By: Alexandria Robinson (’19), Staff Writer
You might not know her by name, but if you were ever seated next to a stove and instructed to “hold ya ear” by someone wielding a hot comb, you’re familiar with Madam C.J. Walker’s work.
Madam C.J. Walker, born Sarah Breedlove to a pair of poor sharecroppers in Mississippi, was the first female self-made millionaire in America. Walker’s inventive spirit, determination and revolutionary branding propelled her from busting suds as a washerwoman in St. Louis to becoming one of the most successful African-American businesspeople of all time.
A dream inspired Walker to develop a successful hair growth formula. This snowballed into a line of beauty products, including skin lightening creams and the infamous straightening comb (not her invention, but her wider toothed model popularized its usage). Walker’s genius didn’t lie only in her products, but in her “by Black women, for Black women” marketing strategy; her chitlin’ circuit hair tours and Black woman–centered advertisements made her a legend to her contemporaries.
But how does this legacy translate in this day and age? With the growing popularity of the natural hair movement, a lot of Walker’s products have lost their historical appeal. Whereas her patron sainthood of box perms and Easter Sunday presses once cemented her legacy in our minds, more and more of today’s black women are opting to embrace their kinkier textures. This combined with her problematic contribution to the colorism-fueled skin lightening industry seem to have all but dated her. However, according to Nykeya King (’18), Elaine Dodoo (’18), and Kenya Lee (’18), stylists at the student-owned YesHer studio, Madam C.J. Walker’s influence is anything but dated.
As young and educated Black women, the hairstylists at YesHer studio are a sort of modern embodiment of Madam C.J. Walker’s “Walker agents,” the thousands of Black women trained by Walker to utilize and market her products, a connection that all three of the women acknowledged.
“I think, in a way, we are both continuing and contradicting her legacy. I think her goal was to help Black women embrace their beauty…but we are embracing our Black womanhood in a different way,” said Dodoo, citing historical context as the primary cause of the differences.
Agreeing with Dodoo, Lee expressed a desire to replicate Walker’s “for us by us,” branding strategy, stating, “Since we are a group of black women that enjoy embracing and doing black hair, I think it’s important we continue that black-owned movement.”
This specific admiration of Walker’s legacy quickly emerged as a recurring theme among the women; King even has plans to rehabilitate former incarcerated women by training them to braid hair and employing them with YesHer in the future. Although her products may be losing their relevance, Madam C.J. Walker’s dedication to black representation and black enterprise ensures she remains an inspiration to aspiring black entrepreneurs like the YesHer stylists.
Madam C.J. Walker was not an uber woke, #NaturalHairGoals, afro-pick-toting activist, but that shouldn’t disqualify her from our acknowledgment.
This Black History Month, I challenge you to find the balance between appreciating the accomplishments of our predecessors while still being critical of their legacies.
Be nuanced, be humble, and above all, be grateful.
That silk press you get every time your fro starts feeling too heavy wouldn’t be possible without the hot comb preceding it.
Madam C.J. Walker crawled so that your favorite natural hair YouTuber could fly.
Show some respect.
The energy of this article matched the information. It was a great read!