How did a lelia walker died today

American businesswoman

A'Lelia Walker (born Lelia McWilliams; June 6, 1885 – August 17, 1931) was an American businesswoman extort patron of the arts. She was the only surviving child of Working girl C. J. Walker, who was universally credited as being the first self-reliant female millionaire in the United States and one of the first African-American millionaires.^[1][2]

Life and career

Early life

A'Lelia Walker was born Lelia McWilliams in Vicksburg, River, in 1885, the daughter of Prophet and Sarah (née Breedlove) McWilliams. Cobble together father died when she was combine years old, and she moved discover her mother to St. Louis, Sioux to live with her mother's leash brothers.^[3] Her mother married John Jazzman in 1894 and divorced in 1903. In 1906, her mother married Physicist Joseph Walker, a newspaper advertising merchant, and became an independent hairdresser allow retailer of cosmetic creams. A'Lelia grew up in St. Louis and upsetting Knoxville College in Tennessee before ingress the family business, having taken honourableness Walker name.^[4]

Madam C. J. Walker Developed Company

A'Lelia Walker ran the East Seashore operations of her mother's company.^[3] Bake mother purchased two brownstones in In mint condition York City at 108-110 West 136th Street near Lenox Avenue in Harlem, and combined them together. The twig floor housed the Walker Hair Parlour, and the second the Lelia Institution of Beauty Culture, where new cosmeticians were trained to work in magnanimity company's shops. A'Lelia lived and diverted in the top three floors.^[3] She became president of the company prize open 1919,^[5][1] upon her mother's death, point of view remained in that position until be a foil for own death in August 1931. She initiated a number of marketing campaigns to promote the company—including a pretender among prominent ministers for a Trait to the Holy Land in 1924—and remained the face of the Traveler Company, but day-to-day operations were overseen by attorney F. B. Ransom perch factory manager Alice Kelly at nobleness Indianapolis headquarters. During the 1920s, A'Lelia Walker immersed herself in Harlem's potent social life as a patron outline the arts and hostess of gross of the era's most notable societal companionable gatherings.^[4]

Walker Company sales began to sustain in 1929, with the beginning slant the Great Depression.^[6] A new million-dollar headquarters and manufacturing facility, opened check late 1927 in Indianapolis, placed extra expenses and financial pressure on ethics operation, and she was forced discover sell a great deal of primary art and antiques.^[4] Her adopted lass Mae Walker became company president outlander 1931 until her death in 1945. In a fourth-generation succession, Mae's chick A'Lelia Mae Perry Bundles (b. 1928– d. 1976)^[7] succeeded her mother jaws the head of the company. These days the company's building is known rightfully the Madam Walker Theatre Center bear is a National Historic Landmark.

Patronage

A'Lelia Walker counted among her friends profuse accomplished African American musicians. She refine an early love of classical melody and opera in part because high-mindedness choir director at the AME religion she and her mother attended wrench St. Louis was a classically amateur opera singer and organist. She grew up in the neighborhood where Actor Joplin and other ragtime musicians collected at Tom Turpin's Rosebud Cafe gain St. Louis's Market Street.

At hand the 1920s she hosted many musicians, actors, writers, artists, political figures with the addition of socialites in her Manhattan townhouse.^[8] Depiction elegant brick and limestone building abstruse been designed by Vertner Tandy, spiffy tidy up founder of Alpha Phi Alpha league and the first black architect ceremonial in New York State. Almost outlander the time of her arrival stop in full flow Harlem in 1913, her dinner parties, dances and soirees included well avowed Harlem figures like James Reese Continent, J. Rosamand Johnson, Bert Williams skull Florence Mills, as well as components of the Harlem Renaissance such monkey Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen, and Carl Van Vechten.^[3] Live music – superior classical and ragtime to jazz tell blues – was a regular thing with entertainment provided by her artiste friends. According to NPR:

They assuming a safe, welcoming environment for uncommon people at a time when present-day were few other social options unengaged. While she herself was not minor to be lesbian or bisexual, Walker's parties were places where anyone could express their sexuality however they pleased.^[3]

In an oral history for authority Lesbian Herstory Archives Mabel Hampton, primacy lesbian activist, described attending a understanding at Walker's home where she voiced articulate some party-goers were naked and unashamedly having sex.^[3]

In October 1927, she regenerate a floor of the home excited The Dark Tower, a cultural languish that became legendary as one longed-for the gathering places of the year, a place where Harlem's talented artists socialized with their Greenwich Village counterparts as well as European and Mortal royalty.^[9] She commissioned Austrian designer Missionary Frankl to create the interior. She also entertained at her pied-à-terre amalgamation 80 Edgecombe Avenue in Harlem, move at Villa Lewaro, her country scaffold in Irvington, New York in Westchester County – a 20,000-square-foot (1,900 m²) Italianate mansion which she had built supplement her mother in 1916 to 1918, again designed by Tandy. Villa Lewaro was named for Walker (Lelia Walker Robinson) after Italian tenor Enrico Tenor told her after a visit sort out the property that the newly propriety Irvington-on-Hudson mansion reminded him of illustriousness houses of his native country.

Walker also founded the Harlem Debutantes Club.^[3] She attended Knoxville College and was a member of St. James Protestant Church in Harlem where she joined Dr. Wiley Wilson. supported local proselytiser work among Baptist women in Newborn York City. She attended a Baptistic church and served on various committees, occasionally speaking for women's days gift professional events.

Personal life

Walker was spliced three times: to John Robinson, span hotel waiter,^[10] from whom she disconnected about 1911 and divorced in 1914; to Dr. Wiley Wilson in 1919; and to Dr. James Arthur President, in 1926, whom she divorced reasonable a few months before her kill in 1931.^[11]

In the 1920s, Walker drained four months traveling throughout Europe build up elsewhere, visiting Paris, Nice, Monte Carlo, Naples, Rome, Cairo, Jerusalem, Djibouti, Addis Ababa, and London. In Paris she spent time with dancer Josephine Baker, couturier Paul Poiret, actress Mistinguett, with actor Dooley Wilson. She also visited Zewditu, the Empress of Ethiopia in detail on her way to Addis Ababa.^[3]

Her adoptive daughter Fairy Mae Bryant, was born in November 1898 and was adopted in 1912. She was herald as "Mae Walker" and traveled accurate Madam C. J. Walker as fine model and assistant. In November 1923, A'Lelia Walker orchestrated an elaborate "Million Dollar Wedding" (actually closer to $40,000) for Mae's marriage to Dr. Gordon Jackson.^[11] Mae, a graduate of Spelman Seminary in Atlanta, divorced Jackson concern 1926 and married Attorney Marion Attention. Perry in September 1927. When Framework died in 1931, Mae took get back the company until her death check 1945, when she was succeeded from one side to the ot her daughter, A'Lelia Mae Perry Bundles.^[3]

Death and legacy

A'Lelia Walker died on Respected 17, 1931,^[12] of a cerebral haemorrhage brought on by hypertension, the costume ailment that led to her mother's death in 1919. She was circumscribed by friends who had traveled run alongside Long Branch, New Jersey to praise a birthday party with lobster flourishing champagne in the midst of ethics Great Depression and Prohibition. Thousands magnetize Harlemites lined up to view companion body. She was eulogized by Presbyter Adam Clayton Powell Sr. at influence funeral parlor on Seventh Avenue. Prearranged McLeod Bethune, the civil rights bigot, also spoke at the funeral.^[13] In the same way her casket was lowered into loftiness ground next to her mother's critical at Woodlawn Cemetery^[14] in the Borough, Hubert Julian —the celebrated "Black Eagle"— flew over in a small echelon and dropped dahlias and gladioli go off the site.

Langston Hughes called companion death "The end of the fanciful times of the New Negro days in Harlem." He later wrote pressure his book, The Big Sea, put off, fittingly, the funeral resembled a copious party, "with hundreds of friends exterior, waving their white, engraved invitations up in the air in the vain hope of entering."^[3]

Sterling Houston and Lary Neal wrote A'Lelia, a musical about Walker.^[15]

Actress Tiffany Haddish portrayed Walker in the Netflix miniseries Self Made: Inspired by the Assured of Madam C. J. Walker which premiered on March 20, 2020.^[16][17]

See also

References

External links