A'Lelia Walker

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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.

Contents 1 Early life 2 The Dark Tower: A'Lelia Walker as Arts Patron 3 Life and legacy 4 References 5 External links

[edit] Early life

She was born Lelia McWilliams in Vicksburg, Mississippi, the daughter of Moses McWilliams and Sarah Breedlove (famously known as Madam C. J. Walker). 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 famous mother and stepfather, Charles Joseph Walker, a few years after attending Knoxville College in Tennessee. In the early 1920s, she changed her given name to "A'Lelia."

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

Noting her beauty, lavish clothing and glamorous lifestyle, some dubbed her the "Mahogany Millionairess." Her high life also 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 life.

[edit] The Dark Tower: A'Lelia Walker as Arts Patron

During the 1920s, she played host to many important artists, writers, musicians and actors of the Harlem Renaissance at "The Dark Tower," a converted floor of her 136th Street townhouse near Lenox Avenue^[1] that was designed by Paul Frankl. She entertained at her townhouse as well as at Villa Lewaro, her Westchester County, New York home, and her pied-a-terre at 80 Edgecomb Avenue in Harlem.

She 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. Italian tenor Enrico Caruso suggested that her mother, Madam C. J. Walker, name her Irvington-on-Hudson, New York estate, Villa Lewaro (after LElia WAlker RObinson) because it reminded him of homes in his native country. She grew up in the very neighborhood where Scott Joplin and other ragtime musicians gathered at Tom Turpin's Rosebud Cafe on St. Louis's Market Street. Among her closest friends during the Harlem Renaissance were the musicians and actors who defined the era.

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 financial pressure on the operation. Today that building is known as the Madam Walker Theatre Center and is a National Historic Landmark.

[edit] Life and legacy

A'Lelia Walker died on August 17, 1931^[2] 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. She enjoyed herself to the end.

Thousands of Harlemites in crowds reminiscent of those which gathered after the death of Florence Mills a few years earlier, lined up to view her body. As her casket was lowered into the ground next to her mother's grave at Woodlawn Cemetery^[3] in the Bronx, Herbert Julian—the celebrated "Black Eagle"—flew over in a small plane and dropped dahlias and gladiolas onto the site.

She married 3 times: to John Robinson, a hotel waiter,^[4] whom she divorced in 1914; to Dr. Wiley Wilson in 1919; and to Dr. James Arthur Kennedy, from 1926 until just a few months before her death in 1931.

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.)^[5]

She had no biological children, but in 1912, legally adopted Mae Bryant (1898-1945), who became known as Mae Walker. 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.

She was named president of the Madam C.J. Walker Company in 1931 after her mother's death. Mae Walker Perry was president of the company from 1931 until her death in 1945. Her daughter, A'Lelia Mae Perry Bundles (1928-1976),^[6] succeeded her mother as president of the company.

A'Lelia Walker's great-granddaughter, author A'Lelia P. Bundles (1952- )is Walker's biographer and author of On Her Own Ground: The Life and Times of Madam C. J. Walker' ' a New York Times Notable Book and recipient of the Letitia Woods Brown Book Prize from the Association of Black Women Historians. Bundles, a former producer with NBC News and ABC News and an executive with ABC News, is at work on the first major biography of A'Lelia Walker.

For more information see On Her Own Ground: The Life and Times of Madam C.J. Walker by A'Lelia Bundles, great-granddaughter of Walker.

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• [1] A'Lelia Walker Bio
• http://www.madamcjwalker.com/ Madam C.J. Walker Official Website] A'Lelia Walker Biographical Information

• A'Lelia Walker at Find a Grave