On Her Own Ground Read online

  Like the other delegates, Madam Walker had come to Chicago in late August to hear the motivational stories and to interact with Washington. But in contrast to the NACW convention—where civil rights issues had been freely discussed—the NNBL was strictly concerned with commerce. Even during an election year, noted the Chicago Broad Ax, a frequent critic of Washington’s, he had chosen to ignore politics and the contest among President William Howard Taft, former President Theodore Roosevelt and Democratic challenger Woodrow Wilson.

  Nearly 2,000 visitors and delegates packed the auditorium of South Side Chicago’s Institutional Church for the opening session as temperatures rose to a warm but not oppressive low eighties. In addition to NNBL members, several other black organizations were represented, among them the National Bankers Association, the National Association of Funeral Directors and the National Bar Association, as well as National Negro Press Association reporters and publishers from more than fifty black newspapers. Traveling in her convertible Model T touring car, Madam Walker was probably one of the few delegates to arrive in a chauffeur-driven automobile. For such public occasions, she tended toward formal attire—worsted wool suits and dresses, corsets, long sleeves, plumed hats and buttoned shoes, even in summer.

  A steady succession of inspirational narratives began immediately after the opening exercises. Among them, that of thirty-year-old Watt Terry, a Washington favorite, whose keen eye for real estate had transformed him from a $7-a-week shoe factory worker into a Realtor, whose $500,000 holdings in Brockton, Massachusetts, provided him with a monthly income in excess of $6,000.

  But it was NNBL founder Booker T. Washington’s annual address that evening that the delegates greeted with prolonged, enthusiastic ovations. Despite the increasing criticisms of his moderate approach to civil rights—especially from elite, educated African Americans—Washington was revered among the NNBL delegates. And while Madam Walker was frustrated with his lukewarm attitude toward her and her work, she respected both his power and his near-mythological metamorphosis from slave to race leader to presidential adviser. Having now seen the more than eighty buildings on his Tuskegee campus, she marveled at his ability to create an endowment fund of more than $1.2 million. In 1901, when Madam Walker was still a St. Louis washerwoman, Washington was dining with President Roosevelt at the White House. By the summer of 1906, in the early months of her business, Washington’s Tuskegee Institute was celebrating its twenty-fifth anniversary.

  Madam Walker admired him, but she did not fear him and she did not agree with everything he said. Yet she fully embraced his self-help, up-from-slavery philosophy and his faith in entrepreneurship as an underpinning of African American progress. “If we do not do our duty now in laying [the] proper foundation for economic and commercial growth, our children and our children’s children will suffer because of our inactivity or shortness of vision,” he said that first evening as handkerchiefs were waved in approval throughout the audience. “This is in an especial sense true of the Negro business man and woman.”

  Madam Walker certainly believed she was doing her part. And she believed Washington knew that too. Yet he continued to snub her. By the time his speech ended, she knew that at least three manufacturers of hair care products were scheduled as speakers before the close of the convention. That evening Mrs. Julia H. P. Coleman, a licensed pharmacist from Washington, D.C., discussed the success of “Hair Vim,” a product that sounded quite similar to Madam Walker’s Wonderful Hair Grower. “Every year the styles for hair dressing demand more and more hair,” Coleman said, drawing laughter as she described the cause for the increasing popularity of her product. “By force of circumstance, birth, or misfortune, we represent a race whose head adornment does not . . . come up to the standard of beauty,” she continued, with no apparent disagreement from the audience. “Where the standard calls for straight lines, those of the Negro’s hair are rather crooked . . . Where it requires fluffiness, ours has stubbornness. To overcome these conditions, as well as to conform with, and keep up with the latest styles of hair dressing, it is very necessary to use the things that will assist nature.” Her product, as well as others “manufactured by our colored women,” she declared, are “some of the best hair preparations now on the market.” The only gesture that could have pleased Madam Walker more than Coleman’s indirect acknowledgment would have been an invitation from Washington to come to the podium. Instead Washington complimented Coleman as “the first woman of our race to open a drug store in the United States,” then called upon the next speaker.

  On Thursday morning Washington introduced Anthony Overton, whose Overton Hygienic Manufacturing Company, Washington noted, was “the largest Colored manufacturing enterprise in the United States.” With more than twenty full-time workers, five traveling salesmen and 400 commission agents, he had sold $117,000 worth of goods in the last year. Having founded his company in 1898 with “less than $2,000,” he now carried his original Hygienic Pet Baking Powder as well as more than fifty other items. Overton attributed his success to a unique promotional campaign targeting black consumers. “When we added our line of toilet articles, we placed colored girls’ pictures on our Talcum Powder, Hair Pomades, and other toilet articles,” he said of a marketing move guaranteed to evoke praise from his fellow NNBL members. His “High-Brown” face powder, one of the first mass-produced facial cosmetics for black women, had become his company’s most well-known product. Each box contained a circular space that was reserved, he said humorously, “for the most beautiful colored woman in the United States, which we propose to put on the box later as soon as we find her.”

  With everyone in good spirits after Overton’s uplifting presentation, Washington—as was his custom during the conference proceedings—requested comments from the audience. Freeman publisher George Knox, a longtime NNBL member and friend to both Madam Walker and Washington, stood to be recognized. “I arise to ask this convention for a few minutes of its time to hear a remarkable woman. It is enough said when I say she hails from Indianapolis, Indiana,” he began, eliciting chuckling from those who annually heard him boost his fellow Hoosiers. “She is the woman who gave $1,000 to the Young Men’s Christian Association of Indianapolis. Madam Walker, the lady I refer to, is the manufacturer of hair goods and preparations.” Once Knox mentioned Madam Walker’s contribution to the YMCA, Washington could have been expected to be more receptive. Having spoken in 1909 in Indianapolis on behalf of the YMCA—and having raised only $100 at the time—he was well aware of the significance of her gift. He also had more than passing interest in the movement to build colored Y’s because his architect son-in-law, Sidney Pittman, had designed the Washington, D.C., branch. Instead Washington’s reply was noticeably icy, especially when delivered to such a loyal associate as the Freeman publisher. “But, Mr. Knox, we are taking up the question of life membership,” he said in a matter-of-fact manner. And then—in what would have been an anxious moment for most people—Washington, without appearing in the least bit ruffled, called upon an Oklahoma man, whose question was not about life membership but about Overton’s business.

  Knox and Madam Walker must have been stunned. Knox certainly knew Washington well enough not to have requested something inappropriate. And both he and Madam Walker knew that Washington could have altered the program had he wished. Instead he brought to the podium H. L. Sanders, the Indianapolis uniform manufacturer, whose factory was a few blocks from Madam Walker’s. Comparing oneself to others, especially in matters of charity, was a risky proposition. But Madam Walker must have noted that Sanders, the treasurer of the Indiana Avenue YMCA, had contributed only $250 to the building fund. And then, in an action that was even more insulting, Washington—who had seen Madam Walker’s home and factory—went out of his way to praise Sanders’s plant as “a creditable manufacturing enterprise” and “a pleasure” to visit. Madam Walker managed to maintain her composure, but she was fully aware of the differences in their businesses. Whereas Sanders employed twenty-two me
n and women, she knew her products provided jobs and commission opportunities for almost a thousand sales agents. Whereas Sanders’s apparel items were distributed primarily in Ohio, Illinois, Indiana and Michigan, her Wonderful Hair Grower was marketed from California to New York, from Illinois to Texas. Why, then, had Washington used a neighbor to put her in her place?

  By Friday, the final day of the convention, Madam Walker had lost all patience. Because Washington clearly was not going to grant her an opportunity to speak, she realized it had become necessary for her to seize the opportunity. After the morning’s first speaker—a Little Rock building contractor who described his current projects—the presentations that followed were a blur of reports from members of the National Bankers Association. Then, as Washington thanked Reverend E. M. Griggs, president of the Farmers and Citizens Savings Bank of Palestine, Texas, for his “splendid address,” Madam Walker could wait no longer. Rising from her seat, she fixed her eyes upon Washington. “Surely you are not going to shut the door in my face,” she demanded, as heads began to turn in her direction. “I feel that I am in a business that is a credit to the womanhood of our race,” she said defiantly, knowing of Washington’s ambivalence about her products. “I went into a business that is despised, that is criticized and talked about by everybody—the business of growing hair. They did not believe such a thing could be done, but I have proven beyond the question of a doubt that I do grow hair!” she said to laughter and applause.

  “I have been trying to get before you business people and tell you what I am doing,” she continued, unable to hide her frustration and resentment. “I am a woman that came from the cotton fields of the South. I was promoted from there to the wash-tub,” she announced proudly, causing nervous snickering among the delegates. “Then I was promoted to the cook kitchen, and from there I promoted myself into the business of manufacturing hair goods and preparations.”

  “I am not ashamed of my past,” she added forcefully. “I am not ashamed of my humble beginning. Don’t think because you have to go down in the wash-tub that you are any less a lady!” Fully wound up, and bolstered by the crowd’s reaction, she had no intention of taking her seat. “Everybody told me I was making a mistake by going into this business, but I know how to grow hair as well as I know how to grow cotton.”

  After chronicling her annual earnings and real estate holdings, she proclaimed, “I have built my own factory on my own ground, 38 by 208 feet. I employ in that factory seven people, including a bookkeeper, a stenographer, a cook and a house girl.” As the clapping mounted, she allowed herself to boast, “I own my own automobile and runabout.” And then, as if sensing that she had little time left to convey the most important part of her statement, she commanded, “Please don’t applaud—just let me talk!

  “Now my object in life is not simply to make money for myself or to spend it on myself in dressing or running around in an automobile,” she announced. “But I love to use a part of what I make in trying to help others.

  “Perhaps many of you have heard of the real ambition of my life, the all-absorbing idea which I hope to accomplish,” she said passionately. “My ambition is to build an industrial school in Africa. By the help of God and the cooperation of my people in this country, I am going to build a Tuskegee Institute in Africa!”

  Although Madam Walker had clearly captured the crowd’s attention, Washington still showed no sign that he was moved. Quickly, George Knox stood to endorse her remarks. “I arise to attest all that this good woman has said concerning her business in the progressive city of Indianapolis. You have heard only a part; the half has not been told of what she has accomplished,” he said.

  Although the NNBL’s meticulously recorded transcripts reflected most details of that day’s proceedings, they did not reveal Booker T. Washington’s personal, unspoken reaction to Madam Walker’s speech. Without missing a beat, or acknowledging her presence, Washington moved on. “The next banker to address us is Mr. W. W. Hadnott, of the Prudential Savings Bank of Birmingham, Alabama,” Washington said, as if Madam Walker had not uttered a word.

  A few weeks later the Freeman called her presentation one of the “big hits” of the conference and praised her “striking personality.” She “at once impresses an audience with the fact that she stands for concrete achievements rather than brilliance of oratory,” the paper reported.

  It would take Booker T. Washington a while longer to come around. But a year later, he would willingly find a place for Madam Walker on the program of the NNBL’s fourteenth annual meeting in Philadelphia.

  CHAPTER 12

  Breaking Ties, Making Ties

  Less than two weeks after Madam Walker returned home from Chicago, F. B. Ransom filed papers for her divorce from C. J. Walker. As one of Indiana’s few black attorneys, Ransom—nattily dressed in his three-piece suits—was easily noticed in the halls of the courthouse. Working for the city’s most prominent black entrepreneur had only enhanced his reputation. Now in Sarah Walker v. Charles J. Walker, Ransom discreetly set about to terminate a union for which no marriage license existed. The possibility that a financially strapped C.J. might claim rights under a common-law marriage—or as a member of the Madam C. J. Walker Manufacturing Company board of directors—surely occurred to the meticulous young attorney. A clean, legally recognized severance was the most prudent strategy for a client with the resources Ransom now realized Madam Walker was capable of generating.

  With an undisputed case of adultery involving Dora Larrie—as well as Louise’s letter as further evidence—Ransom had no difficulty extricating Madam Walker from a potentially costly and embarrassing situation. On October 5, after C.J. had failed to appear in the judge’s chambers, the divorce was made final. According to the docket, “no money” was paid to either party.

  Banished from 640 North West Street, C.J. retreated to Louisville to the home of his sister, Peggie, and her husband, Calvin Prosser. Desperate for money—and cocky enough to believe that he could compete with Madam Walker on her own turf—C.J. placed two advertisements for his “Walker-Prosser Wonderful Hair Grower” in the September 14, 1912, Freeman. The larger of the ads was nearly identical to Madam Walker’s three-panel before-and-after layout, one that C.J. may have helped design.

  By year’s end, Larrie, herself not yet divorced, had joined C.J. in business. “We did not do so well under the name of The Walker-Larrie Company,” C.J. later wrote, “so she planned to get a divorce that we might marry.” But soon after their March 1913 marriage, C.J. realized that he had been duped. “We were not married long before I discovered she did not love me, but that she only wanted the title Mme., and the formula,” he lamented, calling his life “hell” since Larrie had had him arrested for “interfering with her business.” The woman who had promised to make him “master of the situation” had instead “tied up what little mail there was coming in, so I could not get a cent,” C.J. later complained in a letter to the editor of the Freeman. “All I got was ten cents on Sunday for a paper and shoe shine.”

  Madam Walker would publicly maintain that her third marriage had failed because of “business disagreements,” and perhaps in the larger sense that was true. C.J. himself conceded that they “could not agree along business lines.”

  “When we began to make ten dollars a day, he thought that amount was enough and that I should be satisfied,” Madam Walker later told a reporter. “But I was convinced that my hair preparations would fill a long-felt want, and when we found it impossible to agree, due to his narrowness of vision, I embarked in business for myself.”

  But of course their philosophical differences were only part of the problem. By his own admission, C.J. had “let drink and this designing evil woman come between” him and Madam Walker. In a public apology in a March 1914 issue of the Freeman, he denounced Larrie as “the cause of all my sorrow.” In truth, C.J. himself had been responsible for his predicament. Now no amount of flattery could budge Madam Walker, the woman he unconvincingly claimed to �
��still love better than life.” A few months later, when C.J. wrote begging for money and work, Ransom sent him $35 and some advice. “Madam does not understand why you do not go to Key West, Cuba, and other places which afford splendid fields, and in which she has few if any agents,” he wrote. Ever the teetotaler, Ransom also suggested that C.J. “keep sober and build up a big business.”

  Not long afterward, Peggie Prosser warned Madam Walker not to send an additional $100 that C.J. had requested. His plan, Peggie wrote, was to use the money to start yet another company, this time with a Mrs. Barksdale, a woman she called “worse than” Dora Larrie. Perennially down on his luck, C.J. continued to appeal to his former wife, his pestering approaches ranging from breezy and conciliatory to pathetic. “Say Mme, How would you like to give me employment as one of your traveling agents?” he blithely queried a couple of years after their divorce. “I am sure I could be of much service to you . . . There is no one that knows the work better than I.” Understandably, she remained unmoved.

  At times C.J.’s entreaties were pitifully melodramatic. “My heart is changed,” he vowed, doubtless when his wallet was empty. “I am tired of Louisville and am writing these lines with tears dripping from my eyes.” In another letter he whined about his rheumatism and accused her of ignoring his pleas. But Madam Walker had long since lost any sympathy for the man Ransom had accused of selling her formula to others and of teaching it to “some three or four women.” As Madam Walker’s buffer, Ransom warned C.J. against any “unwarranted” legal actions he might try to mount. Madam Walker, he threatened, “would spend every penny that she ever had in court before she would agree to give you one penny.” For the rest of his life C. J. Walker would try, but fail, to maneuver his way back into the company that was to make his name a household word.