ABSTRACT
A’Lelia Walker-Lelia McWilliams or Walker, depending on the biographical source-was born on 6 June 1885 in Vicksburg, Mississippi, to Sarah Breedlove and Moses McWilliams. Sarah Breedlove claimed a unique space in African American social, cultural, and entrepreneurial history as the millionaire Madame C. J. Walker, the “empress” of hair-care products for blacks, particularly straightening chemicals and irons. A’Lelia Walker (she gave herself the name A’Lelia) attended Knoxville College in Tennessee. When she was thirty-five years old, with an adopted daughter, she found herself the sole heiress of her mother’s enterprise and fortune; this success story presented certain social challenges in her life as a black American.
