Hair and beauty have long played an important role in the fight of Black Americans for equality and civil rights. Even before the slogan “Black is Beautiful” became popular in the 1960s, African Americans understood the power of beauty and appearance, not only in asserting their humanity and their right to be treated as equal, but also as a route for economic independence and prosperity.
During and after slavery, Black people used adornment as a practice of resistance and as a way to challenge white supremacy. W. E. B. Du Bois, for example, presented at the 1900 Paris Exposition photographs of well-clad and fashionable African Americans as visual evidence against racist stereotypes that viewed them as inferior, unsophisticated, and ugly.
By the 1910s, the migration of millions of Black Americans in the South to the urban centers of the North offered new ways to engage with consumer culture, turning the marketplace into a political site to redefine modern notions of Black identity.
Visual appearance — created through clothing, makeup, and hairstyles — provided a useful means to assert new freedoms and make claims for equality and inclusion in white society. Instead of trying to adopt white standards however, Black Americans insisted on claiming beauty on their own terms. “We want to show…that there are many Colored beauties of varying types,” argued Half-Century Magazine, one of the few Black-owned women’s magazines in the early twentieth century. “Let us show…that all beautiful hair is not straight, that all beautiful skin is not white, that all pretty profiles do not belong to members of the white race.”
Yet, the importance of beauty was not just symbolic; it had an economic aspect as well. Especially for Black women, the beauty industry presented not only an outlet of creativity and joy, or as a way to claim their equality with whites, but also an important vehicle for upward mobility and financial success.
In a time when many Black women were relegated to jobs like laundresses and domestics, beauty culture afforded independence, freedom, and pride, as well as a lucrative line of work.
One of the most famous of these beauty entrepreneurs was Madam C. J. Walker, whose hair products business made her a millionaire. Born Sarah Breedlove in Louisiana in 1867 to formerly enslaved parents and orphaned at age 7, Walker was the epitome of the modern self-made woman. In a speech before the annual convention of the National Negro Business League in 1912 she claimed, “I am a woman who came from the cotton fields of the South. I was promoted there to the washtub…and from there I promoted myself in the business of manufacturing hair goods and preparations.”
Walker’s fame and success came mostly from developing her own “wonderful hair grower system.” These were products that sought to invigorate and improve “bad” or “kinky” hair by applying lotions and oils. Catering specifically to Black women like herself, Walker offered her customers products that served their needs, which were not met by the existing white-owned beauty brands of the time. While not completely rejecting the prevalent beauty norms that favored long, silky, and straight hair, Walker insisted that her purpose was not to imitate white standards of beauty, but to promote the health of her customers and to instill pride in their beauty.
Adopting her own image to advertise the company’s products, she became one of the most recognizable women in the country. Walker was known for her lavish fashions and lifestyle of driving cars and attending parties, unabashedly celebrating her status as a powerful Black woman. Capitalizing on this image, Walker was able to push against racist stereotypes that portrayed Black women as old backward “mammies” and instead celebrated Black femininity as beautiful and modern.
Whereas Madam C. J. Walker rightly received her iconic status in history, being the focus of biographies, history books, and even a TV series, she was not the only one in this period to promote Black beauty. In fact, Walker owed her success to another beauty entrepreneur — Annie Turnbo Malone — who like Walker also built a beauty business empire that celebrated and empowered Black women.
Like Walker, Malone was also the daughter of formerly enslaved parents and was orphaned at a young age. Living in Illinois, Malone faced both racial and gender discrimination, which convinced her of the importance of grooming and appearance as a path for freedom, especially for Black women. She developed her own formula for scalp preparations and hair growth, advertising it as a tool to help women navigate their role in a society that often demeaned them and deprived them of respect.
In 1902, Malone moved to Missouri where she founded Poro College Company, a cosmetic school that trained women to be beauty culturists and company agents. Poro became an important source of employment for Black women, among them Walker, who was a student in the school and worked as an agent before starting her own brand.
In addition to hair products, Poro also sold face creams, lipstick, and face powders in multiple brown shades that specifically targeted the Black market. As makeup became an acceptable custom for women in the 1920s, Poro served this untapped market of Black consumers and gave them an easy and accessible route to claim their modernity.
Black beauty entrepreneurs like Walker and Malone provided employment, inspiration, and encouragement for many Black women, and became the backbone of their communities.
But they were more than just beauty influencers or shrewd businesswomen. These women also harnessed their economic success to support a variety of philanthropic causes, including education, professional training, and civil rights. Walker donated to the Black YMCA and the NAACP anti-lynching campaign, while also covering tuition for students at Tuskegee Institute. In addition to establishing Poro schools across the country, Malone contributed to educational organizations around St. Louis as well as to Howard University.
Walker and Malone not only provided the money and spaces that enabled civil rights organizing and action, but in their insistence that their products helped women feel beautiful, they also turned Black beauty into a matter of racial pride.
Leaving behind them a legacy of business success and philanthropy, Malone and Walker paved the way for others to follow their footsteps, from Sara Spencer Washington, who founded Apex News and Hair Company in 1919, to George and Joan Johnson’s Afro Sheen products of the 1960s, to more recent brands like Rihanna’s Fenty Beauty.
Far from being a frivolous endeavor, Black beauty culture has demonstrated its ability to empower women and advance ideas of equality and progress. Both in the early twentieth century and today, looking good is not just a personal choice, but a political statement that celebrates freedom, power, and humanity. By expanding opportunities for themselves and others, Black women entrepreneurs highlighted the power of beauty to change the world.
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Comments
Thank you Bob, I’m glad you enjoyed reading it and learning something new.
Very enjoyable, educational article on a fascinating topic I (and probably many of us) didn’t know about, but should. Now we do. Both Ms. Walker and Malone were the right women at the right time, fulfilling a need for hair and beauty products specific to the modern Black woman as shrewd businesswomen of the early 20th century.
They also gave a lot back to philanthropic and educational organizations to help on a series of multifaceted levels in American society aside from the Poro College Company schools across the country. Thanks for the link on the 2020 Netflix series. It looks really good, with top-tier actresses and actors to tell this important story.