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On Her Own Ground: The Life and Times of Madam C. J. Walker. By A'Lelia Bundles. (New York and other cities: Scribner, c. 2001. Pp. 415. $30.00, ISBN 0-684-82582-1.)
Madam C. J. Walker was nationally famous when she died in 1919. The black press in particular lauded her as a heroine of the race, relating a story that was probably familiar to many African Americans at the time. Born in 1867, the daughter of sharecropping parents, Walker worked for years as a laundress in St. Louis before discovering a talent for hair care and selling homemade beauty products to black women door-to-door. From modest beginnings Walker built a small cosmetics empire that included a factory and headquarters in Indianapolis, salons in several cities, and thousands of sales agent/hairdressers operating throughout the United States. Although obituaries disputed the exact amount of her fortune, they all stressed her sensational rags-to-riches story. Walker herself had wanted to be known more for her philanthropic efforts than for her business success. Indeed, many observers recognized that Walker was not simply a black female version of the Horatio Alger myth and remembered her contributions to institutions like the YMCA, the Tuskegee Institute, and the NAACP. Others recognized her for providing an independent means of employment...