above all, Madam was very generous, almost to a fault, and could be very humble at times. She had great faith: People of that generation believed that faith in God was essential to their success and well-being, and she was no different. The AME church was very important in her personal development, when she first arrived in St. Louis as a poor washerwoman without an education and with a daughter. But she still made some mistakes, like marrying another man who was bad for her.

ESSENCE: What do you really want to say about her legacy?

Bundles: Her idea for hair products really became a means to an end. It was the opportunity for her to get the attention of women, to tell them that they should be economically independent and could better themselves. I was really amazed at her ability to push her way into circumstances that most women or men did not have the determination to weather. And she really did have a vision of moving her organization of Walker agents. Madam believed that the economic power of her agents could change America.

She wasn't the first to do many of these things that people attribute to her. But I believe she had to have been one of the first people to create a corporation that used its profits to affect social change. That is her legacy.

Excerpt from On Her Own Ground: The Life and Times of Madam C.J. Walker by A'Lelia Bundles At the time of her fifty-first birthday, Madam C.J. Walker had not only built a fortune but also her dream house, Villa Lewaro, in Irvington, New York. Here's a glimpse of the first holiday she celebrated on her fabled Hudson River estate "in the house that Negro money built":

A Season of Light at Villa Lewaro

Surrounded by a shower of birthday cards from friends and employees from across the country, Madam Walker celebrated her fifty-first birthday on December 23, 1918, amidst the splendor of a festively decorated Villa Lewaro, Madam's recently completed mansion on the Hudson River. That morning her former sister-in-law, Peggie Prosser (sister of Madam's third husband, C.J. Walker) had arrived from Louisville, Kentucky, at the Irvington, New York, train station. In tow was little Frank Ransom (son of Madam's long-time attorney, F.B. Ransom, who managed the Indianapolis operation). Little Frank was dressed in his new Christmas suit that Godmother Walker had bought for him. With her daughter Lelia in Washington, D.C., for the holidays (probably with her latest beau, Wiley Wilson, a pharmacist completing his medical studies at Howard University), Madam Walker was ecstatic to have the rooms filled with a child's wonderment and laughter.

The next afternoon, on Christmas Eve, the house began to fill with other friends. After dinner, the group explored the house as if it were a museum, moving from the music room where they gathered to hear more carols on the Estey's automatic player, to the library where they sampled the magnificent selection of books. That evening Madam Walker's chauffeur, Willis Tyler, drove a small group into the city for a basketball game at the Manhattan Casino, the hall at 155th and Eighth Avenue where Lelia and James Weldon Johnson had hosted a farewell concert for the 369th when the Black regiment departed for France the previous year. "Mme's entrance was the signal for an ovation and she was at once requested to throw the ball from her box," wrote houseguest Hallie Elvira Queen, a Spanish teacher at Washington, D.C.'s premier Black public preparatory school, Dunbar High School. After the game, Tyler drove the two women to Lelia's Harlem townhouse, where they spent the night.

A Week Later ...

Madam Walker greeted the new year with much anticipation and exhilaration as she reviewed Ransom's annual report. Her 1918 earnings had jumped to $275,975.88, an increase of $100,000 over the previous year, and an amount equivalent to more than $3 million current dollars. "Your receipts exceeded a quarter of a million and I have no doubt but that you can easily make it a half million in 1919," Ransom ecstatically predicted. "You should congratulate yourself on a remarkable business, and when I say remarkable, I am putting it mildly."

Even with the wartime supply problems, her sales had more than doubled in September, her busiest month, and in December, usually one of her slowest months. Now with the war behind them, both "Wonderful Hair Grower" tins and metal combs were back in stock. Just as she had expected, Chicago had turned into a lucrative market. "You will be surprised at the number of parlors that have been opened up since the Convention," Mr. Ransom wrote in mid-January after visiting the city. "Some really beautiful parlors. Chicago now reminds me of New York, a Walker Parlor on every corner." Even the conflicts with the agents over drugstore sales of Glossine had been resolved by a plan to open wholesale supply stations in several cities. And within weeks the Madam C.J. Walker Manufacturing Company would begin branching out from hair care into cosmetics, introducing a line of facial products that included cold cream, cleansing cream, witch hazel and four shades of face powder.

Still, potential money worries persisted. Madam Walker's 1918 expenditures--in large part due to the completion of Villa Lewaro--had ballooned to $329,016.85. "This makes an apparent deficit, which is, of course, offset by the loans, etcetera, all of which have been paid in full with the exception of the New York property," summarized the meticulous Ransom. All Indianapolis property is absolutely clear, leaving you a balance in the bank to your credit of $5,228.27," which, both had to agree, left an uncomfortably tight margin. But after only one month into the new year, money was flowing in so quickly that Madam Walker found little reason to be pessimistic. "As for your business it is increasing in leaps and bounds, which is remarkable for January," Ransom gleefully announced. "For instance, your receipts for Monday, just one day, were over $2,000. Your receipts for Wednesday were over $1,400, so you can see where you are going. If nothing out of the ordinary happens, your receipts for the year will approximate half a million if it does not go over." By month's end the company had taken in $26,477.43, exceeding January 1918 by $12,000.

To celebrate, Madam Walker visited Tiffany's showroom at 37th and Fifth Avenue and treated herself to a few eye-catching treasures--a 3.38 carat solitaire diamond set in a platinum ring with "66 tiny diamonds" and a pair of matching earrings, "the pair weighing 7.28 carats." While there, she also arranged to have three one-carat diamonds from another ring placed into a new setting. Riding up Fifth Avenue after making her purchases, she had every reason to believe that 1919 would move her closer to the millionaire status that she and Ransom both expected her to achieve. Unfortunately, she would die of kidney disease before the end of May.

Copyright [C] 2001 by A'Lelia Bundles. Excerpted from the book On Her Own Ground: The Life and Times of Madam C.J. Walker by A'Lelia Bundles, published by Scribner/A Lisa Drew Book.

COPYRIGHT 2001 Essence Communications, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2001 Gale Group