On Her Own Ground

  temporarily lower her blood pressure—David Brown, review of Robert and Michele Root-Bernstein, Honey, Mud, Maggots, and Other Medical Marvels, in Washington Post Book World, Jan. 11, 1998, p. 6.

  “I promise you I am going to let all business alone”—MW to FBR, Dec. 1, 1916 (MWC/IHS).

  “I take the stand that laborious work”—Ibid.

  outlining plans to install her hair culture course—MW to Pensacola Normal Industrial and Agricultural College, Mar 27, 1917; M. W. Dogan/Marshall, TX, to MW, Mar 6, 1917; M. W. Dogan to MW, Mar 26, 1917; W. H. Holtzclaw/Utica to MW, Mar 15, 1917; N. W. Collier/Jacksonville, FL, to MW, Mar 22, 1917 (all MWC/IHS).

  fee for “treatments be divided equally”—MW to FBR, Dec. 15, 1916 (MWC/IHS).

  “For the past four years my girls”—Mary McLeod Bethune to MW, Apr. 5, 1917 (MWC/IHS).

  “I shall be glad to talk this matter over”—Charlotte Hawkins Brown to MW, May 23, 1917 (MWC/IHS).

  “Alice is so dear”—MW to FBR, Dec. 15, 1916.

  Dr. James Webb Curtis—1910 Census, Garland County, Hot Springs, Twp ED #63, Sheet 6, Line 54, from Linda McDowell, Butler Collection, Little Rock Public Library.

  a local reporter learned of her recent purchase—“Negro Woman Gets in Society Addition.”

  “ordered her to Hot Springs”—MW to FBR, Dec. 1, 1916.

  700 agents—Louis George to MW, no date (first page missing); Lelia immediately panicked—LWR to FBR, Nov. 6, 1916 (MWC/IHS).

  Mother “may as well take”—Ibid.

  fluctuating between $50 and $350—Ibid.

  “I know mother is the best hearted person”—Ibid.

  “Mother is just like an impulsive baby.”—Ibid.

  “Mother rules with an iron hand”—Ibid.

  “I do not want to be dependent upon anyone”—Ibid.

  “Mother is willing”—Ibid.

  “If mother and I should have any controversy”—Ibid.

  “You misunderstood me concerning Lelia”—MW to FBR, Nov. 24, 1916 (MWC/IHS).

  “With all of this big house”—LWR to FBR, May 4, 1917 (MWC/IHS).

  Cuba “is the most picturesque place”—LWR to FBR, Mar. 26, 1917 (MWC/IHS).

  “Mother is a brick”—Ibid.

  “I am so afraid of having an argument”—LWR to FBR, undated, but probably June 1917 (MWFC/APB).

  “At the rate you are now going”—FBR to MW, Feb. 14, 1917 (MWFC/APB).

  When asked by a reporter about “the ill feeling”—William Lewis, “Madam Walker Visits Former Indiana Home,” St. Louis Argus, June 8, 1917.

  “Mrs. Malone was very ugly”—MW to Alice Burnette, June 9, 1917 (MWFC/APB).

  CHAPTER 17 “WE SHOULD PROTEST”

  a mass meeting to decry “the frequency”—Herbert Aptheker, ed., A Documentary History of the Negro People in the United States, 1910–1932, Vol. 3 (New York: Citadel Press, 1973, reprint 1993), p. 181.

  “to do their bit to make the world safe”—Johnson, Along This Way, p. 319.

  the murder of Eli Persons—William D. Miller, Memphis During the Progressive Era (Memphis: Memphis State University, 1957), pp. 191–95.

  “industrial slum”—Elliott Rudwick, Race Riot at East St. Louis, July 2, 1917 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1982, originally published by Southern Illinois University Press, 1964), p. 5.

  former laundry customers—Violet Reynolds, “The Story of a Remarkable Woman” (Indianapolis: Madam C. J. Walker Manufacturing Co., 1973), p. 4.

  The headline in the next morning’s—“Race Rioters Fire East St. Louis,” New York Times, July 3, 1917, p. 1.

  those initial reports fueled conspiracy theories—Rudwick, Race Riot, pp. 63–64.

  “first American pogrom”—Lewis, Du Bois, p. 536.

  fight between union organizers—Richard L. Stokes, “East St. Louis Riot Appalling to Nation,” St. Louis Globe-Democrat, July 8, 1917 (CTS/MHS).

  with only sixty-three police officers—Ibid.

  licensing fees from its 376 saloons—Lindsey Cooper, “The Congressional Investigation of East St. Louis,” The Crisis, Vol. 15, No. 3 (Jan. 1918).

  Like Pied Pipers . . . waving free tickets—Horace R. Cayton and St. Clair Drake, Black Metropolis (London: Jonathan Cape, 1946), p. 58.

  “loading box cars, handling crates”—St. Louis Post-Dispatch, July 3, 1917, quoted in Selwyn K. Troen and Glen E. Holt, St. Louis (New York: New Viewpoints, 1977), p. 154; St. Louis Globe-Democrat, July 8, 1917.

  new arrivals were filling—Cooper, “Congressional Investigation.”

  a dozen porters in 1914 to 470—Rudwick, Race Riot, pp. 16–17.

  200 vacant slots—Ibid., pp. 17 and 19.

  “a Negro town”—Ibid.

  a May confrontation—Ibid., pp. 29–33.

  July 4 race war—Ibid., p. 37.

  “almost, if not quite full”—Cooper, “Congressional Investigation.”

  In a case of mistaken identity—Rudwick, Race Riot, p. 38.

  “bullet-riddled”—Ibid., p. 40.

  “stoned, clubbed and kicked”—Ibid., pp. 43–44.

  Sympathetic whites—Ibid., p. 45

  Chanting “Burn ’em out!”—Ibid., p. 48.

  At the Knights of Pythias Hall—“St. Louis Negroes Plan to Care for Refugees,” St. Louis Globe-Democrat, July 4, 1917, p. 2.

  Jessie, then in training—Young, Your St. Louis and Mine, p. 16.

  relief workers at the Wheatley YWCA—Mongold, “Vespers and Vacant Lots,” unpublished manuscript, p. 26 (UMSL).

  “so sickening” that he “had not been able”—“Outrage, Say Congressmen of Race Riot,” St. Louis Globe-Democrat, July 4, 1917.

  “much humiliated” and “state’s fair name”—Ibid.

  “Ironically, Wilson helped create”—Kenneth O’Reilly, Nixon’s Piano: Presidents and Racial Politics from Washington to Clinton (New York: The Free Press, 1995), p. 91.

  In support of the mostly white mine workers—August Heckscher, Woodrow Wilson: A Biography (New York: Collier Books, 1991), p. 451.

  “Waging war abroad”—Ibid., p. 451–52.

  “failure to condemn the riot”—Rudwick, Race Riot, p. 133; see The Crisis, Vol. 14 (1917), p. 305.

  “appalling outbreak of savagery”—“Roosevelt and Gompers Row at Russian Meeting,” New York Times, July 7, 1917; Rudwick, Race Riot, p. 134.

  “Before we speak of justice”—New York Times, July 7, 1917.

  suggested a “silent protest parade”—Johnson, Along This Way, p. 308. (JWJ wrote: “During the conference I had a talk with Oswald Garrison Villard, in which he said that one of the most effective steps the Negro in New York could take would be to march down Fifth Avenue in a parade of silent protest.”)

  In Washington, suffragettes—Michael D. Shear, “Local Leaders Pay Tribute to Women,” Washington Post, Aug. 26, 1995.

  arrested and imprisoned—Ellen Carol Dubois, “Suffrage Movement,” in Wilma Mankiller, Gwendolyn Mink, Maysa Navarro, Barbara Smith and Gloria Steinem, eds., The Reader’s Companion to U.S. Women’s History (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1998), p. 580.

  “preparations were gone about with feverish”—Johnson, Along This Way, p. 320.

  “so striking and unusual a demonstration”—Aptheker, A Documentary History, p. 182.

  With Du Bois in East St. Louis—Lewis, Du Bois, p. 539.

  A “superb public speaker”—Bruce Kellner, The Harlem Renaissance: A Historical Dictionary for the Era (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1984), p. 199.

  Barely two months earlier—Johnson, Along This Way, p. 317.

  just after visiting Madam Walker—Dr. Sondra Kathryn Wilson to author, Feb. 26, 2000, E-mail re: timing of Johnson’s Indianapolis visit.

  a retarded man—Miller, Memphis, pp. 191–95.

  Johnson’s committee and Reverend Hutchens Bishop as president—Aptheker, A Documentary History, p. 181.

  raised more than $900—“Raise $918.17 for the Silent Protest Fund,” New York Age, A
ug. 9, 1917.

  Among the donors—Ibid.

  By noon on Saturday—“Silent Parade Notice,” New York Age, July 26, 1917; “Nearly Ten Thousand Take Part in Big Silent Protest Parade Down Fifth Avenue,” New York Age, Aug. 2, 1917.

  More than 800 children—“Negroes in Protest March in Fifth Av,” New York Times, July 29, 1917.

  Behind them, women dressed in white—Aptheker, A Documentary History, p. 181.

  “Fully 20,000 negroes”—New York Times, July 29, 1917.

  “We march because”—Johnson, Along This Way, p. 321.

  Madam Walker joined a small group—New York Times Magazine, Nov. 4, 1917.

  to decry “the atrocious attacks”—“President Wilson Asked to Speak,” Colorado Statesman, Aug. 18, 1917, from New York Evening Post, Aug. 1, 1917.

  to “speak ‘some public word’”—Colorado Statesman, Aug. 18, 1917.

  boss of Hudson County—Heckscher, Woodrow Wilson, p. 202.

  “to call at the White House”—Fred R. Moore, “New York Delegation Goes to Washington to See President; Greeted by Secretary Tumulty,” New York Age, Aug. 9, 1917.

  “may count upon me for absolute fair dealing”—“Wilson Tells Where He Stands on Race Question,” Indpls. Recorder, Aug. 17, 1921; John Hope Franklin, From Slavery to Freedom (5th ed.; New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1980), p. 324.

  “feed supply bill”—New York Age, Aug. 9, 1917.

  “regretted that he would not”—“Silent Protest Parade Committee Report,” Ibid.

  Wilson’s “political weather vane”—Arthur Walworth, Woodrow Wilson (New York: W. W. Norton, 1978), p. 277.

  “There is no doubt”—James Weldon Johnson, “News and Reviews”/“We Want the Public Word,” New York Age, Aug. 9, 1917.

  Asserting that Wilson—Ibid.

  “in a few well chosen words”—Colorado Statesman, Aug. 18, 1917.

  36 out of 100 eligible black men—Rudwick, Race Riot, p. 133; The Crisis, Vol. 14 (1917), p. 305.

  the petition implored the President—Colorado Statesman, Aug. 18, 1917.

  “not a single one” had been convicted—Petition from the Negro Silent Protest Parade committee (“To the President and Congress of the United States”), original petition (MWFC/APB).

  “No nation that seeks to fight” and among the sixteen signatories—Ibid.

  “the matter would not be neglected”—Colorado Statesman, Aug. 18, 1917.

  “was in sympathy”—“Silent Protest Parade Committee Report,” New York Age, Aug. 9, 1917.

  But the letters . . . “were not for publication”—Moore, “New York Delegation Goes to Washington.”

  “general and platitudinous phrases”—Rudwick, Race Riot, p. 135.

  “Negroes of influence and culture”—Moore, “New York Delegation.”

  Wilson failed to “speak out”—“Dr. Moton Has Talk with President Wilson,” New York Age, Sept. 6, 1917.

  the committee members fanned out—Moore, “New York Delegation.”

  Reverend Cullen convened another public forum—New York Age, Aug. 9, 1917.

  Reverend Wesley G. Parks—“Union Baptist Church History” (Philadelphia: Union Baptist Church, 1992), p. 22.

  Marian Anderson—Charles L. Blockson, “Philadelphia Guide to African American State Historical Markers” (Philadelphia: Charles Blockson Collection, 1992), p. 9.

  As Madam Walker surveyed the crowd—“Hair Culturists’ First Convention,” New York Age, Sept. 6, 1917; Minutes of the First National Convention of the Mme. C. J. Walker Hair Culturists’ Union of America, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Aug. 30–31, 1917, p. 1.

  “in a session composed of graduates”—Walker Hair Culturists’ Union Minutes, 1917, p. 1.

  “every hat was then voluntarily removed”—Ibid.

  “A wonderful picture told the story”—Ibid.

  “splendidly poised”—William Lewis, “Madam Walker Visits Former Indiana Home,” St. Louis Argus, June 8, 1917.

  “the business women of the race”—Walker Hair Culturists’ Union Minutes, 1917, p. 1.

  distinctive convention badges—MW to FBR, June 11, 1917 (MWFC/APB).

  Setting aside the morning sessions—Walker Hair Culturists’ Union Minutes, 1917, p. 1.

  Layten had founded the city’s branch—Lisa Clayton Robinson, “National League for the Protection of Colored Women,” in Kwame Anthony Appiah and Henry Louis Gates, Jr., eds., Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience (New York: Basic Civitas Books, 1999), p. 1395.

  two pioneering black filmmakers—New York Age, Sept. 6, 1917.

  “Her income [now] is $250 a week”—Literary Digest, Oct. 13, 1917, p. 76.

  Each decade had seen steady growth—Negro Population 1790–1925 (Washington, DC: GPO/Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, 1918). In 1930 there were more than 12,800 black female hairdressers; see Negroes in the United States, 1920–1932 (Washington, DC: GPO/Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, 1935), pp. 526 and 332.

  The most significant growth—Fourteenth Census of the United States, 1920, Vol. 4, pp. 358–59; Nathan E. Jacobs, ed., NHCA’s Golden Years (National Hairdressers and Cosmetologists Association/Western Publishing Company, 1970), p. 15.

  reserved the final night—MW to FBR, June 11, 1917 (MWFC/APB).

  “I have always resented”—FBR to MW, Feb. 14, 1917 (MWFC/APB).

  “on a co-operative basis”—“Notice to the Agents of the Madam C. J. Walker Manufacturing Company,” undated (MWC/IHS).

  “to have this organization, its rules”—Ibid.

  “the art of hair culture” was now being taught—MW to FBR, Mar 23, 1917 (MWC/IHS).

  the prizes—$500 in all—“To the Agents of the Madam C. J. Walker Manufacturing Company,” undated (MWC/IHS).

  “a ringing message”—Walker Hair Culturists’ Union Minutes, 1917, p. 2.

  “We, the representatives”—Ibid., p. 3

  After a brief stop in Cape May—“Flashes and Sparks,” Philadelphia Tribune, Sept. 8, 1917.

  more than a dozen company founders—Minutes of the National Negro Cosmetic Manufacturers Association, Sept. 5, 1917, New York (MWC/IHS).

  “necessary and urgent”—National Negro Cosmetic Manufacturers Association news release, undated (MWC/IHS).

  “[I]t has been so often the case”—Minutes of the NNCMA.

  “Yours for Nigger Business”—Shane White and Graham White, Stylin’—African American Expressive Culture from Its Beginnings to the Zoot Suit (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1998), p. 185, cites Chicago Defender, Aug. 5, 1916.

  had founded the Johnson Manufacturing Company—National Negro Business League Annual Report of the Sixteenth Session and the Fifteenth Anniversary Conven tion, Aug. 18–20, 1915 (LOC microfilm), p. 237.

  “some of the best and most successful”—NNCMA news release.

  “devising some form of cooperative advertising”—Minutes of the NNCMA.

  “fix a standard both in their prices”—Ibid.

  “unscrupulous persons”—NNCMA news release.

  Madam Walker elected president—Minutes of the NNCMA.

  “enthusiasm and inspiration”—MW to W. A. Johnson, Sept. 12, 1917 (MWC/IHS).

  “the beginning of a powerful organization”—Ibid.

  Madam Walker joined nearly 200 men and women—“National Equal Rights League Tenth Annual Meeting,” Colorado Statesman, Oct. 6, 1917.

  NERL delegates voted to demand—Ibid.

  “Despite progress we are still surrounded”—“Woman Leader of Negroes Will Battle ‘Lynch Law,’” Colorado Statesman, Oct. 6, 1917.

  elected a vice-president-at-large—“NERL Tenth Annual Meeting.”

  preferring “an organization of the colored people”—Linda O. McMurry, To Keep the Waters Troubled: The Life of Ida B. Wells (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), pp. 302–3.

  Madam Walker “entertained the entire delegation”—Alfreda M. Duster, ed., Crusade for Just
ice: The Autobiography of Ida B. Wells (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1970), p. 378.

  “ushered into the dining room”—Ibid.

  Having visited the devastated town—Mildred I. Thompson, Ida B. Wells-Barnett: An Exploratory Study of an American Black Woman, 1893–1930 (Brooklyn: Carlson Publishing, 1990), p. 119.

  to “undertake an investigation”—“Woman Leader of Negroes Will Battle ‘Lynch Law,’” Colorado Statesman, Oct. 6, 1917.

  applauded her “hard work”—Duster, Crusade for Justice, p. 378.

  “I was indeed proud”—Ibid.

  “I was one of the skeptics”—Ibid.

  “We drove out there almost every day”—Ibid.

  “Of late, Mme. Walker, in her high-powered motor car”—New York Times Magazine, Nov. 4, 1917.

  “‘Impossible!’ they exclaimed”—Ibid.

  “ a cool million, or nearly that”—Ibid.

  “I am not a millionaire”—Ibid.

  When a reprint—Louis George to FBR, Nov. 16, 1917 (MWC/IHS).

  brought white customers—Ibid.

  “astonishment of your success”—Mrs. H. M. Minos/Rocky Ford, CO, to MW/NY, Dec. 10, 1917 (MWC/IHS).

  His diagnosis: nephritis—“Famous Beauty Culturist Succumbs to an Attack of Bright’s Disease,” Chicago Defender, May 31, 1919. (This article identifies Sauer as a Chicago physician.)

  “an indefinite stay”—Ibid.

  “This is necessary for all time”—Louis George to FBR, Nov. 16, 1917.

  Battle Creek’s “dictatorial” director and “regimen of fresh air”—Nancy Rubin, The Life and Times of Marjorie Merriweather Post (New York: Villard Books, 1995), p. 4.

  The bland, tasteless, vegetarian diet—Mary Butler, Frances Thornton and Garth “Duff” Stoltz, The Battle Creek Idea: Dr. John Harvey Kellogg and the Battle Creek Sanitarium (Battle Creek, MI: Heritage Publications, 1998), p. 32.

  Despite the pleasant surroundings—Ibid.

  Unable to “tear herself away”—Chicago Defender, May 31, 1919.