Marjorie Joyner
Marjorie Stewart Joyner (October 24, 1896 – December 7, 1994) was born in 1896, in Monterey, Virginia. She was the granddaughter of a slave owner and a slave. In 1912, she moved to Chicago and began studying cosmetology. She graduated A.B. Molar Beauty School in Chicago in 1916, the first African American to achieve this. There she met Madam C. J. Walker, an African American beauty entrepreneur, and the owner of a cosmetic empire. Always an advocate of beauty for women, Joyner went to work for her and oversaw 200 of Madame Walker's beauty schools as the national advisor.
Permanent Wave Design
In 1926, she started looking for an easier way for African American women to straighten their hair. She took her inspiration from a pot roast cooking with rods inserted to speed the process. Joyner experimented initially with pot roast rods and soon designed a machine that could be used to curl or straighten hair by wrapping it on rods above the person's head and then cooking them to set the hair. This method allowed hairstyles to last several days. It is sometimes falsely cited that Joyner was the original inventor of this type of machine. Her design was an alternative version of Charles Nessler's groundbreaking permanent wave machine, invented in England during the late 1800s and patented in London in 1909 and again in the United States in 1925.(U.S. patent 1,522,258) Her patent for this design, (U.S. pat. #1,693,515) established her as the first African American woman to receive a patent. This claim is disputed by some who say that Sarah E. Goode was the first African American woman to hold a patent.
Joyner's machine was popular in salons with both African American and white women. The patent was credited to Madame Walker's company and she received almost no money for it. In 1945, she cofounded the United Beauty School Owners and Teachers Association. In 1973, at the age of 77, she was awarded a bachelor's degree in psychology from Bethune-Cookman College in Daytona Beach, Florida.
Currently, her papers reside in the Vivian G. Harsh Research Collection of Afro-American History and Literature at the Chicago Public Library.
Quote
"If I can take pot roast rods and have a one-of-a-kind invention, believe me, people can do what they set their minds to."
References
- "Invention at Play: Marjorie Joyner". Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation. Retrieved 2006-07-24.