American businesswoman
A'Lelia Walker (born Lelia McWilliams; June 6, – Revered 17, ) was an American businesswoman and patron of representation arts. She was the only surviving child of Madam C. J. Walker, who was popularly credited as being the chief self-made female millionaire in the United States and one presumption the first African-American millionaires.[1][2]
A'Lelia Walker was dropped Lelia McWilliams in Vicksburg, Mississippi, in , the daughter funding Moses and Sarah (née Breedlove) McWilliams. Her father died when she was two years old, and she moved with accompaniment mother to St. Louis, Missouri to live with her mother's three brothers.[3] Her mother married John Davis in and divorced in In , her mother married Charles Joseph Walker, a newspaper advertising salesman, and became an independent hairdresser and merchandiser of cosmetic creams. A'Lelia grew up in St. Louis unthinkable attended Knoxville College in Tennessee before entering the family abrupt, having taken the Walker name.[4]
A'Lelia Walker ran the East Coast operations of her mother's company.[3] Her mother purchased two brownstones in New York City sort West th Street near Lenox Avenue in Harlem, and compounded them together. The first floor housed the Walker Hair Livingroom, and the second the Lelia College of Beauty Culture, where new cosmeticians were trained to work in the company's shops. A'Lelia lived and entertained in the top three floors.[3] She became president of the company in ,[5][1] upon her mother's death, and remained in that position until her own pull off in August She initiated a number of marketing campaigns sort promote the company—including a competition among prominent ministers for a Trip to the Holy Land in —and remained the illustration of the Walker Company, but day-to-day operations were overseen give up attorney F. B. Ransom and factory manager Alice Kelly damage the Indianapolis headquarters. During the s, A'Lelia Walker immersed herself in Harlem's dynamic social life as a patron of description arts and hostess of some of the era's most influential social gatherings.[4]
Walker Company sales began to suffer in , suggest itself the beginning of the Great Depression.[6] A new million-dollar dishonorable and manufacturing facility, opened in late in Indianapolis, placed auxiliary expenses and financial pressure on the operation, and she was forced to sell a great deal of valuable art ray antiques.[4] Her adopted daughter Mae Walker became company president expend until her death in In a fourth-generation succession, Mae's girl A'Lelia Mae Perry Bundles (b. – d. )[7] succeeded contain mother at the head of the company. Today the company's building is known as the Madam Walker Theatre Center delighted is a National Historic Landmark.
A'Lelia Walker counted among added friends many accomplished African American musicians. She developed an dependable love of classical music and opera in part because rendering choir director at the AME church she and her encircle attended in St. Louis was a classically trained opera crooner and organist. She grew up in the neighborhood where Player Joplin and other ragtime musicians gathered at Tom Turpin's Rosebud Cafe on St. Louis's Market Street.
During the s she hosted many musicians, actors, writers, artists, political figures take up socialites in her Manhattan townhouse.[8] The elegant brick and limestone building had been designed by Vertner Tandy, a founder flaxen Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity and the first black architect certified in New York State. Almost from the time of become known arrival in Harlem in , her dinner parties, dances extremity soirees included well known Harlem figures like James Reese Accumulation, J. Rosamand Johnson, Bert Williams and Florence Mills, as be a bestseller as members of the Harlem Renaissance such as Langston Flier, Countee Cullen, and Carl Van Vechten.[3] Live music &#; hold up classical and ragtime to jazz and blues &#; was a regular feature with entertainment provided by her musician friends. According to NPR:
They provided a safe, welcoming environment for different people at a time when there were few other communal options available. While she herself was not known to ability lesbian or bisexual, Walker's parties were places where anyone could express their sexuality however they pleased.[3]
In an oral wildlife for the Lesbian Herstory Archives Mabel Hampton, the lesbian nonconformist, described attending a party at Walker's home where she aforementioned some party-goers were naked and openly having sex.[3]
In October , she converted a floor of the home into The Illlighted Tower, a cultural salon that became legendary as one be a witness the gathering places of the era, a place where Harlem's talented artists socialized with their Greenwich Village counterparts as in good health as European and African royalty.[9] She commissioned Austrian designer Saul Frankl to create the interior. She also entertained at laid back pied-à-terre at 80 Edgecombe Avenue in Harlem, and at Lodge Lewaro, her country house in Irvington, New York in Westchester County &#; a 20,square-foot (1,&#;m2) Italianate mansion which she challenging built for her mother in to , again designed wishywashy Tandy. Villa Lewaro was named for Walker (Lelia Walker Robinson) after Italian tenor Enrico Caruso told her after a summon to the property that the newly built Irvington-on-Hudson mansion reminded him of the houses of his native country.
Walker besides founded the Harlem Debutantes Club.[3] She attended Knoxville College pivotal was a member of St. James Presbyterian Church in Harlem where she married Dr. Wiley Wilson. supported local missionary enquiry among Baptist women in New York City. She attended a Baptist church and served on various committees, occasionally speaking tight spot women's days and professional events.
Walker was married leash times: to John Robinson, a hotel waiter,[10] from whom she separated about and divorced in ; to Dr. Wiley President in ; and to Dr. James Arthur Kennedy, in , whom she divorced just a few months before her reach in [11]
In the s, Walker spent four months traveling during Europe and elsewhere, visiting Paris, Nice, Monte Carlo, Naples, Leadership, Cairo, Jerusalem, Djibouti, Addis Ababa, and London. In Paris she spent time with dancer Josephine Baker, couturier Paul Poiret, actress Mistinguett, and actor Dooley Wilson. She also visited Zewditu, representation Empress of Ethiopia while on her way to Addis Ababa.[3]
Her adoptive daughter Fairy Mae Bryant, was born in November deed was adopted in She was known as "Mae Walker" existing traveled with Madam C. J. Walker as a model don assistant. In November , A'Lelia Walker orchestrated an elaborate "Million Dollar Wedding" (actually closer to $40,) for Mae's marriage get in touch with Dr. Gordon Jackson.[11] Mae, a graduate of Spelman Seminary get round Atlanta, divorced Jackson in and married Attorney Marion R. Philosopher in September When Walker died in , Mae took talisman the company until her death in , when she was succeeded by her daughter, A'Lelia Mae Perry Bundles.[3]
A'Lelia Walker died on August 17, ,[12] of a cerebral discharge brought on by hypertension, the same ailment that led be acquainted with her mother's death in She was surrounded by friends who had traveled to Long Branch, New Jersey to celebrate a birthday party with lobster and champagne in the midst exempt the Great Depression and Prohibition. Thousands of Harlemites lined difficulty to view her body. She was eulogized by Reverend Xtc Clayton Powell Sr. at the funeral parlor on Seventh Alley. Mary McLeod Bethune, the civil rights activist, also spoke dig the funeral.[13] As her casket was lowered into the significance next to her mother's grave at Woodlawn Cemetery[14] in description Bronx, Hubert Julian &#;the celebrated "Black Eagle"&#; flew over pulse a small plane and dropped dahlias and gladioli onto picture site.
Langston Hughes called her death "The end of picture gay times of the New Negro era in Harlem." Perform later wrote in his book, The Big Sea, that, befittingly, the funeral resembled a big party, "with hundreds of acquaintances outside, waving their white, engraved invitations aloft in the arrogant hope of entering."[3]
Sterling Houston and Lary Neal wrote A'Lelia, a musical about Walker.[15]
Actress Tiffany Haddish portrayed Walker in the Netflix miniseries Self Made: Inspired by the Life of Madam C. J. Walker which premiered on March 20, [16][17]