A'Lelia Walker

A'Lelia Walker

A'Lelia Walker (June 6, 1885 – August 17, 1931) was an American businesswoman and patron of the arts. She was the daughter and only child of self-made millionaire Madam C.J. Walker.

Early life

She was born Lelia McWilliams in Vicksburg, Mississippi, the daughter of Moses McWilliams and Sarah Breedlove (later known as Madam C. J. Walker). Her father died when she was three years old. She grew up in St. Louis, Missouri and attended the city's public schools during the 1890s. She changed her last name to that of her mother and stepfather, Charles Joseph Walker, a few years after attending Knoxville College in Tennessee. In the early 1920s, she changed her first name to "A'Lelia."

In 1919, she inherited her mother's hair care and beauty empire, the Madam C.J. Walker Manufacturing Company.

She was known for her lavish clothing and glamorous lifestyle. Her life inspired singers, poets, and sculptors of the Harlem Renaissance. Langston Hughes called her the "joy goddess of Harlem's 1920s" because of her very interesting parties and guests; Zora Neale Hurston outlined a play about her and her mother; and Carl Van Vechten based his Nigger Heaven character, Adora Boniface, on her. Several Harlem Renaissance era novels include characters inspired by or based upon her.

Arts patron

During the 1920s she hosted many painters, sculptors, writers, musicians, and actors of the Harlem Renaissance at "The Dark Tower," which was part literary gathering place, part nightclub. It was a converted floor of her 136th Street townhouse near Lenox Avenue that was designed by Paul Frankl (Langston Hughes, "The Big Sea" [1940]). She also entertained at Villa Lewaro, her country house in Westchester County and at her pied-a-terre at 80 Edgecomb Avenue in Harlem.

Villa Lewaro was named for Walker (LElia WAlker RObinson) after Italian tenor Enrico Caruso said to her mother that the newly-built Irvington-on-Hudson mansion reminded him of the houses of his native country.

Walker was a patron of the arts who, despite her impoverished childhood, was surrounded by accomplished African American musicians and developed an early love of classical music and opera. She grew up in the neighborhood where Scott Joplin and other ragtime musicians gathered at Tom Turpin's Rosebud Cafe on St. Louis's Market Street.

Personal life

She married 3 times: to John Robinson, a hotel waiter, whom she divorced in 1914; to Dr. Wiley Wilson in 1919; and to Dr. James Arthur Kennedy, in 1926 until just a few months before her death in 1931.

She had no biological children, but in 1912 she adopted Fairy Mae Bryant (1898–1945), who became known as Mae Walker, who traveled with Madam C. J. Walker as a model and assistant. In November 1923, A'Lelia Walker orchestrated an elaborate "Million Dollar Wedding" for Mae's marriage to Dr. Gordon Jackson. Mae Walker, a graduate of Spelman Seminary in Atlanta, divorced Jackson in 1926 and married Attorney Marion R. Perry in September 1927.

Life and legacy

A'Lelia Walker died on August 17, 1931 of a cerebral hemorrhage brought on by hypertension, the same ailment that led to her mother's death in 1919. She was surrounded by friends who had traveled to Long Branch, New Jersey to celebrate a friend's birthday party with lobster and champagne in the midst of the Great Depression and Prohibition.

Thousands of Harlemites lined up to view her body. As her casket was lowered into the ground next to her mother's grave at Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx, Herbert Julian—the celebrated "Black Eagle"—flew over in a small plane and dropped dahlias and gladiolas onto the site.

A'Lelia Walker traveled extensively throughout the United States as well as to Cuba and Panama. From November 1921 to May 1922, she visited Paris, London (where she visited Covent Garden), Rome (where she witnessed a papal coronation), Monte Carlo, Cairo, Jerusalem and Addis Ababa (where she met Empress Zauditu.)

Madam C.J. Walker Building in Indianapolis

Walker Company sales began to suffer in 1929, with the beginning of the Great Depression. Increased expenses associated with a new million dollar headquarters and manufacturing facility opened in late 1927 in Indianapolis, Indiana, placed additional financial pressure on the operation. Today the building is known as the Madam Walker Theatre Center and is a National Historic Landmark.

Mae Walker was president of the company from 1931 until her death in 1945. Mae's daughter, A'Lelia Mae Perry Bundles (1928–1976), succeeded her mother as president of the company. A'Lelia Mae Perry Bundles's daughter, A'Lelia Bundles, (1952- ) is an author and journalist as well as Madam Walker's biographer.

The Madam C. J. Walker Company moved from the building in 1985 and the trustees of the Walker estate transferred the building to a non-profit group called the Madam Walker Urban Life Center. Today the building houses a cultural arts organization, is the anchor of the Indiana Avenue Cultural District and is known as the Madame Walker Theatre Center. Its current president is Dr. Terry Whitt Bailey.

See also

Madam C. J. Walker

A'Lelia Bundles

Madame Walker Theatre Center

External links

• http://www.madamcjwalker.com/bio_alelia_walker.aspx A'Lelia Walker Bio
• http://www.madamcjwalker.com/ Madam C.J. Walker Official Website A'Lelia Walker Biographical Information
• http://aleliawalker.wordpress.com/ A'Lelia Walker Photos and Harlem Renaissance Memorabilia
• https://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/ALelia-Walker-Joy-Goddess-of-Harlems-1920s/110049512355229?sk=wall A'Lelia Walker Joy Goddess

• "A'Lelia Walker". Find a Grave. http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=18240. Retrieved September 3, 2010.