Madame CJ Walker
Robinswing, Black Kos Editor
Chris Rock’s recent movie "Good Hair" touched a nerve in the black community. Whether you found the movie hilarious or not, in it were some essential truths about Black women and our hair. It is the saga of black women's efforts to be fashionable and to look more like our European counterparts. Relaxers,weaves and chemical waves are a part of this effort.
One of the truths clearly illustrated in the movie is that the care and dressing of our hair represents a lot of money. Today this effort is epitomized by the Bronner Brothers Hair Show held in Atlanta. Today manufacturers of white hair care lines such as Revlon have created black hair care lines to capture a part of this billion dollar business. Yesterday the banner was carried by Madame CJ Walker.
The first black female millionaire in America was Madame CJ Walker. Born two years after the official end of slavery, she managed to become a millionaire by the time she was forty years old. No small feat.
Sarah Breedlove Walker was born in 1867 to former slaves in northeast Louisiana. Orphaned at a young age, she made her way to St. Louis and supported herself as a washerwoman for 18 years. A scalp condition caused some of her hair to fall out, and she experimented with a variety of homemade concoctions in an effort to regrow her hair. When new hair sprouted, it was soft and shiny, and her friends asked to try some of her miracle formula.
There were virtually no hair products available specifically for African-Americans at the time, and Sarah saw a business opportunity. She found she had a knack for marketing, and before long, she founded the Madam C. J. Walker Manufacturing Company with her husband, Charles Joseph Walker. Sarah tirelessly sold her product door-to-door and recruited other women to do the same. By 1910, she had over 1,000 sales agents, which gave her time to develop new products like hair conditioners and facial creams.
The woman who had $2 to her name when she arrived in St. Louis was a millionaire by 1914.
Along the way she took one of her husband's name and created what was a need for black women into a hair empire.
Pioneering entrepreneur. Madam C.J. Walker was clearly a pioneer of the modern cosmetics industry. Tenacity and perseverance, faith in herself and in God, quality products and "honest business dealings" were the elements and strategies she prescribed for aspiring entrepreneurs who requested the secret to her rags-to-riches ascent. Along the way, she provided educational opportunities and lucrative incomes for thousands of African American women who otherwise would have been consigned to jobs as farm laborers, washerwomen and maids.
Pioneering philanthropist. Madam Walker was also a pioneering philanthropist, initiating the philosophy of charitable giving in the black community with her unprecedented contributions to the YMCA, the NAACP, the Tuskegee Institute, and Bethune-Cookman College.
Orphaned at age seven, she often said,
"I got my start by giving myself a start."
Pioneering social activist. And, as a pioneering political activist, Madam C.J. Walker organized her sales agents to use their economic clout to protest lynching and racial injustice.
"This is the greatest country under the sun.But we must not let our love of country, our patriotic loyalty cause us to abate one whit in our protest against wrong and injustice. We should protest until the American sense of justice is so aroused that such affairs as the East St. Louis riot be forever impossible."
Like many women of that era, Sarah washed her hair only once a month. As a result, she suffered from severe dandruff and a scalp disease that caused her to lose most of her hair. In 1905, she moved to Denver where she worked as a sales agent for Annie Malone, a black woman entrepreneur who manufactured hair care products. Sarah consulted with a Denver pharmacist who analyzed Malone's formula and helped Sarah formulate her own products.
In 1908, Madam Walker created a college for her future employees. They were trained in the art of hair styling. Leila College, run by Madam Walker's daughter, A'Lelia, taught their students what became known as the Walker Method. After their schooling, most of the graduates were employed by Walker herself. She and her company employed over 3,000 people at one point.
Not content to rest on her financial laurels, Madame CJ Walker was actively involved in the anti-lynching movement.
Walker herself moved to New York in 1916, leaving the day-to-day operations of the Madam C. J. Walker Manufacturing Company in Indianapolis to Ransom and Alice Kelly, her factory forelady and a former school teacher. Although she continued to oversee the business and to run the New York office, once in Harlem, Madam Walker quickly became involved in Harlem's social and political life, taking special interest in the NAACP's anti-lynching movement to which she contributed $5,000.
While "Good Hair" poked a little fun at the changes many black women go through in order to have hair more consistent with our European sisters, it is telling that indeed hair care for women of color is big business. Still.
Now run and tell that.
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News by Amazinggrace and dopper0189, Black Kos Editor and Managing Editor
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Jerry Rawlings says he’s disappointed in many African leaders and in the failure of African countries to work together more closely. The Root: The Former President of Ghana Speaks Bluntly.
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Jerry John Rawlings is addicted to politics. Son of a Scotsman and a Ghanaian, he twice led coups against what he saw as corrupt governments and he acknowledges that his regime committed "a few punishments here and there," during 19 years as head of state of Ghana. Yet, he gave up power in 2001, after losing an election in 2000, and made way for multiparty democracy. Now 62, the former Ghanaian Air Force captain, who stepped down nine years ago, still has a lot to say about his small West African country, which celebrated its 53rd year of independence on March 6.
When The Root interviewed the former president, he was blunt and forthcoming about the evolution of African countries since independence and about his disappointment with his fellow Africans and their former colonial rulers.
The Root: Many African countries celebrate their 50th anniversary of independence in 2010. How do you assess their progress?
Jerry Rawlings: Well, I would have wished that we had made a lot more progress--social, economic and our political sense of purpose--in line with the aspirations of our forefathers, what they were fighting for. But it appears the colonial battle was not as atrocious as the new colonial battle. It has proven to be a lot more difficult, and more and more we are losing ownership of the resources of our continent. And not many of our leaders have a decolonized mind.
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Half a million people will need to be moved from their homes in mountainous areas of Uganda because of the risk of mudslides, the government has said. BBC: Uganda plans to resettle 500,000 over mudslide risk.
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Hundreds are believed to have died last week when mud enveloped communities on the slopes of Mount Elgon, in the east.
The government said some 200,000 people living in the west, near the Ruwenzori mountains, would be among those who should be relocated.
A minister said the deadly mudslides were a "wake-up call".
"The total population at risk of landslides and floods is estimated to be 500,000," said Musa Ecweru, minister for disaster preparedness.
He said he was convinced that much of the area in the east of the country, on the slopes of Mount Elgon about 275km (170 miles) north-east of the capital Kampala, was too dangerous to live in.
map
"The Elgon region has been invaded up to very dangerous slopes and if we don't relocate these people we are likely to witness a repeat of what we have witnessed," he said.
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BBC: Rebuilding economy is next Haiti challenge.
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Money has been forthcoming, but aid agencies say it is simply one of the worst disasters they have ever had to handle.
There has been severe criticism of the lack of cooperation between aid agencies, and the slow pace of getting emergency aid to victims.
"Everybody wants to be the co-ordinator, and nobody wants to be co-ordinated," says Professor Paul Collier at Oxford University, who acted as a United Nations advisor on Haiti's recovery after it was hit by a hurricane in 2008.
"The way out of that trap is to have a single temporary authority, jointly Haitian and international, to actually make decisions," he says.
But for the long-term future of the country, thoughts must now turn to reconstruction and building a viable economy.
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CNN: 'Drowning in Alzheimer's': Minorities struggle with dementia.
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Francisca Terrazas could not be left alone.
She burned her foot pouring boiling water over an ant hill in her driveway. She would wander for hours searching for aluminum cans. The effects of Alzheimer's disease had taken hold.
Minorities such as Terrazas are at greater risk for the degenerative disease, according to an Alzheimer's Association report released Tuesday. It found that African-Americans are about two times more likely and Hispanics are about 1.5 times more likely to develop Alzheimer's and other forms of dementia.
The reasons why minorities are at higher risk are unclear but not believed to be genetic.
The disease is indiscriminately devastating, robbing memories and personality as brain cells deteriorate.
But Alzheimer's for minorities presents unique challenges. Socioeconomic disparities can prevent access to health care, early detection or proper management of other conditions linked to the disease such as high blood pressure or diabetes, said Angela Geiger, the chief strategy officer for the Alzheimer's Association.
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The Loop: Progressives need to come back home, support Obama.
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I can already imagine the onslaught of criticism: Obama is no different than Bush. Obama has buckled under even the slightest pressure from the right. Just look at the case of civilian trials for terror suspects. Just look at his administration's unwillingness to prosecute Bush-era officials. Just look at his failure to close Guantanamo Bay.
His efforts to appease the Republicans has weakened his agenda. He has not addressed comprehensive immigration reform. He abandoned the progressive agenda long before they ever abandoned him. Where’s the public option?
The French writer Voltaire made this observation, nearly three hundred years ago: "Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good."
Today, as progressives lull and the right mobilizes, as Congressional district after Congressional district changes from blue to red, as Democrats retire, as Liz and Dick Cheney and Karl Rove emerge to remake history without any substantial dissent, I think it’s time for liberals and progressives to heed that advice.
We progressives are too busy tearing down the Democratic party, in essence conducting our own unofficial "purity test"—the same thing Republicans have been admonished for doing.
TalkLeft printed this argument about health care reform:
"In terms of progressive activists, it is clear that they have been completely rolled in this process and were given absolutely nothing. The good parts of the bill (Medicaid expansion, theoretically, the better regulations, though I have no confidence in the enforcement mechanisms) were not controversial and should not be seen as concessions to progressives. Indeed, I expect they would be passed separately if the Senate bill fails. In short, progressives got nothing in the political bargaining.
In my view, they should not lift a finger to get these bills passed. If progressives ever want to wield even a smidgen of influence, they have to be prepared to sit on the sidelines if they do not get what they want. Let the winners in this bill do the work for getting it passed. It's their bill after all. Not progressives."
Is this really the stance we want to take— essentially no stance at all? If we cannot define the game are we willing to simply refuse to play? But more importantly, are we willing to deal with the consequences? And there are very real consequences here...eight years of Bush should have taught us that much.
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New York Times: Wedding Plan: Jump a Broom or Eat Goat?
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LIKE weddings, wedding movies have their traditions: the dress is white and, usually, so are the characters.
Fox Searchlight’s "Our Family Wedding," which opens this Friday, subverts that custom with a cast that includes Forest Whitaker, Carlos Mencia and Regina King. Set in Los Angeles, the film revolves around an interracial couple (America Ferrera and Lance Gross) and the tension between their families.
"Wedding films are always about the differences between people," Rick Famuyiwa, the movie’s director, said. "But they haven’t quite dealt with African-Americans and Latinos."
It’s a surprising oversight since the wedding movie has been reliably lucrative, especially in the last two decades. "Father of the Bride," Charles Shyer’s 1991 remake of the 1950 film, took in $89 million at the box office and sparked a seemingly endless parade of Vera Wang-clad followers, like "My Best Friend’s Wedding," "The Wedding Date," "Bride Wars" and "27 Dresses," to name just a few.
Though some minority-driven studio pictures have had wedding-centric plot points, like "The Best Man" and "The Brothers," none has truly capitalized on the genre’s successful formula — one often filled with stressed-out brides, unlucky-in-love sisters or friends, and oddball relatives — much less used it to confront intermarriage. Sensing an opening, Mr. Famuyiwa was intrigued by the opportunity to work on "Our Family Wedding."
He first heard about the project in 2008, just as Barack Obama’s presidential campaign began to heat up. "At the time the entire debate seemed to be around Hispanics voting for an African-American president," he said. "We’ve all seen these projections of how society is going to look in 50 years. We’re all going to have to deal with each other culturally. It felt like a great opportunity to tell that story without being preachy."
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Voices and Soul by Justice Putnam, Black Kos Tuesday's Chile, Poetry Contributor
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The Landscape that Thylias Moss observed from the upstairs window of her childhood homes; and later,painfully felt in school, was of a particular kind of Suffering. An "exceptional" kind of Suffering, found peculiarly within the borders of an expanding American exaltation. She interiorized and walked about on that Landscape; feeling the sting of an icy winter blowing across the crowded hilly streets and the lonely flat plains of this Suffering Life. Yet as harsh as that Landscape and its populace proved, it did not defeat her or bend her to the false idol of capitulation.
In this week's poem, she contemplates a forgotten Divinity manifested in that Landscape of extinction and meditates upon...
The Rapture Of Dry Ice Burning Off Skin As The Moment Of The Soul's Apotheosis
How will we get used to joy
if we won't hold onto it?
Not even extinction stops me; when
I've sufficient craving, I follow the buffalo,
their hair hanging below their stomachs like
fringes on Tiffany lampshades; they can be turned on
so can I by a stampede, footsteps whose sound
is my heart souped up, doctored, ninety pounds
running off a semi's invincible engine. Buffalo
heaven is Niagara Falls. There their spirit
gushes. There they still stampede and power
the generators that operate the Tiffany lamps
that let us see in some of the dark. Snow
inundates the city bearing their name; buffalo
spirit chips later melt to feed the underground,
the politically dredlocked tendrils of roots. And this
has no place in reality, is trivial juxtaposed with
the faces of addicts, their eyes practically as sunken
as extinction, gray ripples like hurdlers' track lanes
under them, pupils like just more needle sites.
And their arms: flesh trying for a moon apprenticeship,
a celestial antibody. Every time I use it
the umbrella is turned inside out,
metal veins, totally hardened arteries and survival
without anything flowing within, nothing saying
life came from the sea, from anywhere but coincidence
or God's ulcer, revealed. Yet also, inside out
the umbrella tries to be a bouquet, or at least
the rugged wrapping for one that must endure much,
without dispensing coherent parcels of scent,
before the refuge of vase in a room already accustomed
to withering mind and retreating skin. But the smell
of the flowers lifts the corners of the mouth as if
the man at the center of this remorse has lifted her
in a waltz. This is as true as sickness. The Jehovah's
Witness will come to my door any minute with tracts, an
inflexible agenda and I won't let him in because
I'm painting a rosy picture with only blue and
yellow (sadness and cowardice).
I'm something of an alchemist. Extinct.
He would tell me time is running out.
I would correct him: time ran out; that's why
history repeats itself, why we can't advance.
What joy will come has to be here right now: Cheer
to wash the dirt away, Twenty Mule Team Borax and
Arm & Hammer to magnify Cheer's power, lemon-scented
bleach and ammonia to trick the nose, improved--changed--
Tide, almost all-purpose starch that cures any limpness
except impotence. Celebrate that there's Mastercard
to rule us, bring us to our knees, the protocol we follow
in the presence of the head of our state of ruin, the
official with us all the time, not inaccessible in
palaces or White Houses or Kremlins. Besides every
ritual is stylized, has patterns and repetitions
suitable for adaptation to dance. Here come toe shoes,
brushstrokes, oxymorons. Joy
is at our tongue tips: let the great thirsts and hungers
of the world be the marvelous thirsts, glorious hungers.
Let hearbreak be alternative to coffeebreak, five
midmorning minutes devoted to emotion.
-- Thylias Moss
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African Poetry written and performed by Andreattah Chuma.
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