History, Hair-story, Her-story

Black Issues Book Review, March, 2001 by Angela Dodson

What TV journalist-turned-biographer A'Lelia Bundles discovered about her celebrated foremother, hair-care enterpreneur and philantrophist Madam C. J. Walker and herself

One of A'Lelia Bundles' favorite childhood adventures in the 1950s was going to work with her mother, the vice president of the company in Indianapolis where Madam C. J. Walker manufactured the products that groomed, employed and empowered thousands of African American women. In the air hung the bergamot-scented family legacy of style and success.

In an elegant apartment nearby, she remembers being mesmerized for hours by her late grandmother's vanity, covered in mauve silk and filled with jeweled mirrors and opera glasses. They had belonged to Mae Walker Perry, Walker's adopted granddaughter and Bundles' grandmother. Stories passed down by her grandfather, Marion Rowland Perry Jr., and mother, A'Lelia Mae Perry Bundles, sparked the imagination of the child who grew up to be a respected television journalist. Now the 48-year-old great-great-granddaughter of Walker has published the much-anticipated biography On Her Own Ground: The Life and Times of Madam C. J. Walker (Scribner, Feb. 2001, $30.00, ISBN 0-6848-2582-1).

"As I explored an old dresser filled with the personal belongings of my famous grandmothers, I could feel their spirits beckoning me, sometimes whispering, sometimes clamoring with the message that I must tell their story," the author writes in the prologue.

She began researching Walker in high school and has spent nearly 30 years filling in the pieces and correcting myths about her. The primary error, as many a school child may have learned during black history month, was that Walker invented the straightening comb. Although she did popularize it, and her company bought the patent for it some years after her death in 1919, Walker was always quick to put that myth in its place.

"Right here and now, let me correct the erroneous impression held by some that I claim to straighten hair" Walker told a reporter in 1918. The businesswoman insisted that what she did was grow hair, not just press it, and banned references to straighteners in her ads, according to her biographer. Walker, who founded her company in 1906, had first developed products to correct her own hair loss, resulting from a common scalp condition.

What she did for women and the African American economy through her army of hair culturists was much more profound. Her success was in the marketing, training and distribution schemes that are credited with revolutionizing the industry. In turn she used her money and clout to work for racial progress and other causes, especially antilynching campaigns.

"The more I have learned about her political activism and visionary advocacy of women's economic independence," writes Bundles, "the more I have become convinced that the true story of her life is, indeed, more interesting than any of the myths that have been created about her through the years."

Bundles' beautifully written and well-researched book is considered the first comprehensive, nonfiction biography of the former laundress who was probably the first self-made, female millionaire in the United States and one of the most legendary African American entrepreneurs ever. "It was such a satisfying experience," said Bundles. "It's important not to accept other peoples definitions of who Madam Walker was," she added, "she was one of the most amazing women of the 20th century."

Bundles, an award-winning producer and former deputy bureau chief in Washington for ABC-News, is also an author, journalist and professional speaker on women's history, philanthropy, television news and minorities in the media. She has long been considered the authority on Walker's life and has been a contributor to books, encyclopedias and articles about Walker. Her young-adult biography, Madam C. J. Walker: Entrepreneur, received an American Book Award in 1992. She also spearheaded the campaign to get Walker on a 1998 U.S. postage stamp.

Her birthright is through Walker's granddaughter, Mae Walker Perry. Perry served as a model for the company and was later adopted by and was the only legal heir of Walker's famous daughter, A'Lelia, the grand hostess of the Harlem Renaissance. Mae's daughter, Bundles' mother, was raised to take over the business and studied chemistry at Howard University to prepare herself.

Bundles says her mother, now deceased, wanted to give her children the freedom not to follow in the business. "My mother was really wise in not making it a big deal because such a big deal had been made of it in her life," she told BIBR. She didn't want another generation to feel the business as a burden. She never made me feel I had to do anything.

When Bundles came of age in the early 70s, she said, "the more pivotal issue was when I wanted an Afro." Her father, S. Henry Bundles Jr., as president of another company that made black hair-care products, pointed out that the family owed a good deal of its livelihood to straighteners. It was her mother who broke the deadlock and marched her over to the Walker Beauty School to have the renowned stylists turn her straightish hair into an Afro. "My mother, wise woman that she was, realized that the battle in our house was just over hair after all," recalled Bundles.