On Her Own Ground

  all the other items—Product formulas of the Madam C. J. Walker Manufacturing Company in possession of the author.

  only New York rivaled—Andrew Morrison and John H. C. Irwin, The Industries of Saint Louis: Her Advantages, Resources, Facilities and Commercial Relations as a Center of Trade and Manufacture (St. Louis: J. M. Elstner & Co., 1885), p. 51; The Saint Louis of To-Day Illustrated: An Artistic Presentation of Her Business Interests (St. Louis: Western Commercial Travelers’ Association, 1888), pp. 28–29; “The Gilded Age,” exhibit at the Missouri Historical Society Museum, Dec. 1997.

  “part of my story may sound strange”—New York Times Magazine, Nov. 4, 1917.

  “Judge in yourselves”—I Corinthians 11:13–15.

  “instead of well-set hair, baldness”—Isaiah 3:24.

  an antebellum elite—Willard Gatewood, Aristocrats of Color: The Black Elite, 1880–1920 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990), pp. 149–81.

  “Black men who clamor”—Alfred A. Moss, Jr., The American Negro Academy: Voice of the Talented Tenth (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1981), p. 55, cited in Paula Giddings, When and Where I Enter: The Impact of Black Women on Race and Sex in America (New York: William Morrow, 1984), p. 115.

  “apt to look to other races”—Fannie Barrier Williams, “The Colored Girl,” Voice of the Negro, June 1905, p. 403, cited in Giddings, When and Where, p. 115.

  “marry a woman for her color”—“Not Color But Character,” Nannie Helen Burroughs, Voice of the Negro, July 1904, p. 277; Giddings, When and Where, p. 115.

  “the Gibson Cure”—This Fabulous Century, Vol. 1: 1900–1910 (New York: Time-Life Books, 1985), p. 183.

  “chic, haughty and graceful”—Ibid., pp. 181–83.

  “one hundred thousand pounds”—C. Henri Leonard, The Hair: Its Growth, Care, Diseases and Treatment (Detroit: C. Henri Leonard, Medical Book Publishers, 1880), p. 9.

  two dollars per ounce—Ibid., p. 10.

  “NAPPY HEADS!”—“Rip Saw Column of the St. Louis Palladium,” St. Louis Palladium, May 26, 1906.

  Pure Food and Drugs Act—This Fabulous Century, p. 173.

  preparations manufactured by others—The Walker Co., p. 3.

  “personally” restored—Albert Anderson, “The Amazing Inside Story of the Malone Case,” The Light and “Heebie Jeebies,” Vol. 3, No. 13 (Feb. 19, 1927), p. 15, Claude Barnett Papers, CPL/VGHC; Robinson, “Class, Race, and Gender,” pp. 349–50; “Annie Turnbo-Malone,” Jeanne Conway Mongold ms. copy Dec. 12, 1977, UMSL Archives.

  An ambitious woman—Second National Poro Convention Souvenir Program, Chicago, July 24–26, 1949.

  2223 Market Street—“Poro” in Pictures with a Short History of Its Development (St. Louis: Poro College, 1926); p. 5.

  free scalp treatments—Ibid., 5; Second National Poro Convention, 1949; Mongold, p. 1.

  “South 16th Street”—Anderson, The Light and “Heebie Jeebies,” p. 15.

  one of Pope-Turnbo’s earliest sales agents—Mrs. C. J. Walker letter, Colorado Statesman, May 12, 1906, p. 5; handwritten notes from Willard Gatewood, Aug. 1992; “To the Ladies,” Denver Statesman, May 18, 1906; George Ross to R. L. Brokenburr, Dec. 17, 1919, MWC/IHS; Anderson, The Light and “Heebie Jeebies,” p. 15; Robinson, “Class, Race, and Gender,” pp. 349–50.

  Tetter’s tiny scales—The Madam C. J. Walker Beauty Manual, 2nd ed. (Indianapolis: Walker Manufacturing Company, 1940); pp. 102–3.

  Hippocrates—Leonard, The Hair, pp. 172–73.

  “Clean scalps mean clean bodies”—Anderson, The Light and “Heebie Jeebies,” p. 14.

  unidentified illness—Annie Minerva Turnbo Pope Malone was born Aug. 9, 1869, the tenth of Robert and Isabella Cook Turnbo’s eleven children. Annie Malone died May 10, 1957. “Poro” in Pictures, p. 4.

  “with the return of her health”—Ibid.

  “natural gift from childhood”—Mrs. A. M. Pope letter, Colorado Statesman, May 12, 1906; handwritten notes from Willard Gatewood, Aug. 1992.

  “weather-beaten building”—Second National Poro Convention.

  Wonderful Hair Grower—“Poro” in Pictures, p. 4.

  “I went around in the buggy”—Robinson, “Class, Race, and Gender,” 1984, p. 348.

  “stimulating washes”—Sir John Eric Erichsen, Practical Treatise on the Diseases of the Scalp (London: John Churchill, 1842), pp. 190–91.

  “Shampoo with tar soap”—“Beauty Notes in General,” St. Louis Palladium, Dec. 17, 1904.

  “Princess Tonic Hair Restorer”—Fred L. Israel, ed., 1897 Sears, Roebuck Catalogue (Philadelphia: Chelsea House, 1968), p. 31.

  “Bathe the affected parts”—“Hair Growth” (Cuticura ad), St. Louis Palladium, July 18, 1903, p. 4; “WILD WITH ECZEMA,” St. Louis Palladium, Apr. 8, 1905; “Seventy Years of Cuticura 1878–1948” (Malden, MA: Potter Drug & Chemical Company, 1948), n.p.

  “only” and “most wonderful” —“Nelson’s Straightine” ad, St. Louis Palladium, Oct. 10, 1903; “Kink-No-More,” Indpls. Freeman, Feb. 18, 1911.

  “members of the colored race”—“Ozono” ad, St. Louis Palladium, Jan. 10, 1903, p. 4, and “Ozono and Cedroline” ad, St. Louis Palladium, Mar. 21, 1903, p. 3.

  “Ozono will take the Kinks out”—St. Louis Palladium, Jan. 10, 1903, p. 4.

  “the first preparation ever sold”—“Original Ozonized Ox Marrow” ad, St. Louis Palladium, Jan. 10, 1903, p. 4.

  “peach-like complexion”—“A Wonderful Face Bleach—Crane and Company,” May 7, 1904.

  local distribution agent—St. Louis Palladium, Jan. 10, 1903.

  “I am determined”—Fred R. Moore to Continental Chemical Company, Richmond, VA, May 29, 1905.

  “Don’t you think”—Moore to Continental Chemical Company, May 29, 1905. (Sent to author by Kenneth Hamilton. With the assistance of Booker T. Washington, Moore purchased the New York Age in 1907.)

  secret financial benefactor—“Frederick Moore,” John B. Wiseman in Rayford W. Logan and Michael R. Winston, Dictionary of American Negro Biography (New York: W. W. Norton, 1982), p. 447.

  “uncompromisingly demanded equality”—Emma Lou Thornbrough, “T. Thomas Fortune,” in Ibid., p. 236.

  “such advertisements are improper in Negro journals”—“The Age-Times Debate,” Indpls. Recorder, Sept. 4, 1909.

  “not the so-called hair straightening goods”—“The Best is always the Cheapest—Johnson Mfg. Company” ad, St. Louis Palladium, May 7, 1904; National Negro Business League Annual Report of the Sixteenth Session and the Fifteenth Anniversary Convention, Aug. 18–20, 1915 (LOC Microfilm), pp. 237–39.

  “NOT a STRAIGHTENER”—“Thomas’ Magic Hair Grower,” Voice of the Negro, Vol. 1, No. 7 (MSRC).

  wild-haired caricatures—“The Best is always the Cheapest.”

  “the Great African Hair Unkinker”—“Hodgson, the Great African Hair Unkinker,” New York Times, Feb. 9, 1859, cited in Middleton Harris, The Black Book (New York: Random House, 1974), p. 190.

  “When I was a washerwoman”—New York Times Magazine, Nov. 4, 1917.

  Eliza Potter—Eliza Potter, A Hairdresser’s Experience in High Life (Cincinnati, 1859), pp. 158–59, cited in Juliet E. K. Walker, The History of Black Business in America: Capitalism, Race and Entrepreneurship (New York: Macmillan Library Reference, USA, 1998), p. 141.

  Mahan Sisters—“Fancy Hair-Dressers,” New York Citizen, Aug. 5, 1865, cited in Harris, The Black Book, p. 190.

  Harriet Wilson—Reginald Pitts to the author, Jan. 16 and 20, 1998, E-mail.

  “hair-work seems to be pleasant”—Katherine D. Tillman, “Paying Professions for Colored Girls,” Voice of the Negro, Jan. and Feb. 1907, p. 55 (LOC Microfilm Serial Set #5062).

  “Some colored hair dressers earn”—Ibid.

  CHAPTER 6 WORLD’S FAIR

  “the worst governed”—Jeffrey E. Smith, “A Mirror Held to St. Louis: William Marion Reed and the 1904 World’s Fair,” Gateway Heritage, Vol. 19, No. 1 (Summer 1998), p
. 35.

  Nudged in part—Ibid., pp. 36–37; Michael Lerner, “‘Hoping for a Splendid Summer’: African American St. Louis, Ragtime and the Louisiana Purchase Exposition,” Gateway Heritage, Winter 1998–99, p. 31.

  superficial sprucing-up—Ibid.

  nearly twenty million people—“Meet Me at the Fair,” Humanities, May–June 1996, p. 17.

  100,000 African Americans—Lerner, “Hoping,” p. 38.

  Engulfed in the blended aroma—Rydell, All the World’s, p. 179, cites “Terrible Battles of the Bloody Boer War,” St. Louis World, June 17, 1904, p. 5.

  won twin bronze medals—John M. Hoberman, “The Olympic Movement,” in Jack Salzman, David Lionel Smith and Cornel West, Encyclopedia of African-American Culture and History, Vol. 4 (New York: Macmillan Library Reference USA, 1996), pp. 2050, 2667 and 2868; Sue Ann Wood, “The 1904 World’s Fair,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch Magazine (reprint), June 16, 1996, p. 4.

  Philippines Constabulary Band—Eileen Southern, The Music of Black Americans: A History (3rd ed.; New York: W. W. Norton, 1997), p. 307.

  pianist Joe Jordan—“The Rose Bud Ball,” Feb. 27, 1904, p. 1, reprinted in full in David A. Jasen and Trebor Jay Tichenor, Rags and Ragtime (New York: Seabury, 1978), pp. 102–3.

  Three weeks later—“Grand Recital—Paul Laurence Dunbar,” St. Louis Palladium, Mar. 19, 1904.

  veteran of World’s Fair orations—“Hon. Booker T. Washington,” St. Louis Palladium, July 2, 1904.

  “the wisest among my race”—Louis R. Harlan, Booker T. Washington: The Making of a Black Leader, 1856–1901 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1972), p. 219.

  “the most intelligent people”—“Du Bois Without Fail,” St. Louis Palladium, Sept. 24, 1904.

  trolley-sized cars—Wood, “The 1904 World’s Fair,” p. 5.

  “no discrimination”—St. Louis Palladium, Jan. 1904, quoted in Lerner, “Hoping,” p. 31; Robertus Love, “To See the Fair,” St. Louis Palladium, Apr. 23, 1904.

  “the coming together”—William M. Farmer to Booker T. Washington, Apr. 8, 1904, BTW/LOC, Container 802; also LPEC/MHS, Folder 14.

  unskilled service job—Lerner, “Hoping,” p 37.

  Those with entrepreneurial instincts—Ibid., p. 33.

  job seekers from bordering states—Young, Your St. Louis, p. 33.

  real estate valued at more than half a million—Lerner, “Hoping,” p. 41.

  “Ragtime Millionaire”—Young, Your St. Louis, p. 34.

  “The impression is fast”—BTW to Farmer, Apr. 22, 1904, BTW/LOC; LPEC/MHS, Folder 14.

  few eating establishments—Ibid.

  “The black man who desires”—Emmett J. Scott, “Louisiana Purchase Exposition,” Voice of the Negro, Aug. 1904, p. 311 (LOC Microfilm Serial Set #5062).

  “distinctively marked goblets”—“Proposes Bureau for Negro Race,” St. Louis Globe-Democrat, June 2, 1904, p. 3, LPEC/MHS, Folder 14.

  “now an element”—Susan Curtis, Dancing to a Black Man’s Tune: A Life of Scott Joplin (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1994), p. 138, cites “The Negro and the World’s Fair,” World’s Fair Bulletin 2 (Oct. 1901), p. 32.

  they were largely omitted—“Bird’s-Eye View of World’s Fair,” St. Louis Palladium, May 7, 1904; Indpls. Freeman, Mar. 16, 1901; Farmer to BTW, Apr. 8, 1904.

  “showing Negro life”—Scott, “Louisiana Purchase,” p. 310.

  Palladium’s 1903 press run—Lerner, “Hoping,” p. 38.

  “to represent human progress”—“Anthropology,” in Louisiana Purchase Centennial: Dedication Ceremonies, St. Louis, U.S.A., Apr. 30 and May 1–2, 1903 (no imprint), 41, in California State University, Fresno, Department of Special Collections, Expositions and Fairs Collection cited in Rydell, All the World’s, p. 62.

  “It is a matter”—W. J. McGee, “The Trend of Human Progress,” American Anthropologist, n.s., Vol. 1 (July 1899), pp. 414 and 446, cited in Rydell, All the World’s, p. 160.

  The Japanese—Rydell, All the World’s, pp. 180–81.

  Beneath them McGee placed—“Hardcovers in Brief,” Review of A World on Display: Photographs from the St. Louis World’s Fair, 1904, Washington Post Book World, June 8, 1997, p. 13; Rydell, All the World’s, p.163.

  Forty-seven-acre reservation—Rydell, All the World’s, pp. 163 and 171.

  “white and strong”—W. J. McGee, “Trend,” pp. 401–47, esp. 403, 410–11, 413, cited in Rydell, All the World’s, p. 160.

  “general directive”—Max Barber, “In the Sanctum,” Voice of the Negro, Vol. I (Nov. 1904), p. 562, cited in Christensen, Black St. Louis, p. 200.

  Georgia troops had objected—St. Louis Post-Dispatch, July 16, 1904; Indpls. Freeman, July 16, 1904, cited in Christensen, Black St. Louis, pp. 200–1.

  Now the 200 NACW delegates—Josephine B. Bruce, “The Afterglow of the Women’s Convention,” Voice of the Negro, Vol. 1 (Nov. 1904), p. 541.

  Assembled in St. Paul’s sanctuary—“NACW Program—Monday, July 11, 1904,” Fourth Convention of the National Association of Colored Women (Jefferson City, MO: Hugh Stephens Printing Company, 1904): p. 3, RNACWC microfilm, 1895–1992, Reel I, Frames 0276–0297, LOC.

  “Future success”—“Minutes: Tuesday, July 12, 1904—Evening Session,” Ibid.

  “progressive colored women”—Fannie Barrier Williams, “The Club Movement Among Colored Women of America,” in A New Negro for a New Century, ed. John E. MacBrady (Chicago: American Publishing House, 1900), p. 418, quoted in Beverly Guy-Sheftall, Daughters of Sorrow: Attitudes Toward Black Women, 1880–1920 (Brooklyn: Carlson Publishing, 1990), p. 57.

  15,000 women from thirty-one states—“Minutes, Tuesday, July 12, 1904,” p. 9.

  In 1896, six years after—Gerda Lerner, Black Women in White America: A Documentary History (New York: Vintage Books, 1973), p. 440; Guy-Sheftall, Daughters of Sorrow, pp. 21–22, 24 and 26.

  “The Negroes in this country”—Lerner, Black Women, p. 436.

  “to withdraw the decision”—“Abandon Meeting at Fair—Mrs. Booker T. Washington Claims Colored Women Are Discriminated Against,” St. Louis Globe-Democrat, July 13, 1904, quoted in St. Louis Palladium, July 16, 1904, p. 1.

  “against Colored women”—St. Louis Palladium, July 16, 1904.

  nearly 700 blacks—Stewart E. Tolnay and E. M. Beck, Festival of Violence : An Analysis of Southern Lynchings, 1882–1930 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1995), p. 271.

  “We the representatives”—”Resolutions of N.A.C.W.,” Fourth NACW Convention, p. 25.

  they urged a boycott—Ibid.

  “rag time, coon songs”—“Colored Women—Interesting Proceedings of the National Association of Colored Women,” St. Louis Palladium, July 16, 1904, p. 1; Young, Your St. Louis, p. 52; Fourth NACW Convention, p. 12.

  “that the musical taste and talent”—Fourth NACW Convention, p. 12.

  “the chief amusements”—Lerner, “Hoping,” p. 35.

  “One ever feels his two-ness”—W.E.B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk (New York: Everyman’s Library/Alfred A. Knopf, 1993; first published in 1903), p. 9.

  “It is foolish”—Young, Your St. Louis, p. 52.

  “What every woman who bleaches”—Nannie Helen Burroughs, “Not Color But Character,” Voice of the Negro, July 1904, p. 278; Giddings, When and Where, p. 115.

  CHAPTER 7 WESTWARD

  a few inches shorter—“Climate and Crops, Nebraska Section,” Climate and Crop Service of the Weather Bureau, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Lincoln, Nebraska, Vol. 10, No. 7 (July 1905), p. 1.

  stifling midnineties—“Another Hot Day Here Says Forecaster,” St. Louis Globe-Democrat, July 19, 1905.

  $850 million bounty—Denver of To-day (no publisher listed, circa 1905), p. 1 (LOC).

  “healthiest city”—Ibid., p. 5.

  With the aid of irrigation—Seeing Denver (Denver: American Sight-seeing Car & Coach Company, 1904), p. 5.

  nearly 540,000—U.S. Bureau of the Census, Twelfth Census of the Uni
ted States, 1900, Vol. 1, Population, Part 1 (Washington, DC: U.S. Census Office, 1901), pp. 609–46, cited in Quintard Taylor, In Search of the Racial Frontier: African Americans in the American West, 1528–1990 (New York: W. W. Norton, 1998), p. 143; Stephen J. Leonard and Thomas J. Neal, Denver: Mining Camp to Metropolis (Denver: University of Colorado Press, 1990), p. 117.

  Denver was home—1900 Census, pp. 609–46; Leonard and Neal, Denver, pp. 180–81 and 481.

  fewer than 4,000 Denverites were black—1900 Census, pp. 609–46, cited in Taylor, In Search, p. 143; Rosalyn Terborg-Penn, African American Women in the Struggle for the Vote (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998), p. 138, cites Helen Laura Sumner Woodbury, Equal Suffrage: The Results of an Investigation in Colorado, Made for the Collective Equal Suffrage League of New York State (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1909), pp. 70, 114 and 117.

  “the best appointed hotel”—“The Inter-Ocean,” Rocky Mountain News, Oct. 22, 1873 (DPL).

  used her nest egg—“Black Colorado: A Forgotten People Who Made History,” Denver Post Empire Magazine, Nov. 16, 1969, p. 33.

  mansion in downtown—Ibid.

  $7,000 wedding dress—Leonard and Neal, Denver, pp. 103–4.

  Colorado Equal Suffrage Association—Ibid., p. 100.

  1906 Carnival of Nations—Kristen Iversen, Molly Brown: Unraveling the Myth (Boulder: Johnson Books, 1999), p. 151.

  “$1.50 in my pocket”—“Negro Woman, Rich Hair Tonic Maker, in City,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Mar. 4, 1918. On occasion Madam Walker said she “began my business career on a capital of $1.25.” See “Wealthiest Negro Woman’s Suburban Mansion,” New York Times Magazine, Nov. 4, 1917.

  “I was convinced”—St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Mar. 4, 1918.

  “alkali that was bad”—Ibid.

  affected agricultural output—Leonard and Neal, Denver, p. 44.

  “was working for Scholtz”—Zenobia “Peg” Fisher interview in Stanley Nelson, “Two Dollars and a Dream” (New York: Half Nelson Productions, 1987); Fisher, who was born circa 1896, was an employee of the Madam C. J. Walker Manufacturing Company from 1914 through the early 1930s.