Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Natural hair is just my personal preference.
Inner confidence is what makes us successful.
God puts pack rats together with non-pack rats.
The real Annie Malone was not a light-skinned woman.
We live in a culture where European beauty standards are dominant.
I think a lot of times, the historical piece is often a way to comment on the present.
I wrote my first report about Madam Walker when I was a senior in high school in 1970.
Madam Walker was a woman who transformed herself in a very American, rags-to-riches way.
A lot of people think Oprah is channeling for Madam Walker, and there are lots of parallels.
The saying was that Madam Walker made the money, and her daughter - my great-grandmother - spent it.
Madam Walker's legacy lives in her philanthropy as well as in an amazing line of hair care products.
Madam Walker's name gets thrown out as either the savior of black women's hair or she's the evil devil.
I have lived almost seven decades. So I've had my hair journey where I wasn't comfortable with my hair.
It takes a long time, I think, to get to the place where you realize you may love the hairstyle that somebody else has.
Madam Walker, as part of the first generation out of slavery, really was inventing the way that she operated in the world.
Women of African descent, since the beginning of time, have altered their hair, decorated it and used it to designate status.
Wearing your hair natural is a positive statement about who you are. It's not a protest to somebody else. It's affirming you.
Madam Walker was an incredible woman, but she wasn't the only one of her time who was. She just took it to the highest height.
Madame Walker was mythologized like George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, but I want to show that she was fabulous on her own.
There was a period of 10 years where the conventional wisdom was Black shows don't sell overseas, therefore nobody is interested.
I love people who have really long locs. I love how they can go in different directions or pile it up into a big crown on the head.
What grows from our head is something that we should love. The larger society can love it or not, but it's not their decision to make.
We buy too much stuff we just don't need. We're trying to look cute for next weekend when we ought to be thinking about the next decade.
As one of the pioneers of modern hair care and cosmetics, Madam Walker is still an inspiration to a lot of people going into the business.
I was like other teenagers in the late 1960s; I too was very interested in having an Afro and getting rid of the perm that was in my hair.
There are literally hundreds of stories about women of color that haven't been told that are amazing, fantastic, better than anything else.
There are schools that have rules against afro puffs. They say it's distracting. But nobody is saying that about a little girl who has ponytails.
There are two national historic landmarks: the Madam Walker Legacy Center in Indianapolis and the Madam C.J. Walker House in Irvington, New York.
Through the years, Madam Walker has certainly become a staple of anything that has to do with black history, women's history and entrepreneurship.
DuBois - my intellectual hero - had written an obit of Madam, praising her... I began to see Madam Walker beyond the definitions others had given her.
For many years Madam Walker was just a little footnote in history. As a woman who made haircare products, she was really consigned to something trivial.
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.
I've found that once people are introduced to Madam Walker's story, they are inspired but also perplexed about why she was omitted from their history lessons.
I'd seen how 'Green Book' had been a box-office hit, but left pianist Don Shirley's family feeling betrayed because his life and relationships had been distorted.
For all my life, I've been trying to tell Madam's story and really it's a labor of love just to make sure people know about her and the empowerment she gave to other women.
If you wear your hair straight or natural, it's all fine with me. It doesn't mean that you aren't politically conscious or that you don't have good thoughts about progress.
And mothers and daughters - mothers need to help their daughters love their hair. And some mothers know how to do this, and some mothers help their daughters love their hair.
My mother was the fourth generation of women to have worked with the Walker company. As a little girl, I would go to her office while she worked. She was a very capable woman.
I've always been fascinated by Madam Walker's ability to use her money for political causes. I find her story so inspires people that it gives me great joy to share the story.
I began to discover that, in addition to her stunning achievements, there were flaws as there would be in any person's life. I wanted to tell Madam's story in an honest, frank way.
Madame Walker selected Indianapolis as the headquarters for her growing business more than a century ago in 1910 because of its central location and thriving black business community.
By 1916, as Madam Walker herself was developing more assertive views on race, she was becoming eager to assume her place alongside Harlem's famous, influential and intriguing residents.
I know of at least two black women who are billionaires: Sheila Johnson, who co-founded BET, and Oprah Winfrey. And I know of hundreds of black women whose net worth is over $1 million.
Today, there's no excuse for not learning how to get our financial houses in order. Some of us close our eyes, take a deep breath and say a prayer when it comes to managing our finances.
Both my parents worked at the Madam C.J. Walker Manufacturing Company, with my dad eventually being hired by another company called Summit Laboratories that made chemical hair straighteners.
There is a core of people who know and love Madam C.J. Walker, but there's a much larger audience who don't really know about her. I think 'Self Made' will give people a window into her life.
So Madam C.J. Walker's Wonderful Hair Grower, when applied after shampooing the hair more frequently, allowed women's scalp to be healthier and their hair to grow back. That was her most popular product.
A'Lelia Walker did not subsidize specific writers, but she provided a place for all kinds of people to gather. She was one of the few blacks who had the money to allow her to entertain in the large scale.
Madame Walker was one of the four iconic women who really created what's now the modern hair-care and cosmetics industry, and we know about her in the black community because everybody gets their hair done.
We all draw inspiration from women whose names make the headlines and whose stories are in the history books, but often our greatest inspiration comes from our mothers, grandmothers, aunts, teachers, and friends.