On Her Own Ground: The Life and Times of Madam C.J. Walker (Lisa Drew Books (Paperback)): Bundles, A'Lelia: 9780743431729: Amazon.com: Books

{"desktop_buybox_group_1":[{"displayPrice":"$11.51","priceAmount":11.51,"currencySymbol":"$","integerValue":"11","decimalSeparator":".","fractionalValue":"51","symbolPosition":"left","hasSpace":false,"showFractionalPartIfEmpty":true,"offerListingId":"kI4HjX%2FR2tQCO2hvZkzX6hOFHxZc%2FFJQLKsl3e2sKO%2F%2F%2FYK39OGRx2CQsBuBVWDUxbNF1%2Fy1qtbP11qELuVwbs9pvmZMioZ3kIh4iUBOShInr5nYhJvrVNG1wy0w7%2FushJ3lxPwzrw2MxRiduSPRxv8fWdE71wg7LuHCxW71M%2FHjZK%2FUSCZEO%2FIOrqGfz4Mf","locale":"en-US","buyingOptionType":"NEW","aapiBuyingOptionIndex":0}, {"displayPrice":"$9.93","priceAmount":9.93,"currencySymbol":"$","integerValue":"9","decimalSeparator":".","fractionalValue":"93","symbolPosition":"left","hasSpace":false,"showFractionalPartIfEmpty":true,"offerListingId":"kI4HjX%2FR2tQCO2hvZkzX6hOFHxZc%2FFJQEaxzD5kfGWt2I6ihdnCzF9%2FyaT3Mtbw9De6kCywODzrL%2B9BsdcMrT1D3vy2%2Fd0La%2F5dp9XIztg98Hpa3v7xpGn2e2Q0zRazpqmjQym74NK7WGqBWtEv7r6Xyfbbxo89hUu%2FAcb%2F6Cjxv2Oco90ny0LHvrULH9fvO","locale":"en-US","buyingOptionType":"USED","aapiBuyingOptionIndex":1}]}

Purchase options and add-ons

On Her Own Ground is the first and only full-scale biography of “one of the great success stories of American history” (The Philadelphia Inquirer), Madam C.J. Walker—the legendary African American entrepreneur and philanthropist—by her great-great-granddaughter, A’Lelia Bundles.

The daughter of formerly enslaved parents, Sarah Breedlove—who would become known as 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 among black women, and devoting her life to philanthropy and social activism. Along the way, she formed friendships with great early-twentieth-century political figures such as Ida B. Wells, Mary McLeod Bethune, W.E.B. Du Bois, and Booker T. Washington.

Editorial Reviews

From The New Yorker

Bundles's great-great-grandmother Madam C. J. Walker founded a cosmetics empire in the early nineteen-hundreds. Born in 1867 to former slaves on a Louisiana plantation, Walker was working as a laundress in St. Louis in the eighteen-nineties when she began losing her hair. First, she developed the scalp ointments that would make her rich; then she established a network of black women to use and sell the products, who went on to escape poverty as she had. After years of contributing to black charities and anti-lynching campaigns, she died in her Westchester mansion, not far from the Rockefeller estate. The author's extensive research and unemphatic style encourage readers to find their own relation to this exemplary American figure.
Copyright © 2005 The New Yorker

Review

USA Today On Her Own Ground is a fascinating book about a fascinating woman....A wonderful story of an entrepreneur, but also a story about a dedicated African-American woman who was committed to giving her time and money to her community.

Chicago Tribune It is like finding out the secret sources of your past to read On Her Own Ground, a graceful biography by Walker's great-great-granddaughter....Bundles tells the tale with obvious affection and impressive scholarship....Under Bundles' deft handling, Walker's fable comes up fresh and inspirational. However we dress our hair, because of her, we daughters stand taller on our own ground.

The Philadelphia Inquirer The life of Madam C.J. Walker is one of the great success stories of American history. The wonder of it is that On Her Own Ground is the first full-blown biography of an amazing woman.

The New York Times Well-paced and well-written...as much social history as biography, filled with the detail and texture of culture and politics.

Chicago Sun-Times More than a history lesson in her rise to fame, On Her Own Ground offers inspiration to women -- regardless of race -- on how to succeed against all odds.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution Bundles always knew, on some level, that this story was hers to tell. And she tells it with a controlled passion and an integrity that would have made Madam Walker proud.

Ishmael Reed Madam Walker is the key to understanding her generation. She had to battle the society that consigned her to doing its laundry...yet she triumphed to become one of the most fabulous African-American figures of the twentieth century.

About the Author

A’Lelia Bundles is the author of New York Times Notable Book and bestseller On Her Own Ground: The Life and Times of Madam C. J. Walker.A former ABC News Washington, DC, deputy bureau chief and an Emmy Award–winning producer, she participated in residencies at Yaddo and MacDowell while writing Joy Goddess. Visit her website at ALeliaBundles.com or on Instagram at @ALeliaBundles.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Prologue

Madam C. J. Walker's story has always deserved an expansive loom on which to weave the threads of her legendary life with the broad themes and major events of American history. As my great-great-grandmother's biographer -- and as a journalist who loves a well-told story -- I consider it to be my good fortune both that she was born in 1867 on the plantation where General Ulysses S. Grant staged the 1863 Siege of Vicksburg and that one of her brothers joined other former slaves in the 1879 mass exodus to the North from Louisiana and Mississippi. I could not have fabricated a more perfect scenario than her confrontation with Booker T. Washington at his 1912 National Negro Business League convention or her 1916 arrival in Harlem on the eve of America's entry into World War I. I could not have invented her 1917 visit to the White House to protest lynching or her decision to build a mansion near the Westchester County estates of John D. Rockefeller and Jay Gould. Certainly when I learned that she had been considered a "Negro subversive" in 1918 and had been put under surveillance by a black War Department spy, I was convinced that reality indeed was more interesting than most fiction.

It has surely been a bonus for me that Madam Walker knew so many of the other African American luminaries of her time because the work of their biographers has provided invaluable guidance. From the correspondence, papers and books of antilynching activist Ida B. Wells-Barnett, educators Mary McLeod Bethune and Booker T. Washington, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People executive secretary James Weldon Johnson, Crisis editor W.E.B. Du Bois, labor leader A. Philip Randolph and others, I have been able to resurrect long-forgotten relationships.

As a pioneer of the modern cosmetics industry and the founder of the Madam C. J. Walker Manufacturing Company, Madam Walker created marketing schemes, training opportunities and distribution strategies as innovative as those of any entrepreneur of her time. As an early advocate of women's economic independence, she provided lucrative incomes for thousands of African American women who otherwise would have been consigned to jobs as farm laborers, washerwomen and maids. As a philanthropist, she reconfigured the philosophy of charitable giving in the black community with her unprecedented contributions to the YMCA and the NAACP. As a political activist, she dreamed of organizing her sales agents to use their economic clout to protest lynching and racial injustice. As much as any woman of the twentieth century, Madam Walker paved the way for the profound social changes that altered women's place in American society.

My personal journey to write On Her Own Ground, the first comprehensive biography of my great-great-grandmother really began before I could read. The Walker women -- Madam, her daughter A'Lelia Walker and my grandmother Mae Walker -- were already beckoning me at an early age, sometimes whispering, sometimes clamoring with the message that I must tell their story. In a faint childhood memory, their spirits envelop me in filtered gray light beneath a tall window inside my grandfather's apartment. On a nearby dresser, just beyond my reach, I can see their sepia faces inside hand-carved frames.

Even as a little girl I sensed that these grandmothers belonged not only to me but to the world and to those who would claim them for their own dreams and fantasies. Black history books had long recited the outlines of Madam Walker's classic American rags-to-riches rise from uneducated washerwoman to international entrepreneur and social activist, from daughter of slaves to hair care industry pioneer and philanthropist. Poet Langston Hughes crowned A'Lelia Walker the "joy-goddess of Harlem's 1920s." The Negro press fancied Mae -- A'Lelia's adopted daughter and only legal heir -- a tan Cinderella. By the time I discovered the Walker women's public mythology, they had already begun to draw me into the world of their private truths.

My grandfather, Marion Rowland Perry, Jr., first met Mae during the summer of 1927 at Villa Lewaro, Madam Walker's lavish Irvington-on-Hudson, New York, mansion. A handsome young attorney and World War I army officer, he was quite proud of a lineage that included college-educated parents. Mae was a recent divorcée and the future Walker heiress, whose thick, waist-length hair had helped sell thousands of tins of Madam C. J. Walker's Wonderful Hair Grower. That weekend, A'Lelia Walker invited Marion to the Cotton Club with her friends -- and without Mae -- to take the measure of the man she considered a potential son-in-law. She discreetly slipped him a hundred-dollar bill to gauge his comfort with paying large tabs. Apparently he passed her test, for a few weeks later, on August 27, he and Mae drove to Port Chester, New York, in his green Pierce-Arrow to be married by a justice of the peace. The following July, my mother, A'Lelia Mae Perry, was born.

In 1955, when my mother, my father, S. Henry Bundles, and I moved to Indianapolis, I was three years old and Mae had been dead for nearly a decade. For a few weeks while we waited to move into our house, I slept in a bedroom of my grandfather's apartment surrounded by Mae's personal treasures. I remember that, in the months afterward, whenever "Pa Pa" opened his front door to greet us, the gluey aroma of roast lamb, Lucky Strikes and old-man musk coated my nostrils. In the entryway, as my mother knelt to adjust my hair bow and smooth my three long braids, my eyes always fixed upon a tall, moss-green Chinese lacquer secretary. Letters, keys, stamps and paper clips tumbled from its tiny gold-trimmed drawers and secret cubbyholes. A serene Ming Dynasty maiden stood guard on the door of its locked upper cabinet. Even before I learned it had belonged to Madam and the first A'Lelia, I was tempted by its mysteries.

Beyond the foyer, the apartment rambled down a long, hushed hall. At one end, Pa Pa's sleeping alcove opened onto a sitting room crammed with the Walker women's belongings -- A'Lelia's first editions of Jean Toomer's Cane and Countee Cullen's Color, Mae's gold harp and Madam's crystal Tiffany vases. At the other end, toward the rear of the apartment, two shadowy bedrooms -- one of them Mae's -- and a rarely used dining room led to a bright, white-tiled kitchen where a dented porcelain pot always simmered with soup bones and stock, and where Pa Pa held court at his knife-scarred oak table.

While Pa Pa and my mother talked, I escaped into Mae's room, drawn time and again by a mauve moiré silk vanity. Even now I can feel a quiet enchantment as I recall grasping cool ivory mah-jongg tiles and miniature enameled King Tut mummy charms. I remember a fluffy ostrich fan in one drawer and mother-of-pearl opera glasses in another. The more I stirred Mae's belongings, the more the scent of her Shalimar dusting powder emerged, masking the familiar grandfather mustiness that clung to all the other rooms. Each piece of clothing, each photograph, each bejeweled mirror and monogrammed napkin became a genie's lamp waiting to be rubbed.

Three blocks from Pa Pa's apartment, my mother worked as vice president of the Madam C. J. Walker Manufacturing Company, the hair care products firm her great-grandmother had founded in 1906. Often when we arrived at the block-long flatiron building in Momma's 1955 black Mercury, Whitfield, the janitor, would be waving at us from beneath the marquee of the Walker Theatre. His official job title notwithstanding, I still think of him as the ambassador of the Walker Building, full of news about the boiler, the freight elevator and whoever had just gone into the Walker Beauty Shop. Opened in 1927, the brick-and-terra-cotta structure housed an elaborately decorated, African-themed theater that offered first-run movies and live jazz. Generations of the city's African Americans had danced under the rotating mirrored globe in the upstairs Casino ballroom, met for Sunday afternoon dinner in the Coffee Pot or walked past the third-floor law offices of attorneys Mercer Mance and Rufus Kuykendall on their way to see Dr. Lewis or Dr. Cox.

For me, riding the elevator was always an adventure. Once inside, I fixated on Mary Martin's shiny, finger-waved tresses and cherry-rouged cheeks as she snapped shut the accordion brass gate with one fluid flick of her wrist, then lifted us four floors toward my mother's office. Another glissade of Mary's manicured hands and the door clanked open. The percussive clickety-clack of my mother's spike heels led me across a cayenne-flecked terrazzo lobby. With each step the sweet fragrance of bergamot and Glossine from the factory downstairs made me wish for candy. First we passed Marie Overstreet (the bookkeeper, who would have been a CPA had she been born sixty years later), then Mary Pendegraph (the tall, dignified beauty who speedily processed hundreds of orders each week), then Edith Shanklin (the efficient Addressograph operator who always had a gossip morsel for my mother). In Momma's office, I must have imagined myself a businesswoman as I played with her hand-cranked adding machine and manual typewriter, sure that my random keystrokes had meaning. No visit was complete without a trip to the second floor, where Myrtis Griffin and Russell White, the ladies of the factory, still mixed some of the Walker ointments by hand in large vats.

At home, there were more reminders of my famous grandmothers. In our living room, I learned to read music on A'Lelia Walker's Chickering baby grand. We ate Thanksgiving turkey on Madam's hand-painted Limoges china and ladled Christmas eggnog -- made with A'Lelia's secret recipe -- from her sterling silver punch bowl.

Our all-black suburb was filled with doctors, teachers, entrepreneurs, musicians and attorneys, many with connections to the Walker Company or the Walker Building. Our next-door neighbor was the son of F. E. DeFrantz, a former trustee of Madam Walker's estate and longtime secretary of Indianapolis's black YMCA. The son of Freeman B. Ransom, Madam Walker's attorney and general manager, lived two doors away on Grandview Drive. Ransom's granddaughter, Judy, was one of my closest childhood friends. On the next corner was the daughter of Robert Lee Brokenburr, the lawyer who had filed the papers of incorporation for the Madam C. J. Walker Manufacturing Company in 1911. Farther up Grandview was Violet Davis Reynolds, the secretary who had joined the Walker Company in 1915 when she was seventeen years old. A few blocks from her was Mrs. Pendegraph, who would retire as corporate treasurer -- and the last employee -- when the original Madam C. J. Walker Manufacturing Company closed its doors in the mid-1980s.

Surrounded as I was by so many accomplished people, it would be several years before I fully understood my extraordinary family heritage. Fortunately my mother had taken great care, I now realize, to keep the legacy of the Walker women in manageable perspective so that I could discover its power in my own time, on my own terms. While she had been expected to assume her role as a fourth-generation executive at the Walker Company -- and had studied chemistry at Howard University in preparation to do so -- she wanted me, her only daughter, to be free to follow my own interests in journalism. But she had also given me the name A'Lelia because she wanted me to value the connection and to respect its origins. Neither of us could have predicted that my love of words and my passion for history would eventually return me to the inheritance I had seemed to be abandoning.

For many years I was more attracted to A'Lelia Walker's story than to Madam's. My heart raced each time I saw "our" name on the pages of the dusty books that were stashed in our attic. I was thrilled to discover that our birthdays were so close: hers on June 6 and mine on June 7. But most important, the original A'Lelia intrigued me because she provided a link to the Harlem Renaissance. For a teenager who loved to read -- but who had always gone to predominantly white schools where little black literature was assigned -- knowing that she had hosted Langston Hughes and Countee Cullen at The Dark Tower, her celebrated Harlem salon, affirmed my dreams of becoming a writer.

While I was embracing A'Lelia, however, I was growing ambivalent about Madam. A'Lelia represented the fun, flamboyance and glamour of the Roaring Twenties. Madam, on the other hand, was associated with more serious matters: business, philanthropy and the politics of hair. And, during the late 1960s and early 1970s, hair was as much a battleground as Vietnam. Whether it was hippies with ponytails or brothers and sisters with Afros, the scalps of baby boomers had become the symbolic stage on which to express racial pride, political militancy and personal liberation. Because many people believed that Madam Walker's products were designed primarily to straighten hair, she became an easy target for accusations and complicated emotions in an era when black pride was measured by the length of one's "natural." The woman who had been among the pioneers of the modern cosmetics industry -- and who had fostered self-esteem, glamour and power among several generations of African American women -- temporarily fell out of favor.

During those years, I was hungry for information about the history of black Americans, reading every book and article I could find, earnestly taking the messages to heart. When E. Franklin Frazier, the venerable Howard University sociologist, accused Madam Walker of running advertisements that "tell how the Negro can rid himself of his black or dark complexion, or how he can straighten his hair," I flushed with embarrassment. Without my own research, how was I to know that while Madam Walker was alive the Walker Company never sold skin bleaches and the words "hair straightener" never appeared in her ads? It would be years before I would learn that her Walker System was intended to treat the scalp disease that was so rampant in the early 1900s, when many women washed their hair only once a month. "Right here let me correct the erroneous impression held by some that I claim to straighten hair," she told a reporter in 1918 after she had been called the "de-kink queen" by a white newspaper. "I deplore such an impression because I have always held myself out as a hair culturist. I grow hair."

Equally persistent was the widely circulated and incorrect belief that Madam Walker had invented the straightening comb. In fact, this metal hair care implement probably had been sold at least as early as the 1870s, when Parisian Marcel Grateau created his famous Marcel Wave, and was advertised in Bloomingdale's and Sears's catalogues during the 1880s and 1890s, presumably for the thousands of white women who also had kinky hair. Years later I would learn that the claim probably originated in 1922 -- three years after Madam Walker's death -- when the Walker Company purchased the rights to a patent from the widow of a man who had manufactured combs for Madam Walker.

Certainly in 1970 most people who recognized Madam Walker's name associated her with the hot comb. And so did I, even as I sat in the Walker Beauty School watching the cosmetology students transform my chemically straightened flip into an Angela Davis-sized Afro. During college I remained self-conscious about my connection to Madam Walker until one winter afternoon when I discovered W.E.B. Du Bois's laudatory obituary of her in the August 1919 issue of The Crisis. From deep in the stacks of Harvard's Widener Library, Du Bois, whom I considered my intellectual hero, had armed me with a strong retort. Madam Walker, he wrote, did not intend "to imitate white folk." Whereas Frazier had criticized her "conspicuous consumption" in The Black Bourgeoisie, Du Bois praised her philanthropy and credited her with "revolutionizing the personal habits and appearance of millions of human beings" by educating them about hygiene and grooming. Even to this day, the complex issues surrounding African American women and beauty continue to be debated.

A few days before my mother died in January 1976, I sat in the middle of her hospital bed and talked about the research I was doing on the women in our family. The previous fall, when Phyl Garland, my adviser at Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism, learned that I was related to Madam Walker, she gently refused to let me even consider another topic for my master's paper. Of course, I had long ago memorized the legend and its litany: Born Sarah Breedlove in Delta, Louisiana, in 1867, Madam Walker was orphaned at seven, married at fourteen, a mother at seventeen, widowed at twenty. While working as a washerwoman, she began to go bald. Miraculously, she claimed, the formula for the scalp treatment that had restored her hair was revealed to her in a dream. When she died at fifty-one in 1919, she was one of America's wealthiest self-made businesswomen. That was the story that everyone -- or at least most African American women born before 1950 -- knew. But now that I was mining new biographical territory, I had begun to discover flaws and occasional lapses of truth mixed in with the victories and accomplishments. There were difficult divorces as well as business successes, legal feuds as well as large charitable contributions. Just when I needed my mother the most to help me make sense of what I was learning, she was too weary from months of chemotherapy to focus on memories.

"What should I do about these things?" I asked, knowing that I would not have her much longer. "Should I include this part? And what about that?"

Mustering just enough energy to leave no doubt about her wishes, she leaned forward, looked into my eyes and said, without hesitation, "Tell the truth, baby. It's all right to tell the truth."

Her words were a powerful final gift and a charge that I have tried to honor.

During the two decades after my mother's death, I worked as a network television producer for ABC News and NBC News, traipsing from coast to coast telling other people's stories, all the while yearning to resurrect my own family saga. Each year I managed to spend at least part of my weekends, vacations and holidays excavating the details of the Walker women's lives, learning that for every fabrication others had created, there was a more profound and interesting reality. Occasionally I found myself at the end of cold trails, but more often I was blessed with serendipitous little miracles that revealed a person or document or place, exactly the clue I needed for the next step of my search. Fortunately, Madam Walker, A'Lelia Walker and my mother had known so many people that the usual six degrees of separation were reduced to two or three. One phone call, maybe two, almost always opened the door that I needed. Few people refused to help.

An innovator and visionary, Madam sped through the final decade of her life too busy to reflect and ruminate. Where others of her generation had penned memoirs and autobiographies, she left only the flimsiest clues about her early life. Fortunately for me she understood the power of the press, and had actively cultivated relationships with black newspaper reporters who chronicled her activities on a weekly basis. As well, hundreds of her personal letters and business records, faithfully preserved by her secretary, Violet Reynolds -- and now archived at the Indiana Historical Society in Indianapolis -- provided my original road map to her travels between 1913 and 1919.

The same sense of adventure and anticipation that had led me to the dresser in my grandmother's room accompanied me through the libraries, archives, courthouses and historical societies of more than a dozen United States cities between 1975 and 2000. In the St. Louis Public Library, as I scrolled through thousands of feet of microfilm, I discovered three brothers Madam Walker had never mentioned in her official company biography. In Savannah, Georgia, I felt an unspoken healing as I hugged R. Burney Long, whose family still owned the land where Madam Walker was born and where her parents had been slaves. Through the years I followed Madam Walker's path from Delta, Louisiana, to Vicksburg to St. Louis, from Denver to Pittsburgh to Indianapolis, then to Harlem and Irvington-on-Hudson, New York.

During the summer of 1982 -- with the last of the Walker friends and employees still alive -- I was welcomed into the parlors and living rooms of a fascinating array of men and women in their eighties and nineties, all eager to entrust me with the legacy we shared. In New York, Gerri Major, long known as Jet's "Society World" columnist, spun stories of A'Lelia's weekend soirees and afternoon poker parties. Confined to her bed with vertigo, Major was still glamorous in a white satin lounging jacket as she described typesetting the Inter-State Tattler, the tabloid she had edited under the name Geraldyn Dismond during the 1920s and 1930s. Blues singer Alberta Hunter, who was then performing at the Cookery in Greenwich Village, described her visits to Villa Lewaro and told me that A'Lelia had a "beautiful singing voice." Over a mimosa-filled brunch across the Hudson River in Hoboken, writer and artist Bruce Nugent recalled the crowded October 1927 opening of The Dark Tower as well as spaghetti dinners in A'Lelia's hideaway on Edgecombe Avenue. In Chicago, Marjorie Stewart Joyner, the former principal of the national chain of Walker Beauty Schools, sparkled as she recounted her first meeting with Madam Walker in 1916.

For my grandfather's ninetieth birthday, I traveled to Pine Bluff, Arkansas, his childhood home, to which he had returned in the early 1960s. On the second day of my visit, I asked him about a large steamer trunk that I remembered from his Indianapolis apartment. "Try the closet in the front bedroom," he suggested. And there it was, behind a stack of newspapers and boxes. After I dragged it into the living room, where he was sitting, we unsuccessfully tried every key in the house. Finally we called a locksmith, who in no time was there popping the lock. To my delighted astonishment, the treasures of my childhood -- the ostrich fan, the King Tut charms, the opera glasses -- all appeared magically before me. For the rest of the day Pa Pa and I explored. In one drawer we found the license for A'Lelia's second marriage with a spray of baby's breath still pressed into the folds. Beneath that document was Madam's last letter to A'Lelia, written just nine days before she died. Folded in another compartment was Mae's hand-embroidered wedding dress from her 1923 marriage to Dr. Gordon Jackson. Throughout the afternoon and into the evening, Pa Pa -- still seated in his straight-backed chair -- was ready with an explanation for each item I retrieved. Too excited to eat, too charged to sleep, we continued past midnight. As soon as Pa Pa's head fell to his chest, he was awake again, mesmerizing me with family stories until the sun peeked through the window blinds.

Six years earlier, my mother had granted me permission to present the Walker women's lives as I found them. On this hot July night, Pa Pa passed the baton of family griot.

Certainly whatever teenage reservations I may have had about Madam Walker are long gone. My original childhood curiosity has remained my most reliable guide. And now that I am the same age as Madam Walker when she experienced her greatest achievements, I fully understand why many consider her an American icon. It is a privilege to tell her story.

A'Lelia Bundles

Alexandria, Virginia

www.madamcjwalker.com

A word about A'Lelia Walker: During the early 1920s Lelia Walker changed her name to A'Lelia Walker. Because her mother had originally named her Lelia and because that was the name she used during the years of Madam Walker's life, she is called Lelia throughout the remainder of this text, except in the afterword.

For ease of reading, research source citations have been placed at the end of the book.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Scribner
Publication date ‏ : ‎ January 1, 2002
Edition ‏ : ‎ Reprint
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Print length ‏ : ‎ 416 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0743431723
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0743431729
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.2 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.13 x 1.2 x 9.25 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #298,096 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #693 in Women in History
- #899 in Black & African American Biographies
- #2,246 in Women's Biographies

Customer Reviews:
550 ratings

Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.

Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

Videos

Help others learn more about this product by uploading a video!

Upload your video

About the author

Follow authors to get new release updates, plus improved recommendations.

A'Lelia Bundles

Brief content visible, double tap to read full content.

Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

A'Lelia Bundles's fifth book -- Joy Goddess: A'Lelia Walker and the Harlem Renaissance -- will be published by Scribner on June 10, 2025. This revealing new biography about Bundles's great-grandmother reframes the narrative of Walker's international travels, philanthropy, parties and friendships with some of the most famous musicians, writers, actors and artists of the 1920s. On Her Own Ground: The Life and Times of Madam C. J. Walker (Lisa Drew Books/Scribner) was a NY Times 2001 Notable Book, a Hurston-Wright/Borders Books Legacy Award finalist, a Black Caucus of the ALA honor book and received the Association of Black Women Historians 2001 Letitia Woods Brown Prize for the best book on black women's history.

On Her Own Ground is a work of non-fiction with carefully researched and documented facts about Walker's life. "Self Made," the four-part Netflix series that premiered on March 20, 2020, was "inspired by" On Her Own Ground but is a work of fiction.

Bundles has written two young adult biographies: All about Madam C. J. Walker (Cardinal Publishing/Blue River Press, 2018) and Madam C. J. Walker: Entrepreneur (Chelsea House, 1991), the first book length biography of Walker which received a 1992 American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation. Madam Walker Theatre Center: An Indianapolis Treasure (Arcadia 2013) tells the story of one of the two National Historic Landmarks associated with Walker's legacy. Bundles's essay, "The Armor We Still Need," is included in Rochelle Riley's The Burden: African Americans and the Enduring Impact of Slavery (Wayne State University Press, 2018).

Bundles is a former network television executive and producer, who enjoyed a 30 year career with ABC News and NBC News. She is a former chair of the National Archives Foundation board, a former vice chair of Columbia University's board of trustees, a member of several boards including Indiana Landmarks, the Schlesinger Library at the Harvard Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, the March On Festival and Columbia Global Reports.

Customer reviews

550 global ratings

How customer reviews and ratings work

Review this product

Write a customer review

Customers say

Customers find this biography of Madam C.J. Walker to be a great read that provides a fascinating view of untold history. Moreover, the book receives positive feedback for its sturdiness and pacing, with one customer noting it reads like an African American history book. However, the writing quality receives mixed reviews, with some finding it beautifully written while others describe it as somewhat wordy.

Select to learn more

Readability Enlightenedness Story quality Sturdiness Pacing Writing quality

34 customers mention "Readability"34 positive0 negative

Customers find the book highly readable and engaging, with one customer noting it reads like an African American history book.

"...`rags to riches story' instead On Her Own Ground, reads like an African American history book, packed with historical figures, dates and events -..." Read more

"I found this to be a literary masterpiece as well as a riveting depiction of what life was like for almost all middle-aged black women in such a..." Read more

"...For the most part, it was an intriguing, inspirational and well written book that kept my interest all the way through!..." Read more

"...I am so happy I saw the movie first, because this book is so rich and beautifully written that the movie would be disappointing...." Read more

31 customers mention "Enlightenedness"27 positive4 negative

Customers find the biography enlightening and inspirational, describing it as a very good account of Madam CJ Walker's life.

"...only details the remarkable story of business woman, and philanthropist Madam CJ Walker, but the lives and experiences of African Americans from the..." Read more

"...This book spoke to the true character of Madam Walker and her life's work which was in many ways selfless, it appears that she lived her life in an..." Read more

"...Your careful, detailed research and wise insights have made an indelible impact on my life...." Read more

"A’Lelia Bundles has not only written a fascinating and masterful biography of her great-great-grandmother, but has also woven in a primer on the..." Read more

19 customers mention "Story quality"16 positive3 negative

Customers find the book's story interesting and fascinating, providing a view of untold history. One customer notes it's a good example of overcoming obstacles, while another mentions the genealogy information is fabulous.

"...This book in and of itself is an American Treasure, and I don't take for granted the exceeding value I've received by investing in it as part of my..." Read more

"...Her story is one of endurance, strength, hope, courage, independence and resolve!..." Read more

"Incredible true story of Madam C.J. Walker, the first black female entrepreneur in US history to build a national business and become a millionaire...." Read more

"...Life and Times of Madam C.J. Walker" (Lisa Drew Books) is an excellent history book about the mid 1800's to early 1900's and it is regarding Ms...." Read more

5 customers mention "Sturdiness"5 positive0 negative

Customers appreciate the book's sturdiness, noting that it arrives in very good condition and is well-substantiated.

"...noticeable attention to detail that has been applied to support, substantiate and sustain the historical record of events is second to none." Read more

"...Her story is one of endurance, strength, hope, courage, independence and resolve!..." Read more

"Came in great condition" Read more

"Product in top notch condition! Couldnt be more pleased !" Read more

4 customers mention "Pacing"4 positive0 negative

Customers appreciate the pacing of the book, with one describing it as a fascinating woman's story.

"What an amazing woman! She showed black women a way to independence & self respect at a time when they had very few options...." Read more

"Great lady...Great Lady...Her legacy has been forgotten" Read more

"Very readable story about a great lady..." Read more

"A most fascinating woman who lead an amazing life. She proved to be an inspiration for ......" Read more

15 customers mention "Writing quality"10 positive5 negative

Customers have mixed opinions about the writing quality of the book, with some finding it beautifully written and noting its attention to detail, while others describe it as somewhat wordy and not well written.

"I found this to be a literary masterpiece as well as a riveting depiction of what life was like for almost all middle-aged black women in such a..." Read more

"...happy I saw the movie first, because this book is so rich and beautifully written that the movie would be disappointing...." Read more

"...The only thing i did not really like was it gets a little wordy...." Read more

"...upon context and circumstances, which are thoroughly researched and detailed...." Read more

Reviews with images

See all photos

Top reviews from the United States

There was a problem filtering reviews. Please reload the page.

Laquita Thomas
Not Your Typical 'Rags to Riches' Story
Reviewed in the United States on January 14, 2010
Verified Purchase

On Her Own Ground, The Life and Times of Madam CJ Walker is not just your average `rags to riches story' instead On Her Own Ground, reads like an African American history book, packed with historical figures, dates and events - one in which I wish we would have used when I was in school. The author not only details the remarkable story of business woman, and philanthropist Madam CJ Walker, but the lives and experiences of African Americans from the Reconstruction Era to the Harlem Renaissance as well.

I bought the book, interested in starting my own hair care business, thinking I would get an insight on how Madam CJ Walker started and maintained her business and On Her Own Ground delivered this, as well as so much more. I was intrigued by the relationships Madam CJ Walker had with other historical figures, such as Booker T. Washington, Mary McLeod Bethune, Paul Laurence Dunbar, W. E. B. Du Bois, Nannie Helen Burroughs and others, as well as her numerous contributions to organizations such as the YMCA, YWCA, NAACP, and numerous educational institutions such as the Tuskegee and Daytona Normal and Industrial Institutes.

I was also entertained by the book's account of the relationships of Madam CJ Walker and her daughter A'Lelia Walker, which read like a Tyler Perry movie or play (specifically the account of Madam CJ Walker contemplating pulling out a gun on her cheating husband). And the final chapters leading into the Harlem Renaissance and depicting a glimpse into the life of A'Lelia Walker left me wanting to learn more about her life as well. On Her Own Ground is a very inspirational biography and one that I think everyone should read.

Read more

18 people found this helpful

Helpful

Report
Amazon5741
Well Presented!
Reviewed in the United States on December 15, 2016
Verified Purchase
I found this to be a literary masterpiece as well as a riveting depiction of what life was like for almost all middle-aged black women in such a dark moment within the body politic of America. This book spoke to the true character of Madam Walker and her life's work which was in many ways selfless, it appears that she lived her life in an attempt at always trying to make life better for those around her.The author A'Lelia Bundles has taken great care and consideration in translating in vibrant detail, the events of Madam Walker's trials and triumphs and her single-minded drive to accomplish what could have been considered as unthinkable at the turn of the century. Anyone who enjoys reading biography will also appreciate the extensive research that has been ascribed to this work, the noticeable attention to detail that has been applied to support, substantiate and sustain the historical record of events is second to none.

Read more

27 people found this helpful

Helpful

Report
MarketLikeAQueen
An American Treasure - Both Book and Family
Reviewed in the United States on December 28, 2011
Verified Purchase
Thank you for all you've done with continuing your family's legacy in this way Ms. A'lelia Bundles. This book in and of itself is an American Treasure, and I don't take for granted the exceeding value I've received by investing in it as part of my library. Your careful, detailed research and wise insights have made an indelible impact on my life.

I am so grateful for God's great gift to me through you and your family. I won't go into a lot of detail in this post about just how deeply this book has impacted me, but know that it is very significant. So, I hope to help others take a closer look for their own benefit, also, and am glad for this chance to leave a review.

I truly feel that this book should be required reading for every American school child at the middle school level and above. Truthfully, a teacher could easily use an entire semester, or even a whole year, to go through this book in detail with their students and probably still feel they weren't able to fit all of its goodness into the curriculum.

I also definitely feel that homeschool families, like our family, would greatly benefit from a book like this because it helps to tie all of the historical pieces together all in one book.

Sincerely,
Donna Marie Johnson
[...]
On Her Own Ground: The Life and Times of Madam C.J. Walker

Read more

10 people found this helpful

Helpful

Report
StarZ
Amazing & Inspirational is Madam C.J. Walker!!
Reviewed in the United States on March 28, 2017
Verified Purchase
Why Is it that Madam C.J. Walker isn't found in U.S. history books? Her story is one of endurance, strength, hope, courage, independence and resolve! One of the first African American business women; an entrepreneur, her own self-marketing agent, tireless worker and fierce and fearless in her endeavors to achieve, she is one of the first black women in history to earn the highest wages, in her time! I highly recommend reading this entertaining biography. The only reason I gave it a 4-star in lieu of 5-star, is that it is so loaded with facts; dates and lineage, that it occasionally became a little "dry" in places. There's a vast amount of information to be gleaned! For the most part, it was an intriguing, inspirational and well written book that kept my interest all the way through! The research by its author is mind-boggling and extensive! Kudos to the achievements of Madam C. J. Walker!

I chose this title as a selection for our book club. Everyone was blown away by this woman's fierce determination to succeed! We just couldn't understand why she isn't more predominant in American history books in school. None of us remember reading about her contributions!

Read more

2 people found this helpful

Helpful

Report

Top reviews from other countries

Translate all reviews to English

francoise
Merci !
Reviewed in France on August 2, 2020
Verified Purchase

J'ai aimé la série. Cependant le livre est encore plus intéressant ! Reçu dans les temps.

Read more
Report
Translate review to English
LEPurvis
Five Stars
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 21, 2017
Verified Purchase
Book was well packaged and excellent value.

Read more
Report
Dr.M.Poetzsch
on her own ground
Reviewed in Germany on June 7, 2019
Verified Purchase
I did it before!

Read more
Report
Zia Barbara
La vita di una donna fuori dal comune
Reviewed in Italy on June 15, 2024
Verified Purchase
Nell'800, appena finita la schiavitù negli Stati Uniti, una donna di colore diventa multimilionaria grazie al suo spirito imprenditoriale e si occupa attivamente di far progredire la comunità nera.

Read more
Report
Translate review to English
Robert Rock
not sure what you mean by a headline.
Reviewed in Canada on April 10, 2020
Verified Purchase
I`m sure my wife will enjoy that book once it arrives. Until then, take care and stay safe.

Read more
Report

See more reviews

Price		$11.51
AmazonGlobal Shipping		$9.50
Estimated Import Charges		$0.00

Total		$21.01

Shipping & Fee Details

Sorry, there was a problem.

Sorry, there was a problem.

Follow the author

On Her Own Ground: The Life and Times of Madam C.J. Walker (Lisa Drew Books (Paperback)) Paperback – January 1, 2002

Purchase options and add-ons

Frequently bought together

Customers who viewed this item also viewed

Editorial Reviews

From The New Yorker

Review

About the Author

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Product details

Videos

About the author

A'Lelia Bundles

Related books

Customer reviews

Review this product

Customers say

Select to learn more

Images in this review

Reviews with images

Great book, but poorly constructed

Top reviews from the United States

There was a problem filtering reviews. Please reload the page.

5.0 out of 5 stars Not Your Typical 'Rags to Riches' Story

5.0 out of 5 stars Well Presented!

5.0 out of 5 stars An American Treasure - Both Book and Family

4.0 out of 5 stars Amazing & Inspirational is Madam C.J. Walker!!

Top reviews from other countries

5.0 out of 5 stars Merci !

5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars

4.0 out of 5 stars on her own ground

5.0 out of 5 stars La vita di una donna fuori dal comune

5.0 out of 5 stars not sure what you mean by a headline.

Not Your Typical 'Rags to Riches' Story

Well Presented!

An American Treasure - Both Book and Family

Amazing & Inspirational is Madam C.J. Walker!!

Merci !

Five Stars

on her own ground

La vita di una donna fuori dal comune

not sure what you mean by a headline.