She remembers the smells of the hair pomades in the factory, where women stirred ointment by hand in great, black vats.
She remembers her mother taking her to Madam C.J. Walker’s beauty school in Indianapolis in the 1960s to have her hair styled in an Afro.
She remembers growing up with remnants of the black wealth created by Walker, who built an empire in the early 1900s selling hair scalp ointments and whose accomplishments will be on display at the Smithsonian’s new African American Museum of History and Culture, which opens Sept. 24.
“The china we ate on for special occasions belonged to Madam Walker,” says A’Lelia Bundles, Walker’s great-great-granddaughter and the author of the biography, “On Her Own Ground: The Life and Times of Madam C.J. Walker.”
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