On Her Own Ground: The Life and Times of Madam C.J. Walker (Hardcover)

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Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

She was the daughter of slaves, married at 14, a widow with a baby daughter at 20. But, by the time that she was 40, Madam C.J. Walker (1867-1919) was making as much money as a white corporate executive, thanks to her popular hair-care products for black women and her brilliance at marketing them. She created a workforce of sales agents that gave African American women job options other than being washerwomen or domestics. As her prominence and wealth increased, she became a generous benefactor of black educational institutions, and such a staunch supporter of the antilynching movement that the State Department labeled her a "race agitator" and denied her a passport in 1919. Yet, she had plenty of time for fun, too; she built a lavish mansion (near John D. Rockefeller's) in Irvington-on-Hudson, New York, and her daughter Lelia entertained the Harlem Renaissance elite in a spectacular Manhattan townhouse that was renovated with revenues from the company's New York branch. Author A'Lelia Bundles, a veteran television journalist and Madam Walker's descendant, reminds us that controversy over straightened hair has raged within the black community for a century, and that the businesswoman insisted that her aim never was to "de-kink" her customers' tresses, but instead to "grow" them through proper care, frequent washing, and improved nutrition. Bundles seamlessly weaves together her great-great-grandmother's remarkable personal odyssey with the broader outlines of African American struggle in the early 20th century, to create a colorful biography that's also a fascinating social history. --Wendy Smith

From Publishers Weekly

Bundles, the great-great-granddaughter of America's first black woman millionaire, evinces great affection for her famous relative, even if she doesn't overcome a major hurdle: Madam Walker kept her intimate life so private that there's not much to say about it. In the first chapters, Bundles uses a lot of awkward "possibly"s and "perhaps"s as she speculates about her subject's motivations and feelings. Once into the swing of Madam Walker's career, however, Bundles sidesteps the problem by turning social historian, leaving questions of love and sex aside. Walker's trajectory from uneducated washerwoman to hair-care industry magnate becomes the organizing element for a larger mosaic of black life in America, from Reconstruction through the founding of the NAACP in 1909. There's solid business history here, too, as Madam Walker figures out how to make her kitchen industry into a national empire by franchising it. Walker's philanthropy and social consciousness (working for the antilynching and the African anticolonial movements, for example) made her an important powerbroker in the black community. With fascinating details on benevolent and fraternal organizations, urban churches, black colleges, political movements and government surveillance of those involved in them, Bundles takes readers on an engrossing tour of a neglected corner of American history. Agent, Gail Ross. (Feb. 1) Forecast: While this is too densely researched for the average Oprah fan, devotees of social history, women's studies and business narratives will find Bundles's work a treasureAand find it they will as Bundles goes out on a major nine-city tour. This could easily become a staple in college-level African-American studies classes, and a reading group favorite.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 416 pages
• Publisher: Scribner; First Printing edition (February 1, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0684825821
• ISBN-13: 978-0684825823
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.4 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (26 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #906,194 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A compelling portrait of an American pioneer, January 29, 2001

By	Mary G. Longorio "Texasbookgirl" (Eagle Mountain, UT) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

On Her Own Ground details the life story of Madame C.J. Walker, best known for developing a line of hair care products. To know her only for this accomplishment would be short sighted, indeed. Born to slaves, Sarah Breedlove (her given name) was orphaned by age 7, married by age 14 and widowed with a small daughter by age 20. She was one of many women who took in washing to earn a living and to support her daughter. She began to experiment with hair salves when she noticed her hair was breaking and falling out. Tapping into a common problem for black women of the time, she began to produce and sell her discovery. This is also the story of a woman who was in the forefront of black educational and political movements of the early 1900's. She was friends (and sometimes adversaries) with many of the well known names of the time,including Booker T. Washington,Mary McLeod Bethune,and W.E.B DuBois. and a force behind providing educational and employment opportunities for African American women. Her daughter , who also helped run the family business was at the forefront of the Harlem Reniassance. Working against the prejudice of not only her race, but her sex, she built a family industry that exisits today ( although no longer in family hands).She built a home among the most wealthy of the time and enjoyed an income comprabable to any white, male executive of the time. A'Lelia Bundles has skillfully woven a complex portrait of a woman who shaped marketing techniques still used universally today. Using a wealth of family material (Bundles is the great-great granddaughter of Madam Walker)as well as other well documented sources, the author opens the door to a vibrant time in Black history, provides a historical context to help explain and compliment this amazing woman and tells a story so compelling that this is a hard book to put down.

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars For Your Career's Sake, May 9, 2001

By	Anne S. Headley (University Park, MD United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Why should an adult in a career transition take the time to read a 300-page book on a woman who has been dead since 1919? What does the daughter of freed slaves, who lived through reconstruction, Jim Crow, and the Harlem Renaissance have to say to us of the high-tech twenty-first century? Why do we read about the development of hair care products which have long been replaced and improved upon?

Fair questions. This new biography, written by the great-great granddaughter of Madam Walker, will surprise you, educate you, and (most importantly) motivate you. You have obstacles based on age, obsolete education, debt from college loans, child care problems, lack of confidence? Try comparing those with no education, a body stressed by laundry work and harsh chemicals, several husbands who abused her trust and undermined her business, mixed messages by her own community (including Booker T. Washington) about successful women, and an ungrateful daughter who never measured up to her work ethic and who enjoyed spending her mother's money.

Ms. Bundles, whose journalism credentials include a Columbia University education and experience as deputy bureau chief in the ABC News Bureau in Washington, has told the story of Madam Walker within the context that few of us have been taught. From the records of post-civil war Louisiana to nineteenth-century segregated railway journeys to northern cities, from the St. Louis World's Fair displays of ranking levels of civilization by race to the role influential African Americans played demanding justice for returning black soldiers from World War I, this book presents the cultural contexts which have been too long denied.

Read this book for inspiration. Read this book for understanding. Read this book because a potential employer might ask you, "What have you read recently?" You'll be proud of your answer.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Not Just About Hair Products -- About a "Race Woman", March 23, 2001

By	Terrie L. Robinson (Sacramento, CA United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

To minimize Ms. Bundles' work as being merely a biography about a poor washerwoman who made her fortune in the then-unserved African American hair products market is to dismiss this wonderful work unfairly. "On Her Own Ground" is a wonderful portrait not just of Madam Walker's meteoric rise from abject poverty and cruel circumstances to unequaled wealth among the African American elite (and the non-African American elite, too), but about the politics of race and the politics within the African American leadership at the turn of the century. Simply put, Madam Walker was what was then known as a "race woman": A woman who used her money and influence to further the rights and opportunities of African Americans. Because of her immense wealth, she made herself a voice to be heard and a force to be reckoned with within the male-dominated African American leadership of her time (her refusing-to-be-denied quest to gain the respect of Booker T. Washington is sad, admirable and amusing all at the same time)and against the Jim Crow/"turn our heads and look away from racism" white leadership of the day. Her works on behalf of and huge donation to the black YMCA in Indianapolis, her $5,000 donation to the anti-lynching fund of the NAACP (the largest contribution to the NAACP at that time), and her charge that the Walker agents, the African American women who sold her products, not only better themselves but work towards the betterment of the race, made her a woman way ahead of her time. In reading this book, it made me question why my affirmative action generation has not accomplished nearly so much with so much more at our disposal.

On a different note, Ms. Bundles is not a historian and does not pass herself off as being one. Unlike many historians, when Ms. Bundles does not know a fact for certain, she clearly states so and offers her theories as to what might have happened during some of the gaps in Madam Walker's history. And, in an act of intellectually honesty that is becoming increasingly rare, she never passes off her theories as the only possible explanations of what could have occurred, allowing the reader to engage in conjecture on her own, which, in my view, is all the more engaging. A thoroughly enjoyable read which I predict will become required reading in college African American studies' curricula.