A'Lelia Walker was born Lelia McWilliams in Vicksburg, Mississippi, in 1885, the daughter of Moses and Sarah McWilliams. Her father died when she was 2. Her mother later married John Davis in 1894 and divorced in 1903. In 1906, her mother married Charles Joseph Walker, a newspaper advertising salesman, and became an independent hairdresser and retailer of cosmetic creams. A'Lelia grew up in St. Louis, Missouri, and attended Knoxville College in Tennessee before entering the family business.
A'Lelia Walker became president of her mother's company in 1919, upon her mother's death, and remained in that position until her own death in August 1931. She initiated a number of marketing campaigns to promote the company—including a competition among prominent ministers for a Trip to the Holy Land in 1924—and remained the face of the Walker Company, but day-to-day operations were overseen by attorney F. B. Ransom and factory manager Alice Kelly at the Indianapolis headquarters. During the 1920s, A'Lelia Walker immersed herself in Harlem's dynamic social life as a patron of the arts and hostess of some of the era's most notable social gatherings. Walker Company sales began to suffer in 1929, with the beginning of the Great Depression. A new million-dollar headquarters and manufacturing facility, opened in late 1927 in Indianapolis, placed additional expenses and financial pressure on the operation, and she was forced to sell a great deal of valuable art and antiques. Her adopted daughter Mae Walker became company president from 1931 until her death in 1945. In a fourth-generation succession, Mae's daughter A'Lelia Mae Perry Bundles succeeded her mother at the head of the company. Today the company's building is known as the Madam Walker Theatre Center and is a National Historic Landmark.
Arts Patron
A'Lelia Walker counted among her friends many accomplished African American musicians. She developed an early love of classical music and opera in part because the choir director at the AME church she and her mother attended in St. Louis was a classically trained opera singer and organist. She grew up in the neighborhood where Scott Joplin and other ragtime musicians gathered at Tom Turpin's Rosebud Cafe on St. Louis's Market Street. During the 1920s she hosted many musicians, actors, writers, artists, political figures and socialites in her townhouse at 108-110 West 136th Street near Lenox Avenue. The elegant brick and limestone building had been designed by Vertner Tandy, a founder of Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity and the first black architect licensed in New York State. Almost from the time of her arrival in Harlem in 1913, her dinner parties, dances and soirees included well known Harlem figures like James Reese Europe, J. Rosamand Johnson, Bert Williams and Florence Mills. Live music—from classical and ragtime to jazz and blues—was a regular feature with entertainment provided by her musician friends. In October 1927, she converted a floor of the home into The Dark Tower, a cultural salon that became legendary as one of the gathering places of the era, a place where Harlem's talented artists socialized with their Greenwich Village counterparts as well as European and African royalty. She commissioned Austrian designer Paul Frankl to create the interior. She also entertained at Villa Lewaro, her country house in Westchester County and at her pied-à-terre at 80 Edgecombe Avenue in Harlem.
Personal life
Walker was married three times: to John Robinson, a hotel waiter, from whom she separated about 1911 and divorced in 1914; to Dr. Wiley Wilson in 1919; and to Dr. James Arthur Kennedy, in 1926, whom she divorced just a few months before her death in 1931. Her adoptive daughter was Fairy Mae Bryant, born in November 1898, who became an orphan and was adopted in 1912. She was known as Mae Walker and traveled with Madam C. J. Walker as a model and assistant. In November 1923, A'Lelia Walker orchestrated an elaborate "Million Dollar Wedding" for Mae's marriage to Dr. Gordon Jackson. Mae, a graduate of Spelman Seminary in Atlanta, divorced Jackson in 1926 and married Attorney Marion R. Perry in September 1927.
Death and legacy
A'Lelia Walker died on August 17, 1931 of a cerebral hemorrhage brought on by hypertension, the same ailment that led to her mother's death in 1919. She was surrounded by friends who had traveled to Long Branch, New Jersey to celebrate a birthday party with lobster and champagne in the midst of the Great Depression and Prohibition. Thousands of Harlemites lined up to view her body. She was eulogized by Reverend Adam Clayton Powell Sr. at the funeral parlor on Seventh Avenue. Mary McLeod Bethune also spoke at the funeral. As her casket was lowered into the ground next to her mother's grave at Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx, Hubert Julian —the celebrated "Black Eagle"— flew over in a small plane and dropped dahlias and gladioluses onto the site. Walker supported local missionary work among Baptist women in New York City. She attended a Baptist church and served on various committees, occasionally speaking for women's days and professional events. Villa Lewaro was named for Walker after Italian tenor Enrico Caruso told her after a visit to the property that the newly built Irvington-on-Hudson mansion reminded him of the houses of his native country. Actress and comedian Tiffany Haddish portrayed Walker in the Netflix miniseries Self Made: Inspired by the Life of Madam C. J. Walker which premiered on March 20, 2020.
Madam Walker Urban Life Center
The Madam C. J. Walker Company moved from the building in 1985 and the trustees of the Walker estate transferred the building to a non-profit group called the Madam Walker Urban Life Center. Today the building houses a cultural arts organization, is the anchor of the Indiana Avenue Cultural District and is known as the Madam Walker Legacy Center. As of 2020, Its current president is Judith Thomas.
