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The Story Behind Telling Madam C. J. Walker’s Story
When "Self Made: Inspired by the Life of Madam C. J. Walker" -- the Netflix series starring Oscar winner Octavia Spencer -- premieres on March 20, millions of people around the world will hear Madam Walker's name for the first time. Thousands of people, who already...
The Facts about Madam C. J. Walker and Annie Malone
Professor Tyrone McKinley Freeman, who teaches at Indiana University's Lilly Family School of Philanthropy, has described the impulse to compare the fortunes of Madam C. J. Walker (1867 - 1919) and Annie Malone (1877* - 1957) as "the first millionaire sweepstakes." In...
Madam Walker’s Mentors, Sister Friends & Rivals
I’ve written a lot about Madam C. J. Walker’s professional and financial achievements, but to truly understand who she was at her core, I’ve also examined her relationships with other women: her mentors, her sister friends and her rivals. Madam Walker is perhaps best...
The Real A’Lelia Walker Is Much More Interesting Than the Myth
A’Lelia Walker was born 134 years ago today on June 6, 1885. I’ve written a lot about her since I began researching her life during my senior year in high school fifty years ago. I won’t rehash the basic biographical information, which you can find in my book, On Her...
The Centennial of Madam C. J. Walker’s Death – May 25, 1919
On Sunday morning, May 25, 1919 – exactly 100 years ago this weekend – Madam C. J. Walker died at Villa Lewaro, her Irvington-on-Hudson, New York estate. A few hours later in black churches across America, ministers talked of her journey from deep poverty in the...
Remembering My Fantastic Dad, S. Henry Bundles, Jr. (1927-2019)
My dad, S. Henry Bundles, Jr., died a few days ago on March 26. Since then I’ve had a few tears, of course, but at the moment I am feeling more grateful than sad because he lived 92 very beautiful and productive years. He was president of the Center for...
Remembering April 4, 1968
We all remember where we were on April 4, 1968. We remember when we first heard that Martin Luther King, Jr. had been shot. We remember learning soon after that he had died. Indeed, that he had been assassinated. We already had lived through the assassinations of...
Madam C. J. Walker’s 150th Birthday (December 23, 2017)
Madam C. J. Walker was born Sarah Breedlove on December 23, 1867 on the same Delta, Louisiana plantation where her parents and older siblings had been enslaved before the Civil War. Orphaned at seven and a poorly paid washerwoman in St. Louis until she was 38 years...
Madam C. J. Walker’s First National Convention (August 30-31, 1917)
One hundred years ago this week -- on August 30 and August 31, 1917 -- hair care entrepreneur Madam C. J. Walker hosted the first annual convention of her sales agents and beauty culturists. More than 200 women gathered at Philadelphia's Union Baptist Church to hear...
Harlem Delegation Visits White House to Protest Lynching – August 1, 1917
July 28 marked the 100th anniversary of the Silent Protest Parade when 10,000 African Americans of all ages marched silently up Fifth Avenue to protest lynchings in America. As they stepped solemnly past thousands of onlookers, the only sounds were the muffled...
Strategy, Service and Serendipity (5-15-2016) Wilson College Commencement
Yesterday I had the privilege of delivering the commencement speech for Wilson College in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania. Founded in 1869, Wilson has been a pioneer in women's education for almost a century and a half. Like many other women's schools, it faced challenges...
Happy Birthday, Langston Hughes! (A’Lelia Walker and Langston Hughes)
Happy Birthday, Langston Hughes and Happy Black History Month 2016! For my A'Lelia Walker biography, I'm in the midst of simultaneously writing three connected chapters right now focused on late 1925 through 1926 about white novelist and music critic Carl Van...
Happy 148th Birthday to Madam C. J. Walker!
Today -- December 23, 2015 -- is the 148th anniversary of Madam C. J. Walker's birth! She was born Sarah Breedlove on December 23, 1867 in Delta, Louisiana on the same planation where her parents Owen and Minerva Anderson Breedlove had been enslaved. The first child...
A’Lelia Walker and Pope Pius XI (Rome 1922)
As President Obama greeted Pope Francis on the tarmac at Andrews Air Force Base this afternoon, I couldn't help but think of A'Lelia Walker's presence in St. Peter's Square for the coronation of Pope Pius XI in February 1922. In the midst of a five month overseas...
A World of Words: Asian American Poets at the Library of Congress
To be a writer is to live in the world of words. To get a thrill and a chill from a well-turned phrase. To become blissfully lost in the scenes and emotions other writers create. To be startled into a reality you had not yet considered. Yesterday I had the pleasure of...
A’Lelia Walker’s 1924 Visit to Atlantic City
Discreetly poured cocktails under the pavilion of George Walls’s Texas Avenue bathhouse made Atlantic City one of A'Lelia Walker's favorite getaways. Sunrise on Indiana Avenue beach lured her back every year. During the annual Easter parade, when families in...
The Future of Villa Lewaro: Madam Walker’s Dream of Dreams
During the week of October 19, 2014 the National Trust for Historic Preservation featured Villa Lewaro, Madam Walker's Irvington-on-Hudson, New York estate, on all its social media platforms. This piece that I wrote for the Trust's Preservation Blog also appeared on...
Of Serendipity and the Ancestors
It has to be more than coincidence that so many clues and links to my family history just keep being placed in my path. Last Saturday I was at a Columbia University alumni luncheon, leaving late, as usual, because I had lingered to talk to just one more person! I...
Delphia: The Price of Freedom
In 1838 when William Hendry of Greene County, Tennessee drew up his will, he included this passage: "It is my will and desire that Nancy McEfee have $300 in place of a Mulatto girl named Delfey [that] I once gave her as a legatee and McEfee gave her back and gave her...
Four Free Women Re-visited
In April 2012 at the time of the 150th anniversary of the emancipation of enslaved people in the District of Columbia--a prelude to the Emancipation Proclamation of January 1, 1863--I saw a photograph in the Washington Post of four women centenarians, who had gathered...
A’Lelia Walker’s 1922 Visit with Ethiopian Empress Zauditu
So finally I am finished with the two chapters (for my forthcoming book Joy Goddess of Harlem: A'Lelia Walker and the Harlem Renaissance) that focus on A'Lelia Walker's November 1921 to April 1922 trip abroad. It's a good thing I didn't know how long it was going to...
Maya Angelou: A Woman without Limitation
Maya Angelou is with the ancestors. Born in 1928, she died peacefully this morning in her own home. She was 86 years old. She was a force. A pioneer. "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings," "Phenomenal Woman" and "Still I Rise" were staples for many of us black girls and...
Mud and Writing
Sometimes writing is like slogging through mud. A vast, clumpy sepia sea that extends beyond the horizon. A molasses thick morass that will be there when the sun goes down and when it comes back up. That's what the chapter I'm writing right now feels like. Thigh high...
“Going Down the Rabbit Hole” in Search of the Joy Goddess
"Going down a rabbit hole." People use this phrase to mean many different things. For anyone whose writing requires research, it usually means following clues until enough dots are connected to create a credible scene. And when writing nonfiction, it really is...
BlackPast.org Features A’Lelia Walker Essay
Many thanks to Quintard Taylor and BlackPast.org for inviting me to write an essay about A'Lelia Walker for Black History Month 2014. Here is the essay as it appears on the website. And please do visit this wonderful, information website for hundreds of articles...
Writing Biography: An Update on “The Joy Goddess of Harlem”
Anyone who knows me well, knows I've been working on a biography of A'Lelia Walker, my great-grandmother and namesake, for more years than I want to admit. After I finished writing On Her Own Ground: The Life and Times of Madam C. J. Walker--the biography of A'Lelia...
Why Are Americans So Afraid to Talk about Slavery?
A few days ago, I came across Azie Mira Dungey's new satirical web series, “Ask a Slave.” As a person who loves history--and who believes history is important for setting the record straight on oh, so many things--I believe this sistah is really on to...
The Niagara Movement: A Distant Personal Connection
Today, July 11, on this anniversary of the Niagara Movement’s inaugural meeting in Buffalo, New York, I’m reminded of how discovering a distant personal connection to that event made an historical moment come alive for me. That connection begins with my grandmother’s November 1923 wedding.
Madam Walker and 20,000 Agents
HOW MADAM WALKER DEVELOPED HER PRODUCTS AND SALES FORCE After selling her line of products from door to door and turning a room of her Denver home into her first salon in 1906, Madam C. J. Walker began visiting the black communities in Colorado's small mining towns....
Madam Walker: Black History Month 2013 #1
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,...
My Fourth of July Conversation with Thomas Jefferson
“As we listen to more voices, we’ll hear a greater harmony. At times we will hear a more complicated dissonance, too. The problem solves itself, however; for when we invite more sources of insight and information into our fold, we will simultaneously increase our...
Celebrating the Fourth of July at the National Archives
What a day! I haven't come down from the joy of this morning's Independence Day celebration at the National Archives! I had a fabulous time last year listening to the Old Guard Fife and Drum Corps and mingling with Revolutionary War era re-enactors Abigail...
Celebrating Columbia J-School’s Centennial
April 21, 2011--My alma mater, the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, launched its centennial celebration yesterday afternoon with the renaming of the Journalism School Building and an evening of festitivies. More than 40 descendants of newspaper...
Four Free Women: 1916 Emancipation Reunion
I couldn’t stop staring at this photo. Four elderly black women, “all older than 100, at a convention in the District in 1916,” said the caption in last Friday’s Washington Post. Hoping to learn more about them, I logged on to the Root DC's page of the Post’s...
Black History Month Lecture
Slide show Treasury 2 16-2012 #2 pdf View more presentations from aleliabundles
Madam Walker Honored: A Great Hoosier
Madam C. J. Walker was honored in the inaugural class of Hoosier Legacy Award nominees with a memorial on Georgia Street in Indianapolis on March 2. Descendants of several of the ten iconic Hoosiers joined Mayor Greg Ballard as he unveiled the seven-foot-tall pillars...
Happy Birthday, Madam Walker! Born December 23, 1867)
Madam C. J. Walker was born Sarah Breedlove in Delta, Louisiana on December 23, 1867. Her prospects for success were nil. Yet, by the time she died in May 1919 at Villa Lewaro--her Irvington-on-Hudson, New York mansion--she had transformed herself into a...
My Grandmother’s Harlem Renaissance Wedding
Mae Walker’s November 1923 wedding was Harlem’s most elegant, most opulent event of the season. Coordinated with an impresario’s flare by her mother, A’Lelia Walker, the hair care heiress, the nuptials drew guests from three continents. But there was a glitch: the bride was in love with someone else.
Madam Walker and The Doctors Dumas of Natchez
Combine clues in a faded 1916 letter with the algorithms of Facebook and the distance across decades wondrously evaporates…Imagine my delight a few days ago, when the universe again activated those two degrees of separation, this time to photojournalist Joseph Dumas, whose grandfather and great-uncle, had made a brief appearance in On Her Own Ground because of their hospitality to Madam Walker during a visit to Natchez, Mississippi. Read more at https://aleliabundles.com/blog-2/
A Family Perspective: Celebrating Madam Walker’s Legacy
One of my earliest memories of my great-great-grandmother's existence is seeing her monogram on the silverware we used everyday. "CJW" for "C. J. Walker," the name Sarah Breedlove McWilliams adopted after marrying her third husband, Charles Joseph Walker. I grew up in...
Madam Walker’s 1917 Convention: Entrepreneurship & Protest Politics
On August 31, 1917, Madam C. J. Walker hosted the first national convention of her Walker "beauty culturists" at Philadelphia's Union Baptist Church, where a young contralto named Marian Anderson was just beginning to be noticed. More than 200 women from all over the...
A’Lelia Walker’s Grand Harlem Funeral: August 1931
Eighty years ago this month on August 17, 1931--after a lovely day at the beach celebrating a friend's birthday-- A'Lelia Walker, my great-grandmother and namesake, died in Long Branch, New Jersey. She and six pals from Harlem had enjoyed the sea breezes and dined...
Madam Walker’s August Garden
Another 100 degree day! Crazy me has the air conditioning off, the windows open and the ceiling fan on high speed. I think it's my way of communing with the folks I'm writing about because heaven knows it was HOT in A'Lelia Walker's un-air conditioned 136th Street...
Madam Walker Featured on CEO TV
We recently sat down for a wide-ranging discussion about Madam C. J. Walker with Michael E. Parker, CEO and founder of VCS, Inc. and host of CEO TV. Here's the link: CEO TV Madam C. J. Walker Hope you'll share the link with others who want to learn more about Madam...
Chris Rock’s “Good Hair” Is Back: My 40 Second Hollywood Debut
Invitation to 2009 DC Screening of Chris Rock's "Good Hair"Chris Rock's comedy doc, "Good Hair"--and my 40 second Hollywood debut--are back on HBO for a summer run from July 12 through August 19. Check out the trailer and the schedule for HBO West, East and Latino on...
July 13: Columbia University Alumni & Student Career Panel in DC
I'll be moderating the annual Columbia University Alumni and Student Career Panel at K&L Gates LLP, 1601 K Street, NW in Washington, DC on Wednesday, July 13 from 5:00 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. if you're a Columbia alumni, please Click here for registration...
Happy July 4th: Celebrating ALL of America’s Forefathers and Foremothers
July 4, 2011 Washington, DC To be in Washington, DC on July 4th--and to be surrounded by the monuments and documents of American government--is to be at the center of the nation's commemoration of the 1776 Declaration of Independence. Today we celebrate with parades...
Woodlawn Cemetery–Burial Place of Madam Walker–Designated National Historic Landmark
June 30, 2011: Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar today announced that The Woodlawn Cemetery in The Bronx--where entrepreneur Madam C. J. Walker and her Harlem Renaissance arts patron daughter, A'Lelia Walker, are buried--has been designated a National Historic...
Lyric Tenor Roland Hayes’s January 1924 Chicago Concert
I learned to read music on a Chickering baby grand piano that had belonged to my great-grandmother, A'Lelia Walker, but it really was my mother, A'Lelia Mae Perry Bundles, and my grandmother, Mae Walker Perry, who had musical talent. As the only legally adopted...
A’Lelia Walker’s Sterling Silver Flask
A’Lelia Walker, hostess of the Harlem Renaissance Salon known as The Dark Tower, carried this monogrammed, sterling silver flask to the annual Howard-Lincoln football games. (www.aleliabundles.com)
Happy Birthday, A’Lelia Walker! (June 6, 1885)
My great-grandmother and namesake, A’Lelia Walker (1885-1931), loved getting flowers on her birthday! Orchids. Dahlias. Gladiolas. Roses. She had everything else–houses, diamonds, furs, cars–plus great friends, a gregarious spirit and a love of life. Well, almost...
Watoto from the Nile’s “Letter to Lil Wayne” Makes My Day
When you write for a living, you never know where your words will land. You always hope your messages will make a difference, but there's no guarantee. Yesterday was one of those days that made it all worthwhile. I'd heard earlier this year about the smart young...
Berenice Abbott’s 1930 Photos of A’Lelia Walker
A'Lelia Walker--charismatic, statuesque and stylish--posed for many of the most noted Harlem Renaissance photographers and sculptors, including Richmond Barthe, Augusta Savage, James Van Der Zee, James Latimer Allen and R. E. Mercer.She also sat for Greenwich...
A’Lelia’s Blog
http://aleliabundles.wordpress.com/
Stars of Black History Shine at 85th annual ASALH Luncheon
Black historians and black history lovers converged in Washington, DC on Saturday, February 26th for the 85th annual Association for the Study of African American Life and History, the organization founded by Carter G. Woodson--the father of black history--in 1915. ...
Cheryl Brown Henderson Champions Her Family’s Brown v. Board Legacy
My Black History Month has been brimming with living legends! This afternoon I had the good fortune to be invited to a luncheon hosted by my homegirl Janet Langhart Cohen in honor of Cheryl Brown Henderson, whose father, Reverend Oliver Brown, and sister Linda Brown,...
“Heritage of Resistance” Panel Features Descendants of Walker, Du Bois, Wells and Drew
I'm still feeling the glow of a great weekend in Chicago with old friends and new. The "Heritage of Resistance" symposium at the DuSable Museum where Michelle Duster, Charlene Drew Jarvis, Arthur McFarlane and I talked about our ancestors (Ida B. Wells, Dr. Charles...
Inside the Vaults at the National Archives
One of my favorite parts of writing a book is the research. You truly never know where a photograph, a newspaper clipping or a faded letter will lead you. When I started my research for On Her Own Ground: The Life and Times of Madam C. J. Walker almost 40 years ago, I...
Serendipity: Family Photos
Walker Family Photos (A'Lelia Bundles's Walker Family Archives)Doing the research about the women in my family brings many incredibly serendipitous moments. Last fall out of the blue I received a call from a gentleman who had purchased these photos at an auction. My...
Flashback: Villa Lewaro, Madam Walker’s New York Estate
View Part One of the video: HGTV Villa Lewaro View all five parts. In celebration of the United Negro College Fund's 1998 Designer Showhouse at Villa Lewaro, Madam C. J. Walker's Irvington-on-Hudson, NY estate, HGTV produced this hour documentary. You can learn more...
Flashback: 1996 An Evening with Henry Louis Gates and Cornel West
Click her for video: http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/TheFutureofth This 1996 video from C-Span Book TV's archives brought back great memories. At the time, I was deputy bureau chief of ABC News’s Washington Bureau. Skip and Cornel had stopped by the building to...
On Her Own Ground Book Tour
Click here for C-Span Video On Her Own Ground Book Tour-Detroit 2001 I'm having a great time going through C-Span Book TV's archives. Hard to believe my book, On Her Own Ground: The Life and Times of Madam C. J. Walker, is a decade old. Here's the presentation at...
Baltimore-The Winner’s Summit
Title: Baltimore-The Winner's SummitLocation: Baltimore Marriott Inner Harbor at Camden Yards 110 S. Eutaw, Baltimore, MDLink out: Click hereDescription: Entrepreneur Deborah Hardnett presents three day conference featuring A'Lelia Bundles, Linda Clemons, Sheila...
San Francisco-NC100BW Madam Walker Luncheon
Title: San Francisco-NC100BW Madam Walker LuncheonLocation: San FranciscoDescription: 12th Annual Bay Area National Coalition of 100 Black Women's Madam C. J. Walker LuncheonStart Time: 11:00Date: 2011-03-04End Time: 14:00
“Let Your Motto Be Resistance” Symposium
Title: "Let Your Motto Be Resistance" Symposium Location: DuSable Museum 740 East 56th Place Chicago, IL 773-947-0600 Link out: Click here Description: A symposium featuring A'Lelia Bundles (Madam C. J. Walker and A'Lelia Walker family), Michelle Duster (Ida B....