repost
In fact, Madam C J Walker should probably counted as the original Naturalista. Again, she did not invent the relaxer. G.A. Morgan and Annie Malone both invented relaxers.* 
Some of us might turn up our noses at some of of Walker's ingredients these days--petrolatum, beeswax, copper sulfate, precipitated sulfur, coconut oil and violet extract. But she didn't sell chemical straighteners for hair. That is, she did not invent the creamy crack. She didn't even invent the first hot comb. She only modified the french hot comb for black women.
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Another word for chemical relaxers (perms).
must be retouched every 6 to 8 weeks,
and become reliant on them, like a crackhead on crack.
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Sarah Breedlove, who would later marry and become Mrs. Charles Joseph Walker, was into healing the scalp and healthy hair growth
It was t was G.A. Morgan, famous on black websites everywhere for inventing the gas mask and the traffic light, that deserves much of the credit for inventing creamy crack, otherwise known as hair relaxer.
G A MORGAN - Inventor of Gas Mask, Traffic Light, and one of the first hair relaxers
In 1909, Morgan was working with sewing machines in his newly opened tailoring shop—a business he had opened with wife Mary, who had experience as a seamstress—when he encountered woolen fabric that had been scorched by a sewing-machine needle. It was a common problem at the time, since sewing-machine needles ran at such high speeds. In hopes of alleviating the problem, Morgan experimented with a chemical solution in an effort to reduce friction created by the needle, and subsequently noticed that the hairs of the cloth were straighter.
After trying his solution to good effect on a neighboring dog's fur, Morgan finally tested the concoction on himself. When that worked, he quickly established the G.A. Morgan Hair Refining Company and sold the cream to African Americans. The company was incredibly successful, bringing Morgan financial security and allowing him to pursue other interests.
Good Thing Mr. Morgan doesn't need the money from hair straightening how. Relaxer sales reportedly dropped 26% in 2014
ANNIE TURNBO MALONE
STARTED BY FOCUSING ON HEALTHY HAIR
BUT WITH THE HELP OF AN AUNT SHE WOULD CREATE CHEMICAL STRAIGHTENERS FOR BLACK HAIR
BUT WITH THE HELP OF AN AUNT SHE WOULD CREATE CHEMICAL STRAIGHTENERS FOR BLACK HAIR
While experimenting with hair and different hair care products, she developed and manufactured her own line of non-damaging hair straighteners, special oils, and hair-stimulant products for African-American women.[4] She named her new product “Wonderful Hair Grower”[5] To promote her new product, Turnbo sold the Wonderful Hair Grower in bottles from door-to-door.[5] She began to revolutionize hair care methods for all African Americans....
One of her selling agents, Sarah Breedlove (who became known as Madam C. J. Walker when she set up her own business), encouraged Turnbo to copyright her products under the name "Poro" because of what she called fraudulent imitations and to discourage counterfeit versions.
Malone's business thrived until she wound up in a battle for control of her business with her second husband, Aaron Eugene Malone. She'd left some of the day to day affairs in his hands as manager. And he eventually claimed he was responsible for 1/2 of the success of the business. She suffered another blow when a former employee also sued her, claiming credit for Annie Malone's success. This lawsuit forced her to sell property in order to pay the settlement. Eventually, the government would come after for back taxes.
* * * * *
Life was hard on Sarah Breedlove from an early age. Her parents died when she was a child. She wound up marrying young. Her first husband died by the time she was 20.
When Sarah Breedlove took her children and moved to St. Louis Missouri, the middle class women in the church she attended helped her to see herself as more than a washer woman. She learned philanthropy and entrepreneurship, both, from these church women. And she started her first charity drive at this black church.
Eventually she was selling her product door to door.
In 1906 she married Charles Joseph Walker and Ms. C J Walker was born. Mr. Walker would help her with advertising the business. They would travel door to door together, selling her products and demonstrating the products. They would eventually divorce when Madam Walker wanted to expand the business and Mr. Walker did not.
As her company grew, she encouraged the black women that worked for her to stand for racial equality and the equality of women. She wanted her Walker Agents to show themselves not just as professionals but as people who give back to the community. During her 1917 Convention for Walker Agents, Madam Walker gave prizes to women that sold the most product and got the most clients but also to women who gave the most to charity.
At their Beauty Salons the walker agents would talk to clients about what black women could do to help their churches, their schools in their communities. (I'm reading a book right now that talks black women like these making the black church strong enough, connected to one another enough to make it good base for The Modern Civil Rights Movement a few decades later)
By 1910 The Walker Company had employed some 5000 black female agents around the world, and averaged revenues of about $1000 dollars a day, seven days a week...Upon her death in 1919, her will stipulated that two-thirds of her fortune go to various charities and that her company always be controlled by a woman
Contributor to the Black Women's Club Movement, Madam Walker was also a part of black suffrage and also the anti-lynching movement. She was a signer on the letter to President Woodrow Wilson, demanding that he make lynching a federal crime. She seems to have counted Ida B Wells, the original anti-lynching activist, as a friend and also contributed money to the NAACP's anti-lynching campaign.
She became famous nationwide when she contributed $1000 to the building fund of a YMCA for young black boys. And it sounds like she may have built something in Indianapolis that sounds like one of the first malls, the Madam Walker Theater Center....
Madam C. J. Walker
Employer Of Black Women
Philanthropist
Political Activist
Naturalista
*Like the light bulb, the relaxer probably had simultaneous multiple inventors in multiple places around the world that didn't know about each other. I'm not sure who was first or most responsible for invention of hair relaxer but Madam C J wasn't one of them.
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Walker told her friend Ida B. Wells, the journalist and anti-lynching activist,
that after working so hard all her life
— first as a farm laborer, then as a maid and a cook,
and finally as the founder of an international hair care enterprise
— she wanted a place to relax and garden and entertain her friends.
She also wanted to make a statement,
so it was no accident that she purchased four and a half acres in Irvington-on-Hudson, New York,
amidst America’s wealthiest families.
.
She directed....the architect
— to position the 34-room mansion close to the village’s main thoroughfare
so it was easily visible by travelers en route from Manhattan to Albany...
.
[H]er new [white] neighbors were “puzzled” and “gasped in astonishment”
when they learned that a black woman was the owner.
“Impossible!” they exclaimed. “No woman of her race could afford such a place.”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/national-trust-for-historic-preservation/do-big-things-madam-cj-wa_b_6029236.html |
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