Madam C. J. Walker

That's one of my favorite words.

So I want you to talk about Madam C.J. Walker.

Talk about her in the book and the AME Church.

The

shared experience.

Generation over generation over generation.

Okay, so Madam C.J. Walker, yes.

A'Lelia Bundles is a friend of mine and she is the great, great granddaughter of Madam C.J. Walker.

At all.

Madam C.J. Walker turn over in her grave right now.

Uh, let's get it.

[laughs]

Black folks continued to innovate with their own hair, though, and by the early 1900s, that innovation would turn into full-fledged empires.

[upbeat music] Let's start with two women: Madam C.J. Walker and Annie Turnbo Malone, the first pioneers in Black haircare as an industry.

They took the hodgepodge of hair straightening methods floating around and turned them into an actual system.

Madam C.J. Walker and Annie Turnbo Malone became very wealthy by selling the idea of straight hair, but not with chemicals.

They used hot combs and worked them through the hair with pomade to get a sleek, straight look, but more importantly, they built an entire industry and economy around Black haircare that didn't exist before.

You have to remember that during slavery, Black women were not given time to really pay attention to their hair in terms of, like, really taking care of it.

Madam C.J. Walker and Annie Turnbo Malone were both really good at creating a beauty culture around hair for Black women, and so it would be like, "We're gonna wash your hair.

We're gonna massage your scalp.

It's a short series.

I never even knew who Madam C.J. Walker was until I watched this.

And I am now obsessed with this woman.

So she was born in 1867.

Some of the most enduring businesses start in incredibly cramped, highly unlikely spaces, minimizing their physical footprint to almost zero.

I mean, Madam C.J. Walker built an absolute skin care and hair care empire starting with a gas stove in a stable.

Right.

Or consider Dr. Beata Lehman.

So if I go to like...

I'm gonna go to Madam C.J. Walker.

She's a better example of this though.

Um, little hair products there.

[laughs] Uh, okay.

So when I hover over Madam C.J. Walker there, um, another tool to pop up, but you'll also see on the left that her quilt tension, that she had a lot more obstacles to overcome, so that's why that mauve bar is longer and the orange bar is shorter.

Her impact wasn't as much as the obstacles that she had to overcome, it almost, um, shadowing it.

Uh, and that's because, um, as analysts, you know, we aren't measuring gaps.