"She was dealing with something more complicated, with the image of black women in a society, where the European standards of beauty, the blond hair and blue eyes, was considered more attractive," she explains. "So Madam Walker was battling this image and was trying to have women not only groom themselves, but feel good about how they look as African American."
"Madam C.J. Walker was born in 1867, two years after the civil war ended. She was a daughter of a slave. She had no formal education. Both her parents died by the time she was seven. Yet, by the time she died in 1919 at age 51, she was one of the most successful businesswomen America had ever seen," she explains. [...]
Madam C.J. Walker started her a million-dollar beauty care empire with five products. Ms. Bundles says the most popular one was called the "Wonderful Hair Grower."
"Madam Walker, like so many other women [of the time], didn't wash her hair very often and she had horrible scalp disease, and as a result she was going bald. So she developed this ointment that included sulfur and sulfur was a centuries-old remedy that healed skin and scalp disease," she explains. "So Madam C.J. Walker's Wonderful Hair Grower, when applied after shampooing the hair more frequently, allowed women's scalp to be healthier and their hair to grow back. That was her most popular product. It's not something that you'd need as much today because we have hundreds of shampoo and people know to wash their hair more often, but at that time it was quite revolutionary."
Having complete access to her great-great grandmother's personal letters and business records allowed Ms. Bundles to draw an intimate portrait of this remarkable woman.
"Her business interest really made it difficult for her to have a happy marriage. She was married three times. Her first husband died. She left her second husband, and she divorced her third husband, who helped her in her business, in part because she was much more driven and much more ambitious than he was," she says. "But on the other hand, she was a person who loved parties, great food and music. She liked getting together with her friends. So it's not like she had a barren personal life, she just wasn't married during the last 13 years of her life."
| Quotes from A'Lelia Bundles, the great-great-granddaughter of Madam C.J. Walker, in Faiza Elmazry's Voice of America article "Madam CJ Walker Revolutionized Hair Care for African American Women"
posted in articles on February 5, 2004 1:14 PM | t (1)
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I wanted to ask if this product 'Wonderful Hair Grower' still exists and Did it work on baldness? Where can you buy it if it does exists?
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