A'Lelia Bundles

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 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.

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.

Through the years, Madam Walker has certainly become a staple of anything that has to do with black history, women's history and entrepreneurship.

I hope that people will be inspired by Madam Walker's story. I hope that they will see her as a complex human being, and that they will want to dig more deeply, that they will want to know the details of her life.

Natural hair is just my personal preference.

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.

Wearing your hair natural is a positive statement about who you are. It's not a protest to somebody else. It's affirming you.

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.

We live in a culture where European beauty standards are dominant.

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.

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.

Madam C.J. Walker was born in 1867, two years after the civil war ended. She was a daughter of a slave. She had no formal education. Both her parents died by the time she was seven. Yet, by the time she died in 1919 at age 51, she was one of the most successful businesswomen America had ever seen.

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.

God puts pack rats together with non-pack rats.

People will buy products for quality, and they will buy products for bargains.

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.

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.

We didn't sit around the dining table talking about Madam Walker, but the silverware that we used every day had her monogram on it and our china for special occasions had been Madam Walker's china... and the baby grand piano on which I learned to read music had been in A'Lelia Walker's apartment in Harlem during the Harlem Renaissance.

The saying was that Madam Walker made the money, and her daughter - my great-grandmother - spent it.

There are two national historic landmarks: the Madam Walker Legacy Center in Indianapolis and the Madam C.J. Walker House in Irvington, New York.

Women of African descent, since the beginning of time, have altered their hair, decorated it and used it to designate status.

Madam Walker's name gets thrown out as either the savior of black women's hair or she's the evil devil.

Inner confidence is what makes us successful.

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.

Don't sit around and wait for the opportunities to come. You have to get up and make those opportunities come.

She used her wealth and philanthropy to contribute to Black schools and colleges, she gave the largest gift the NAACP had ever received to it's anti-lynching fund... Madam Walker's life was one of transformation and re-invention.

Madam Walker's legacy lives in her philanthropy as well as in an amazing line of hair care products.

There are literally hundreds of stories about women of color that haven't been told that are amazing, fantastic, better than anything else.

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 more than three years, I'd been part of a complex and frustrating dance as my nonfiction, fact-based material was translated from book to movie by scriptwriters whose visions, goals and sensibilities often were quite different from mine.

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.

From the beginning, Madam C. J. Walker's message was as much about hair and beauty as it was about empowering other women. She knew that confidence and self-assurance are key ingredients to success, and that true beauty comes from within.

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.

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.

It's very hard to be a kid, especially in a predominantly white school or white town where other people want to police your body and hair.

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.

I think Michelle Obama ought to wear her hair exactly the way she wants to wear her hair. I am not looking for Michelle Obama to cut her hair off like I have mine, very short. I'm not looking for her to do twists. I'm looking for her to wear what's comfortable for her.

I wrote my first report about Madam Walker when I was a senior in high school in 1970.

Why is she Mrs. C.J. Walker? It really was a matter of her trying to insist that people respect her, because during that time, white people would call any black woman 'Sally.' 'Aunt Sally.' So this was like... you can't call me that.

It takes a long time, I think, to get to the place where you realize you may love the hairstyle that somebody else has.

I have lived almost seven decades. So I've had my hair journey where I wasn't comfortable with my hair.

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.

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.

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.

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.

You know the AME Church has a history of empowering black people and having an international outlook. So it was the women of the church who began to give Sarah Breedlove an image of herself as something other than an illiterate washerwoman, and she wanted to make her life better, and her daughter's life better.

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.

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.

For some people, success is a zero sum game. They think that if they push other people out of the way, fewer people can compete with them. That's one way of seeing the world. It's dog eat dog. It's, sadly, always going to be there.