A'Lelia Bundles recently gave a talk to NOVA students about her great great-grandmother, Madam C.J. Walker.

“Something special is being created at NOVA.” Those were the opening words of A’Lelia Bundles, biographer and great granddaughter of Madam C.J. Walker, when she addressed her interested United States History 122 class on Wednesday, March 3, 2010.  “With more than 180 countries represented at NOVA, it is an interesting representation of what America will look like in the next three decades,” Bundles began.

Bundles has engaged public audiences on her book, On Her Ground the Life and Times of Madam C.J. Walker, from Kansas to Latvia, and Walker’s life story is a collective one that one from any gender or culture can appreciate and identify with. It is the classic rags to riches story in which the heroine, Walker, saw fit to invest in the well being of the less fortunate in her day. In fact, one elementary school in Peoria, KS was so inspired by Walker’s philanthropy that the children raised money for Haiti.

Like most successful people, Walker did not ascend to the heights of goodwill and fortune alone. At the age of seven, Walker’s parents died and by the age of 14, Walker was married. By 20, she was a mother and widow. She then moved to St. Louis, MO to live with her four brothers who were barbers. At St. Paul American Methodist Evangelical Church, a group of church women decided to mentor Walker. They helped her get a job as a maid. From that job, she was promoted to a cook.

Along her journey, Walker suffered from scalp disease. In the early 1900s, there were not many options for hair care or scalp disease as there are now, nor were the hygiene standards very high. Many suffered from terrible scalp conditions. Walker was among their number. She experimented with different treatments and then formulated her own hair care product. She sold the product out of her brothers’ barber shop. The remedy was called Madam Walker’s Wonderful Hair Grower.

According to biographer Bundles, “It was quite revolutionary in 1907 for Walker, a black woman, to put her own image on a product. There were few products geared toward African Americans and those had only pictures of white women.” She not only put her image on her products, but also changed her name from Sara Walker to Madam C.J. Walker after her third marriage. Madam was a French term that American women of high society used.

Walker acquired as much knowledge as she could. She had her secretaries read the daily newspaper out loud. If they did not know what a word meant, then Walker would look up the word  to not to embarrass them.

Before women were granted suffrage, Walker was photographed in the driver’s seat of a Model-T Ford in 1910. When Bundles was asked by a NOVA student if all of Walker’s panache was resented by the African American community, Bundles replied, “Back then successful African Americans were role models. Just the fact that one of them had made it gave them something to aspire to.” Later on when Walker relocated to Indianapolis, she hired a tutor to improve her own learning and grammar. She surrounded herself with excellence hiring the best lawyer, hiring the best accountant, and throwing the best parties. She loved music and Nobel Sissel, the American jazz musician and playwright, was one of her music entertainers when he was a teenager, according to Bundles.

A’Lelia Walker was the apple of her mother’s eye. She grew up privileged, never experiencing the struggles of her mother’s childhood for herself. This life of comfort did not inhibit her from learning to care for others. May Bryant was adopted by A’Lelia Walker after becoming a hair model for and a close friend of the Walker family.

Bryant began with the Walkers as an errand girl. Born to a widow who was the mother of eight children, her birth mother knew she could not give May the life that she wanted for her. So, she asked the Walker family to legally adopt May so long as they provided May an education. A’Lelia Walker agreed, and thus became A’Lelia Bundles’ great grandmother.

One NOVA student asked Bundles why she did not go into the hair care business. Bundles replied that her passion was writing. Bundles had written for student newspapers, radio, the New York Times Book Review, and other prestigious publications. Her biographic novels include Madam C.J. Walker: Entrepreneur, Madam C.J. Walker (Black Americans of Achievement), and On Her Own Ground: The Life and Times of Madam C.J. Walker. JOY GODDESS: A’Lelia Walker and the Harlem Renaissance, an  upcoming novel focusing on Walker’s only daughter, A’Lelia Walker, is scheduled to be released in 2011.

You can find out more about A’Lelia Bundles and the Walkers at www.madamcjwalker.com.

By: Annie Ryan

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