Queens: Portraits of Black Women and Their Fabulous Hair - Michael Cunningham - Hardcover

A'Lelia Bundles, 52 Journalist and Madame C. J. Walker Biographer As a child growing up in Indianapolis, I was too young to really appreciate everything my great-great-grandmother Madame Walker did as a hair products entrepreneur, philanthropist, and political activist. I was just a kid playing in a dresser discovering things that had belonged to her and her daughter, A'Lelia Walker. The first time I had my hair pressed was at the Walker Beauty Shop for the sixtieth anniversary of the Walker Company. People came from all over the world. When they cut the ribbon to open the celebration I was standing there and my hair was pressed, it was all down my back. Then came the late sixties. The day that Martin Luther King, Jr., was assassinated I was elected vice president of my high school's student council and my school was 95 percent white. The next day some white parents called the school and said that they were going to take their children out of the school because I was elected. That was the beginning of my "real" personal radicalism and my Black identity. I read The Souls of Black Folks by W. E. B. DuBois and that was particularly important because it was the first book I read that truly deconstructed race and power in America. That book transformed me. I was going through this identity transformation and hair was very much a part of that. In my household there was a big battle about whether or not I could have an Afro. My father, as president of Summit Laboratories, which made hair-straightening products, said, "What do you mean you're going to get an Afro? Who do you think pays the mortgage and tuition?" It was an intense battle. My father traveled a lot to hair shows and he was leaving town and I had a nightmare. I was screaming. I had to get an Afro. The next day my father called and he and my mother must have talked because he got on the phone and said, "Okay, you can have your Afro." My mother took me to the Walker Beauty School and the students rolled my hair up and created this huge Afro for me. I had always had long hair, big braids, crinkly, wavy hair, and I'm proud to say that I have all of my ancestors in my hair, but in the era I grew up in, people only valued whatever part of your hair that was straight. With long hair people did say I was cute, but with my Afro I was considered strong. The older I get the more I realize that what endures is "strong," not "cute." After I graduated from Harvard I later went to graduate school at Columbia to study journalism. My advisor was Phyllis Garland, who was the only Black woman on the faculty at the journalism school. We sat down to talk about my final project and I threw out some lame topics. But she said, "Your name is A'Lelia. Do you have any connections to A'Lelia Walker or Madame Walker?" And I said, "Yeah, they're my great-great-grandmother and my great-grandmother." She said, "That's what you're going to write your paper about." She was such a blessing to me because if I had had any other advisor they would have looked at my name and thought, "This is a weird colored name this girl has." But Phyl validated my name and my family history. People had told me before that I should write about Madame Walker, but no one like Phyl, who was a role model and a published journalist, who said that it was an important story and told me you're going to write it, and I'm going to support you in the writing of it. Anita Norgrove, 17 Hairdresser and High School Student I was born in Africa, but moved with my family to London when I was small. My mom is from Nigeria and my father is from the U.K. People don't see me in an Afro normally. I usually wear my hair in cornrows or braids. Where I live you don't walk around town in an Afro if you're a girl. They'll make fun of you. On Saturday I went into a pub aCunningham, Michael is the author of 'Queens: Portraits of Black Women and Their Fabulous Hair - Michael Cunningham - Hardcover' with ISBN 9780385514620 and ISBN 038551462X.