A’Lelia Bundles with Thomas Jefferson re-enactor Steve Edenbo (Credit: Lauren V. Burke)
“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 ability to understand the conflicts both in our history as well as in our present.” Steve Edenbo, Thomas Jefferson interpreter, July 8, 2012
One of the delights of the National Archives’s annual Fourth of July celebration is the chance to mingle with the Revolutionary War era re-enactors. Thomas Jefferson. Benjamin Franklin. Abigail Adams. Edward “Ned” Hector. John Adams.
Revolutionary War era re-enactors at the National Archives July 4, 2012 (NARA photo)
Each stays in character and is deeply immersed in the biographical knowledge of his or her character. They are so adept at making history come alive that it is easy to be transported to the 18th century. At the same time, we know that out of costume these actors are people equipped with 21st century sensibilities and the advantage of historical context. (more…)
Fourth of July at the National Archives (File 2011)
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 Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson and Ned Hector, a black Continental Army soldier.
Old Guard Fife and Drum Corps 2012
But this year was over the top! At the invitation of David Ferriero, Archivist of the United States, I delivered the keynote address, taking my inspiration from Frederick Douglass’s famous 1852 Fourth of July speech while also recounting the role of black Patriots in Revolutionary War.
Riley Temple (Foundation for the National Archives board member), Laura Murphy (descendant of Declaration signer Philip Livingston) and A’Lelia Bundles
The morning was even more special because my friend Laura W. Murphy, director of the ACLU’s Washington Legislative Office, became the first African American descendant of a signer of the Declaration of Independence to participate in the reading of the document at the prestigious National Archives ceremony.
I’ve posted lots of photos on my Facebook page. Because several people were kind enough to ask for a copy of my speech, I’m posting what I said about Frederick Douglass’s 1852 Fourth of July speech and what the holiday means to me 160 years later. [Here, also, is a link to the video.]
Honored guests at the 2012 National Archives Fourth of July Celebration
(more…)
Columbia J-School Dean Nicholas Lemann and Columbia President Lee Bollinger at renaming of Pulitzer Hall
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 publisher and J-School founding benefactor Joseph Pulitzer joined Dean Nicholas Lemann, Columbia President Lee Bollinger and a crowd of alumni and staff for the unveiling of the newly carved “Pulitzer” name.
"Pulitzer" was carved above the entryway to Columbia's Journalism School in honor of the centennial and its founder
At Columbia’s Miller Theatre, we watched the premier of Jesse Dylan’s Centennial Celebration film.
As emcee for the Centennial program, I had the pleasure of reviewing the stellar achievements of a century’s worth of J-School grads from the new collection, “50 Great Stories.” It was an honor to introduce Michael Pulitzer, grandson of Joseph Pulitzer and former Pulitzer Inc. board chair, and Robert Caro , the Pulitzer Prize winning biographer and the evening’s keynote speaker. We all were moved by NPR reporter Martina Guzman , J-School ’08, whose award-winning investigative coverage of Detroit challenges the status quo.
Columbia Grad School of Journalism Program April 20, 2012
After the program, we gathered in the J-School’s World Room for dinner. What a nice coincidence, after an evening of interesting conversation, to discover that my tablemate, Michael Pulitzer, Jr., also is my college classmate. Truly small world.
My remarks about my accomplished fellow alumni and my intro of Robert Caro follow. (more…)
Annie Parrum, Anna Angales, Elizabeth Berkeley and Sadie Thompson–all older than 100–at a 1916 Emancipation reunion (Harris & Ewing Collection/Library of Congress)
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 website. Instead I found only an image of Abraham Lincoln in the Emancipation Day article about the April 1862 legislation that freed 3,128 of the District’s enslaved citizens.
Within a few minutes of online research, though, I discovered two more photos taken on the same day in 1916 by Harris & Ewing at an Emancipation reunion. As the official White House photographers of the early 1900s and then the nation’s largest photo news service, they rarely snapped shots of African Americans. (more…)
Slide show
Madam C. J. Walker honored as a Great Hoosier in Indianapolis on March 2, 2012
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 in the plaza that had hosted the 2012 Super Bowl Village a few weeks earlier.
Mayor Ballard unveils a Legacy Award Pillar. Looking on are Lance Bundles, Judith Ransom Lewis and A'Lelia Bundles (Credit: Robert Scheer/IndyStar.com)
Madam Walker’s great-great-granddaughter, A’Lelia Bundles, presented remarks on behalf of the families. “As I pondered the lives of these great Hoosiers,” she told the audience, “I couldn’t help but imagine them all seated together at a magnificent banquet. What would Madam Walker–a pioneer of the modern hair care and cosmetics industries–have to say to Eli Lilly–a pioneer of the modern pharmaceutical industry–about building a business?”
Other honorees–whose lives spanned two centuries from 1768 to 1968–are Pulitzer Prize winners Booth Tarkington and Ernie Pyle, Ben-Hur author Lew Wallace, Grammy Award winner Wes Montgomery, Presidents Abraham Lincoln and Benjamin Harrison, suffragette May Wright Sewall and native American leader Tecumseh. The selections were made by a panel convened by the Greater Indianapolis Progress Committee, a civic organization chaired by attorney Deborah Daniels.
A'Lelia Bundles speaks on behalf of the Legacy Award families (Photo: Robert Scheer/IndyStar.com)
Among the descendants and family friends who attended were Robert Montgomery, son of jazz guitarist Wes Montgomery; Ted and and Anita Sewall, representing the May Wright Sewall family; Lance Bundles, great-great-grandson of Madam Walker; and Judith Ransom-Lewis and Robert Ransom, grandchildren of Walker Company attorney F. B. Ransom.
Madam Walker Theatre Center board chair Joni Collins was joined by several staff members from the National Historic Landmark. (more…)
Madam C. J. Walker
Madam C. J. Walker was born Sarah Breedlove in Delta, Louisiana on December 23, 1867. Her prospects for success were nil.
Sarah Breedlove was born in this Delta, LA cabin in 1867
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 millionaire entrepreneur, philanthropist, patron of the arts and political activist.
Madam Walker died at Villa Lewaro in May 1919.
To learn more about Walker’s life, visit the Madam Walker Family Archives’s Birthday Wish for Madam Walker
- Mae Walker’s headdress was inspired by the recently opened King Tut tomb
© Whenever I see my grandmother Mae’s 1923 wedding photographs, I can’t help but marvel at the elegance and extravagance. I also can’t resist searching her eyes for clues to the drama I now know was roiling just behind the scrim of the carefully choreographed scenes.
Newspaper headlines from the Pittsburgh Courier –“Heiress Weds ‘Mid Pomp-Splendor”—to the New York World—“Thousands Attend Wedding of Negro Heiress in Harlem”—tell only part of the story.
Mae Walker's 1923 wedding was the social event of the season (aleliabundles.com)
For Harlem’s social event of the season and of the year, there were parties galore, guests from three continents and a groom from a prominent family. There also was a major glitch: the bride was in love with someone else. (more…)
Madam Walker's November 8, 1916 letter to Atty. F. B. Ransom describes her visit with the Doctors Dumas in Natchez, MS (www.aleliabundles.com)
Combine clues in a faded letter from November 1916 with the algorithms of Facebook and the distance across the decades evaporates.
Finding descendants and relatives of people who knew my great-great-grandmother, Madam C. J. Walker, and her daughter, A’Lelia Walker, thirty years ago when I began researching On Her Own Ground: The Life and Times of Madam C. J. Walker often was a hit or miss proposition.
But even then–long before we had all the Internet tools we now take for granted–I had the sense that the ancestors were leading me to the interviews I did in the homes of surviving Harlem Renaissance icons Alberta Hunter, Dorothy West, Bruce Nugent and Geraldyn Dismond (later known as Jet’s society columnist, Gerri Major) and artist Romare Bearden, whose mother, Bessye Bearden, had been a close friend of A’Lelia Walker’s. (more…)
Madam Walker's Everyday Silver (Madam Walker Family Archives/A'Lelia Bundles)
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 Indianapolis in a home surrounded by items that had belonged to Madam Walker–the early twentieth century hair care entrepreneur and philanthropist–and her daughter, A’Lelia Walker, who was to become an icon of the Harlem Renaissance. And ofcourse with a name like “A’Lelia,” there was an obvious connection since both my mother and I are named for Madam Walker’s daughter.
Madam Walker's China (Madam Walker Family Archives/A'Lelia Bundles)
The china that we used on special occasions had been purchased by Madam Walker. The Chickering baby grand piano on which I learned to read music, had been in A’Lelia Walker’s 136th Street Harlem townhouse and Edgecombe Avenue pied-a-terre. And, yet, as a child I was never made to feel as if Madam Walker were the center of my universe or that I had any obligation to carry on or live up to a legacy. (more…)
Recent Comments