A'Lelia Perry Bundles

Bundles, a journalist and great-great-granddaughter of Madam C.J. Walker, offers a lively portrait of an American businesswoman. Walker, the first freeborn child of slaves, rose from poverty to establish a successful hair-care business, became one of the wealthiest women in the U.S., and devoted herself to a life of activism and philanthropy toward race and women's issues. photo insert.

Madam C.J. Walker was beloved within her community for her philanthropy and for supporting the local YMCA, but she couldn't have done that if she weren't the first American female self-made millionaire, and one of the most successful African American business owners ever.

The daughter of slaves, Madam C.J. Walker was orphaned at seven, married at fourteen and widowed at twenty. She spent the better part of the next two decades laboring as a washerwoman for $1.50 a week. Then, with the discovery of a revolutionary hair care formula for black women, everything changed. By her death in 1919, Walker managed to overcome astonishing odds: building a storied beauty empire from the ground up, amassing wealth unprecedented...