A’Lelia Bundles, Madam Walker’s great-great-granddaughter and biographer, holds a 100 year old portrait of Walker from her Madam Walker Family Archives
I love Black History Month because I learn something new every day!
The truth is, I’m already immersed in black history every month, week and day of the year, but in February it feels as if I have lots of company. It seems that whereever I turn, there are websites, blogs, television networks, radio programs and lectures all celebrating the fascinating people I love to study.
Langston Hughes called A’Lelia Walker “the joy goddess of Harlem’s 1920s”
Writing books about my great-great-grandmother, Madam C. J. Walker, and her daughter, A’Lelia Walker, has given me an opportunity to learn not just about them, but about the eras in which they lived and the people they knew. Whether it’s Ida B. Wells and W. E. B. Du Bois or Langston Hughes and Florence Mills, they crossed paths with some of the most interesting and influential black women and men of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Through their lives, I’ve been able to tell a more inclusive account of American history than the version I learned in school. From Madam Walker’s birth in 1867 as America was emerging from the Civil War through World War I and the Harlem Renaissance to A’Lelia Walker’s death in 1931 during the Great Depression, I’ve been fortunate to view America through a lens that gives women and African Americans their rightful place in the nation’s story.
To begin the month, I’d like to share a super new video series about Madam Walker from the Biography channel.
I hope you enjoy the three brief videos.
And we’d love for you to visit our Official Madam Walker Biography Webpage and our Madam Walker Facebook Page.
MADAM WALKER’S EARLY LIFE
MADAM WALKER AS A SUCCESSFUL BUSINESSWOMAN
MADAM WALKER AS A POLITICAL ACTIVIST
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