16
Battle for Hair Supremacy
On a sweltering, humid day in June 1912, Annie Turnbo sat on a park bench in St. Louis, wishing for a cool breeze. She was hot and tired. She’d spent the last year on a tour of forty-six states, overseeing the hair salons and offices she had set up across the country, giving presentations, and meeting with her more than three thousand employees. Her company was making nearly a million dollars a year ($8.1 million). As she sat underneath a shady tree, exhausted, it hit her all at once.
She was always working. There in the park in Missouri, she was in the middle of pitching to a few dozen women who were interested in becoming sales agents for her company, Poro. She told the women that her sales agents were the evangelists of Poro and Poro women were examples for other black women, who “spread the gospel of personal appearance.” When she finished, several women approached her to ask questions about possible employment. One woman was out of work after she had injured her leg in a furniture factory where she had been employed. Another woman had been taking care of her infant niece since her brother died and was looking for work she could do from home. A woman who was a principal at a local school was intrigued. She said she was looking for a new career. Annie signed several saleswomen that afternoon, expanding her army of Poro representatives. After she finished signing them up, she closed her eyes, leaned back, and dabbed sweat from her face with a handkerchief. As she started to relax, she heard a voice behind her: “Nothing cools like lemonade.” When she opened her eyes, she saw a man standing in front of her, smiling and holding a glass of lemonade. He introduced himself as Aaron Malone.
Aaron Malone was a traveling Bible salesman. He had big brown eyes, caramel-colored skin, and short, straight hair. “You picked a good time to start your company,” he told Annie. She agreed. As the Reconstruction era was replaced by Jim Crow and blacks were excluded from white shops and sections of town, a powerful black economy was emerging. Excluded from white institutions, blacks sought black-owned businesses and built all-black communities in which to spend their hard-earned dollars.
It had been a whirlwind since the World’s Fair. Annie had opened Poro College, a training center for hairstylists, built a sales force of thousands, and franchised hundreds of beauty shops. She hardly had time to enjoy or even count her money, as she was always on the road.
“Do you employ men?” Aaron asked with a smile. “No, but I believe many men help their wives who are Poro agents,” she told him. Still smiling, Aaron rubbed his chin as if he were thinking. “Well,” he finally said, “if I want a job I guess I’ll have to marry the boss.”
Annie was flattered but too busy to date or be courted. Aaron was persistent. He began showing up at Annie’s presentations to flirt with her. Soon they began dating and then became engaged.
AS ANNIE WAS FINDING LOVE AND ENJOYING BEING A MILLIONAIRE, Madam C. J. Walker’s business was struggling and her marriage was on the rocks. The business was making a little over $10,000 ($250,000) a year selling hair products through the mail and franchising beauty salons. The Walkers’ share of profits was enough for them to purchase better clothes, housing, and transportation but nowhere close to Annie’s nearly million-dollar market share. After leaving Denver in 1906, Walker had set up shop in Pittsburgh for a few years before moving to Indianapolis, Indiana, in 1910.
Madam, who had fully expected to be neck and neck with Annie at that point, blamed much of the company struggle on her husband, who seemed to be more interested in fronting a prestigious company than running a business. He often failed to fulfill orders, came up with products that nobody would buy, and mismanaged the company’s money. He also drank too much and flirted openly with other women. Madam moved to minimize his role in the company by moving him from the manager’s office to the road. Walker was a natural salesman, and sending him on the road to drum up business strengthened sales and allowed her to take the reins of management. It came with one risk, though: spending nights alone could lead to his being unfaithful. It was a risk she had to take to keep him out of the day-to-day business.
As she began to take over, Madam made plans to restructure the entire company. She wanted to build a factory and mass-produce her Wonderful Hair Grower and other products instead of making them in small batches on her stove or outsourcing her production to another manufacturer.
Shortly after they arrived in Indianapolis, the Walkers bought a home on the north side of the city, in a middle-class black enclave of shop owners, grocers, and domestics. She purchased a two-story, three-bedroom brick home at 420 North West Street with a balcony on the second floor facing the street for $3,500 ($87,330). After purchasing the home, Madam renovated it by adding two additional bedrooms and bathrooms and placed an ad in the local newspaper for borders to supplement her income. “Four congenial lady roomers, teachers preferred, modern house, 640 N. West Street,” it read.
After moving in two boarders and finishing the renovations, she threw a housewarming party. More than a hundred guests attended, bringing gifts. The interior of the house was decorated with cut flowers and palm trees and the Walkers hired a harpist to provide background music for the gathering. After introducing herself to her neighbors and getting settled in Indianapolis, Madam began rebuilding her company. Among the attendees at the housewarming was George Knox, the publisher of The Freeman, the largest black newspaper in Indiana. He and Madam struck up a friendship. Knox was a loyal friend and enthusiastic booster of those he considered to be in his inner circle. Shortly after the two became friends, Knox became Madam’s most enthusiastic advocate, printing articles about her in his paper and taking creative license to publicize her wealth and success.
In 1912, Madam went on the road to raise $50,000 ($1.2 million) to build a factory. Staying in colored boardinghouses in North Carolina, Virginia, New York, California, and Missouri, she visited black industrialists, lawyers, and doctors, trying to get them to invest in her idea. She returned from her trip unsuccessful and decided to put up her house as collateral for a small loan to build a factory in a brick building down the street.
As Madam was restructuring, Poro remained the dominant brand of black women’s hair care products. Madam knew if she were to compete with Annie, it would be not with superior hair products but in the marketing and branding.
At the time, Booker T. Washington was the most famous black person in America. He was a friend of the black industrialist Alonzo Herndon and the late Robert Reed Church. He was also the head of the Tuskegee Institute and the founder, along with Andrew Carnegie, of the National Negro Business League, a preeminent organization for African American entrepreneurs. Madam believed that if she could win an endorsement from Washington, her brand would vault to the top.
Winning an endorsement from Washington would not be easy. He despised black hair care and beauty products, believing that they encouraged the imitation of whiteness. “I have come to view with alarm . . . hair straightening advertising,” he once wrote to a black newspaper, imploring it not to carry black hair and makeup ads. At the Tuskegee Institute, he banned makeup for the Indian and black students.
In 1912, Madam wrote to Washington, asking for permission to sell her hair care products at the agricultural convention in Tuskegee. Washington rejected the idea, scolding her for wanting to sell hair care products to poor black farmers. “I do not feel that a visit to our conference would offer the opportunity which you desire,” he wrote back in diplomatic but cold prose. Madam went there anyway.
The week of the convention, she showed up on the porch of Washington’s house at the Tuskegee Institute, hoping to get him to reconsider. The house sat on a half-acre lawn across from the institute. It was made of red brick and built in the Queen Anne style, with two balconies and a porch that wrapped around the house. Madam knocked on the front door and asked to talk to Washington in person. Washington refused to speak with her and dispatched his assistant to deal with her instead. Madam delivered a letter via his assistant asking that he reconsider and let her speak at the convention. Later that day, perhaps won over by her persistence, he sent word back to her that she could speak for ten minutes but could do no selling.
She spoke the first night of the convention about having risen from the sharecropping fields to start a hair business. Few, including Washington, were impressed with her oration. According to legend, she did not give up. She went back to Washington’s home a second day and she won him over by demonstrating her products on his female friends and relatives, shampooing and styling their hair. In the end, he allowed Walker to sell her products to attendees at the remainder of the convention. Perhaps he was warming to the idea of black beauty products.
Before she left Tuskegee, Madam installed an agent in the region to continue selling her products. She selected Dora Larrie, a thirtysomething understudy of hers in Indianapolis. A few months after Dora was set up, Mr. Walker began an affair with her. For several months, the two met in hotels in Alabama. Together they conspired to pull the same trick that Madam had on Annie Malone: they decided they would knock off Madam’s products and start their own line together. Once they were off the ground, he would leave Madam and marry Dora. Shortly thereafter, Dora stopped working for Madam and moved to Atlanta, Georgia, to get started on the new venture.
When Madam discovered their plans and their affair, she was furious. Madam, who often carried a revolver in her purse for protection, contemplated killing Mr. Walker but thought better of it. Instead, she cut off access to their bank accounts and hired a lawyer to begin divorce proceedings.
In 1912, Madam attended a conference of the Negro Business League in Chicago, a convention for black entrepreneurs. More than two hundred African American businessmen and -women were expected to be in attendance. Along with Madam, the convention was attended by her fellow Hoosier George Knox.
On Thursday morning, the first day of the convention, Booker T. Washington introduced Anthony Overton, the founder and owner of the Overton Hygienic Manufacturing Company. His company was “the largest Colored manufacturing enterprise in the United States,” Washington noted. Overton was a titan. He had been born a slave in Louisiana in 1865. After Emancipation, he and his family had moved to Topeka, Kansas. In 1881, Overton opened a grocery store. He used the profits from his store to put himself through law school at Washburn College in Topeka. In 1892, he was elected a municipal judge in Topeka, becoming one of only a handful of black jurists in the country. In 1898, after he and his family saved $2,000 ($60,000), he moved to Kansas City, Missouri, and opened the Overton Hygienic Manufacturing Company, an outfit that produced and sold baking powder. Later he moved the company to Chicago and began selling cosmetics and toiletries as well. He started his company with “less than $2,000,” Washington bragged as he stood next to Overton. Overton was a fair-skinned black man with a toothbrush mustache, serious eyes, big ears, and hair parted in the center and shellacked straight. As he took the convention floor, he looked out into the audience where Madam was sitting and told his fellow entrepreneurs that his key to success had been focusing on black consumers. “When we added our line of toilet articles, we placed colored girls’ pictures on our Talcum Powder, Hair Pomades, and other toilet articles.” A smattering of applause and cheers came from the crowd. He continued, telling them that his “High-Brown” face powder was his company’s best seller. On the top of each box was an empty circle where the model should have gone. The space, he said, was reserved “for the most beautiful colored woman in the United States, which we propose to put on the box later as soon as we find her.” Nods, applause, and laughter came from the audience.
Washington opened up the floor for questions. George Knox stood, ostensibly to ask a question. When Washington called upon him, he redirected attention to his friend Madam C. J. Walker. “I arise to ask this convention for a few minutes of its time to hear a remarkable woman,” he began. “She is the woman who gave $1,000 to the Young Men’s Christian Association of Indianapolis. Madam Walker, the lady I refer to, is the manufacturer of hair goods and preparations.” Washington let Knox finish before telling him that his intervention was off subject. He then called on the next questioner. Walker and Knox were crushed by Washington’s response; they had been sure that the mention of Walker’s donation would have curried favor with Washington; instead, it seemed to have had the opposite effect, appearing self-congratulatory and self-promotional.
On Friday, the final day of the convention, Madam decided that she would get Washington to listen to her one way or another. As Reverend E. M. Griggs, the head of the Farmers and Citizens Savings Bank of Palestine, Texas, was wrapping up his speech, Madam seized the floor. “Surely you are not going to shut the door in my face,” she said, staring at Washington, daring him to stop her from speaking. Heads turned in her direction as she locked eyes with Washington. “I went into a business that is despised, that is criticized and talked about by everybody, the business of growing hair,” she began. She related her annual earnings, letting the crowd know that she was making $10,000 a year ($252,248). She listed the properties she owned, including her home in Indiana. “I have built my own factory on my own ground, 38 by 208 feet. I employ in that factory several people, including a bookkeeper, a stenographer, a cook and a house girl,” she continued. “I own my own automobile.” She concluded by revealing an aspiration of opening a beauty school in Africa: “By the help of God and the cooperation of my people in this country, I am going to build a Tuskegee Institute in Africa!” Her attempt at impressing Washington with a demonstration of wealth and flattery hung in the air as she waited for him to respond. “The next banker to address us is Mr. W. W. Hadnott, of the Prudential Savings Bank of Birmingham, Alabama,” Washington said, resuming the scheduled activities as if Walker’s outburst had never occurred.
Madam and Knox returned to Indianapolis defeated, but Knox tried to put a positive spin on the events, taking creative license, as he often did, to help his friend. He wrote that Madam had been one of the “big hits” of the conference. She “at once impresses an audience with the fact that she stands for concrete achievements rather than brilliance of oratory.” As far as anyone in Indiana knew, Madam had been received warmly by Booker T. Washington. But she would have to keep working if she wanted a genuine endorsement.
A little over a week after the conference, Madam filed for divorce from Mr. Walker in Indianapolis. Their marriage was not legal, as Madam had never divorced her previous husband, and she left Mr. Walker with little ground to stand on to pursue her assets. In October 1912, their divorce became final and Mr. Walker was left with nothing.
Mr. Walker and Dora Larrie’s new venture, the Walker-Larrie Company, sputtered in marketing its hair products. They married in 1913, and Dora dubbed herself Madam C. J. Walker; then she broke off her relationship with C. J. and pushed him out of their new venture. “We were not married for long before I discovered that she did not love me, but that she only wanted the Madam title and the formula,” he lamented.
Divorced from the first Madam Walker and estranged from the second, C. J. struggled to make ends meet. In 1914, he printed a public apology to the original Madam Walker, hoping she would take him back. “I let drink and this designing of evil women come between us,” he wrote. Madam wrote to him through her lawyer, suggesting that he relocate overseas and start his own hair company and including $35 ($900) in the letter. “Madam does not understand why you don’t go to Key West, Cuba or some other place in which she has few agents,” the lawyer wrote, counseling him to “Keep sober and build a big business.” In her heart, Madam hoped he would be able to pull himself together one day. Instead, he continued to write her, asking her to reconcile or give him money or a job. Any chance at reconciliation died when he started selling the formula for Wonderful Hair Grower to knockoff companies. Nonetheless, he never stopped writing Madam to try to win her back. He was “writing these lines with tears dripping from my eyes,” he wrote in one of his many letters.
AS MADAM WAS MOVING ON FROM HER BROKEN MARRIAGE TO MR. WALKER, Annie Turnbo and Aaron Eugene Malone were preparing to get married in St. Louis.* Aaron was a teacher and salesman with a modest income. By 1914, Annie, on the other hand, was worth between $1.5 million and $3 million (between $36.4 million and $72.8 million) and the head of a business empire with more than four thousand agents in forty-six states, as well as Jamaica, Trinidad, Cuba, West Africa, and the Philippines. She lived in a mansion managed by two maids. Her home had twenty-six rooms, many of which she let out to boarders. It sat just above the site of the World’s Fair at Forest Park on the west end of St. Louis.
In the fall, Annie and Aaron were married in Annie’s palatial home in front of more than a thousand of her friends, family members, and employees. She was smitten with Aaron. Shortly after they married, she put all her assets, including the house, into both their names and made him the chief executive officer of Poro.
In 1916, the Malones broke ground on a new headquarters that would span nearly an entire two-acre city block of St. Louis and employ more than two hundred people. The large four-story rectangular brick building would include a college with dozens of classrooms, meeting rooms, a dining hall, and a dormitory. It would also include a factory, where Poro products would be made, and a greenhouse, where the herbs for the products and the vegetables and fruits for the dining hall would be grown.
AS ANNIE WAS EXPANDING HER BEAUTY BUSINESS, MADAM BEGAN to focus less on her hair care business and more on real estate and cementing herself as a member of the black elite. In 1912, she purchased a brownstone town house in Harlem in the northern part of Manhattan, hoping to soon relocate from Indianapolis to the glitz and glamour of Manhattan, where she might better enjoy her wealth. “I am preparing myself so that when this hair business falls to the ground I will have an income and I won’t have to come down,” she said in 1912. Madam continued to spend, buying a Cole touring car, the top luxury vehicle on the market. Her daughter, A’Lelia Walker, who Madam was grooming to take over the business one day, spent thousands of dollars on pearls, gold, and clothing. Freeman Briley Ransom, Madam’s business manager, was worried about the Walkers’ financial habits. “I want you to join me in urging Madam . . . to bank a large portion of her money to the end that it be accumulating and drawing interest for possible rainy days,” he pleaded to A’Lelia in letters.
Madam’s new, lavish lifestyle ate away at her profits, but it also raised her profile. She was not the first rich African American, but she was perhaps the first to be both brazenly wealthy and openly black. Hannah Elias and Jeremiah Hamilton were both incredibly rich, but they tried to distance themselves from other African Americans. Dr. James McCune Smith was at least as wealthy as Madam, but he detested materialism and lived a minimalistic lifestyle. Robert Reed Church, the country’s most well-known black millionaire, had died a few months prior. The black society pages reported on Madam’s cars, houses, and jewelry. It made people wonder, how much money does she have? Is she a millionaire?
In the summer of 1913, Madam heard that Booker T. Washington was coming to Indianapolis for the grand opening of the new YMCA, and she invited him to stay at her house in Indianapolis during his visit. To her surprise, he accepted. When Washington arrived at the train station, she had a car and chauffeur waiting for him and had informed the newspapers of his arrival. Reporters were stationed at her door, and she invited them in to interview Washington. They wrote of the opulence and decor of her house, continuing the fascination with her wealth. After Washington departed, Walker was able to get him to agree to let her visit him at Tuskegee and spend a few days with him and his students.
When she arrived on the Tuskegee campus in February 1914, he greeted her smilingly. Her displays of wealth seemed to have worked on Washington, who had finally warmed to her when he came to believe she was a possible donor. He personally took her around the campus and had her address a group of students. Later he invited her back to his office. There he asked her to donate money to the Tuskegee Institute to support scholarships at the college. Madam agreed on a large donation in his office.
After she returned home, she sent a small donation and wrote apologetically, “Next year I hope to be able to help you in a larger way.” Washington, believing that she was holding out, wrote her a few months later, asking for another donation for scholarships for three students. Madam wrote back, “I am unlike your white friends who have waited until they were rich and then help,” she admitted, conceding that she was not as liquid as her luxurious lifestyle suggested. “I have been mistaken for a rich woman, which has caused scores of demands for my help,” she added. Despite feeling somewhat duped by her, Washington appreciated her for giving what she could. At the National Negro Business League conference, he invited her to speak and encouraged her to attend in future years.
In the months after that exchange, Booker T. Washington’s health deteriorated rapidly due to severe hypertension. In 1915, he was ordered to take bed rest but refused and continued to work and travel. In November 1915, he collapsed from a stroke in New York while on a speaking tour. Doctors in New York told him he would not survive, and Washington asked to be sent home to Alabama. “I was born in the South, have lived all my life in the South, and expect to die and be buried in the South,” he said. Washington was trained home to Tuskegee, where he died on November 14, 1915. The family of Robert Reed Church, Madam C. J. Walker, and Annie Malone all sent condolences to Tuskegee and mourned the death of a titan.