Author: Steve Herman
Issue: April, 2000

The barge she sat in, like a burnished throne, Burned in the water. The poop was beaten gold; Purple the sails, and so perfumed that The winds were lovesick with them...

--Shakespeare, Anthony and Cleopatra

We all know that cosmetics existed thousands of years ago. Cleopatra used a heavy arsenal of beauty aids to help her shake the foundations of the Roman Empire. Yes, cosmetics and perfumes have a long history, but the consumer industry we live in is relatively recent, a creation of the decades 1890 through 1920. The products hawked in the 19th Century by druggists, perfumers, barbers, physicians, and a colorful assortment of other enterprising individuals were primitive by our standards. Certainly, active ingredients were used with abandon, notably arsenic, lead, and mercury. These were products that really made visible differences, and the consumer was well-advised to be wary of the majority of these mysterious concoctions.

The transition to modern consumerism involved not just the introduction of responsible product formulation, but fundamental transformations of social behavior. Women were at the heart of this development in the cosmetic industry, and we will consider the contributions of two of them: Annie Turnbo Malone and Madame C. J. Walker. These women and their contemporaries paved the way for Estee Lauder and Mary Kay Ash in our time.

It is essential to recognize the relative perception of beauty products and hair treatments for different ethnic groups at the time in question. For the white consumer, the use of makeup was the major issue; the disreputable view of the painted lady had to be overcome. The black woman had a more complex situation regarding the products being offered. Hair-straightening and skin-lightening products could be viewed as an attempt to seem more white, and use of these products was thus charged with racial overtones within the black community.

Into this seething cauldron of social and economic change, two remarkable women seized the challenge, each becoming millionaires in the process. Each was born into poverty, endured grueling manual labor, and lived in a society with intense racial discrimination. The women, Annie Turnbo Malone and Madame C. J. Walker (born Sarah Breedlove), proved that in an America more than half a century before the civil right movement, opportunity indeed existed for all.

Each developed a hair-care formula. Walker based her product on lore obtained from an aunt who was a herb doctor. Malone took the approach many modern bench chemists use: Her formulation came from a large African man in a dream--or directly from God, whichever version one prefers.

Malone entered business first, anchoring her line with Wonderful Hair Grower. Access to traditional distribution through chain stores was denied to blacks, so the products were sold door-to-door. Business prospered and in 1902 manufacturing settled in St. Louis, with its vibrant black community and active toiletries trade. Within a few years, the line was distributed nationally.

Then as now, success breeds imitators, and by 1906 it was necessary to rename the product. The trademark protected the name Poro, the Mende (West African) word for a devotional society. These minority companies viewed their products as more than a mere business, but the focus of a way of life.

Malone's competition came from a former Poro sales agent, C. J. Walker. After experimenting with those hair-care staples, sulfur and capsicum, she came out with her own Wonderful Hair Grower. By 1910, from her headquarters in Indianapolis, Walker also achieved national distribution. The basis of the new hair-pressing treatment was light oil and a wide-tooth steel comb. The comb was heated on a stove, and the design placed less strain on the scalp than the tongs or pullers previously used. The result was long, styled hair.

With distribution forced outside the conventional wholesale-retail network by racial discrimination, reliance was placed on salons, mail-order, and door-to-door. As an example of this approach in mainstream America, a book salesman named David Hall McConnell established the California Perfume Company in 1886, when the perfume samples he gave away were better received than his books. Depot agents were recruited for house-to-house sales. The company he founded is better known to us as Avon.

In 1917, Walker constructed a lavish, $350,000 estate in the prestigious Hudson River village of Irvington-on-Hudson. Dubbed Villa Lewaro by tenor Enrico Caruso (!), the mansion was proof of the economic opportunities for anyone with energy and vision. Walker went on to become more than a leading businesswoman, but a leader of the black community. Her activities earned her a commemorative stamp from the U.S. Postal Service in 1998.

Prior to the 1950s, records and formulas are scarce, history fragmentary. Many important participants have been lost in obscurity. We will probably never learn who made the first hair relaxer, a technical feat beyond the grasp of the pioneers we have been considering. The sum of their efforts left an indelible impression on the cosmetic industry and American society in the 20th Century.

Frequently Asked Questions
About Madam C. J. Walker

Please read through the FAQ's before asking a question through e-mail. When was Madam Walker born and when did she die? Madam C. J. Walker was born Sarah Breedlove on December 23, 1867. The fifth of Owen and Minerva Anderson Breedlove's six children, she was the first Breedlove child born after the end of slavery. She died at age 51 on May 25, 1919. How many times was Madam Walker married? Sarah Breedlove married her first husband, Moses McWilliams, around 1882. Their daughter, Lelia (who later changed her named to A'Lelia) was born on June 6, 1885. Moses died of unknown causes in 1888. Although some sources say that he was killed in a race riot there is no documentation to support that claim and it is believed to be an inaccurate story. Six years after moving to St. Louis, Sarah Breedlove McWilliams married John Davis in 1894. The couple separated around 1903. After she moved to Denver in 1905, her close friend, Charles Joseph Walker, joined her in the Colorado town. They married in January 1906 and were divorced in 1912. How many siblings did Madam Walker have? Madam Walker had five siblings including one sister, Louvenia, and four brothers, Owen, Jr., Alexander, James and Solomon. Did Madam Walker invent the straightening comb? No, Madam Walker did not invent the straightening comb. This erroneous claim seems to have originated during the 1920s after Madam Walker's death when the officers of the Madam C. J. Walker Manufacturing Company purchased a patent for a metal comb from a man who had supplied the combs to Madam Walker during her lifetime. While much more research is required to determine which person or persons actually created the first straightening comb, there is evidence that such hair care implements were available at least as early as 1872 when Parisian Marcel Grateau perfected his Marcel Wave. Metal hot combs were sold in Sears and Bloomingdales catalogs during the 1880s to a predominantly white clientele. What was Madam Walker's contribution to the hair care industry? Madam Walker, who was inducted into the American Health and Beauty Aids Institute's Hall of Fame in 1999, is widely recognized as a pioneer of the modern hair care and cosmetics industries. As the founder of the Madam C. J. Walker Manufacturing Company, she developed marketing and distribution strategies as innovative as any entrepreneur of her era. An early advocate of women's economic independence, she provided lucrative incomes for thousands of African American women who otherwise would have been employed as farm workers, maids and washerwomen. Can I purchase Madam Walker hair care products? The original Madam C. J. Walker Manufacturing Company was in business from 1906 until 1985 when the Walker estate trustees sold the company. Since that time distribution of the products has been limited. Today Madam Walker's legacy in the hair care industry is celebrated in the success of the American Health and Beauty Aids Institute, a consortium of black-owned hair care products manufacturers. Many AHBAI members manufacture products similar to Madam Walker's original line of products. For more information contact www.ahbai.org I am writing a report. Where can I find primary source documents about Madam Walker? The Madam Walker papers are located at the Indiana Historical Society Library in Indianapolis. For more information go to www.indianahistory.org/library/lib.html or call 317-232-1879. We suggest that you consult the suggested research sources which are listed on this website. (Click here for a bibliography.) We also suggest that you visit your local library to consult black newspapers from the early 1900s and that you ask the librarian if there are any archival materials about the black community in your town or city. Major manuscript collections of other famous African Americans who knew Madam Walker exist at the Library of Congress and at Howard University's Moorland Spingarn Collection in Washington, DC and at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in New York. We recommend that you not rely solely on the World Wide Web for your research because there is a great deal of inaccurate information about Madam Walker on the Internet. Where did Madam Walker live? Madam Walker was born in Delta, Louisiana. Around 1878 she and her sister moved across the Mississippi River to Vicksburg, Mississippi. After the death of her first husband, Moses McWilliams, in 1888, she and her two-year old daughter moved to St. Louis, where her brothers had established themselves as barbers. In 1905 after the death of her brothers and her separation from her second husband, John Davis, she moved to Denver. She lived in Denver from July 1905 to September 1906 when she began a year of travel to promote her new company. From 1908 until early 1910 she lived in Pittsburgh, where she opened the first Lelia College, a school to train Walker "hair culturists." In February 1910 she moved to Indianapolis, Indiana, where she built a factory. Although Madam Walker moved her residence to New York in 1916, the headquarters of the Madam C. J. Walker Manufacturing Company remained in Indianapolis for more than seven decades. Is there a Madam Walker museum? There are two National Historic Landmarks associated with Madam C. J. Walker. The Madame Walker Theatre Center in Indianapolis, which was home to the Madam Walker Manufacturing Company from the late 1920s until the mid-1980s is open to the public. A cultural arts center, it includes a small Walker museum room. Villa Lewaro, Madam Walker's Irvington-on-Hudson, NY mansion, is a private residence, which was briefly opened to the public in 1998 as a United Negro College Fund Designer Show House. A one-hour video about the house called "Designing for History" is available from Home and Garden TV at www.hgtv.com. I have seen fictional accounts and novels about Madam Walker. Do these sources contain reliable information? We do not recommend any of the novels or other fictional accounts about Madam Walker because they include inaccurate information. Click here to e-mail A'Lelia Bundles For more information contact: info@madamcjwalker.com

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