PEORIA, Ill. – American Journalist and author A’Leila Bundles is hosting a lecture series at Peoria Riverfront Museum this weekend.
It’s called “Mentors, Rivals and Sisterfriends: Madam C.J. Walker and Annie Turnbo Malone.
Bundles is Walker’s great-great-granddaughter. She tells WMBD’s “Greg and Dan”, Walker became a millionaire selling hair care products made for African-American women.
“She did it door by door, meeting by meeting, recruiting sales agents…really developing all over the United States and the Caribbean. An army of sales agents who would sell the products to the other women, who were her beauty culturists, as she called them,” Bundles says.
Bundles, who wrote “On Her Own Ground” about Walker, says as a black woman starting her own business in the late 1800s, she faced a lot of opposition.
“One of my favorite stories about her, she wanted to speak at Booker T. Washington’s 1912 National Negro Business League convention. He refused to let her speak, and then finally on the last day, she just stood up and said…you’re going to let me speak,” Bundles says.
Washington reportedly didn’t want to let Walker speak to the crowd not only because she was a woman, but also because he’d planned out the whole event.
Malone, who once lived in Peoria, was the first African-American woman to start a hair care company specifically for black women. Walker sold Malone’s line before venturing out on her own.
Bundles’ book was the inspiration for the Netflix mini-series “Self Made” about the two African-American entrepreneurs. She will be speaking Friday at 5:30 p.m., then again Saturday at 2 p.m. James Agbara Bryson, descendant and historian of Annie Malone, will also be a part of the discussions.
To learn more about “Mentors, Rivals and Sisterfriends: Madam C.J. Walker and Annie Turnbo Malone, click HERE.
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