The ultimate subject of the advertisements for the company, however, was Walker herself. In the earliest days of her advertisements, she appeared in “before” and “after” pictures to physically demonstrate the effectiveness of her products.94 As Noliwe M. Rooks points out, this strategy has subliminal effects: in the “before” picture, she looks diffident and has downcast eyes, whereas in the “after” picture, Walker looks steadily at the camera and appears young, active, and full of confidence.95 Walker’s piercing eyes provide readers with a positive mindset, assuring them of their future success.
In 1911, Walker became “the woman of the hour” in the black community when she made a strategic $1,000 contribution toward the construction of a new Young Men’s Christian Association building in an African American neighborhood in Indianapolis.96 One article in 1913 summarized a business trip she made to Washington, D.C., as follows: “Like Caesar, ‘she came, she saw, she conquered.’ ”97 Later advertisements in the mid-1910s showed a glamorous portrait of Walker that almost served as a company logo. In the picture of the upper half of her body, she purposely and gracefully cast her eyes down, but viewers might still feel her appealing gaze. Her earrings and necklace substantiated the upward social mobility that she had realized through her lifetime of hard work.
By the late 1910s, she had become a national celebrity and a role model for African American women. The Kansas City Sun paid tribute to Walker in 1918: “Mrs. Madam C. J. Walker is more than a marvelous human success; she is an example and a sermon to mankind as truly as she is the incarnation of the advancement of Colored people.”98 Her personal charisma supplemented her advertisements, with her travels and speeches often appearing in black periodicals as news stories in their own right. As her fame spread, she attracted an increasing number of customers and agents with fewer advertisements. What Kate Dossett called her “hard-work narrative,” in which every effort was made toward success, pervaded black communities and attracted women throughout the country.99 Shared by the black community, Walker’s narrative centered on hair—fluffy hair once lost but now retrieved—which allowed her to replace the stereotype of enslaved womanhood with modern womanhood.
Advertisements invited black women with the same values and goals to an imaginary community reigned over by Walker, the guru. Advertisements guaranteed an upward social trajectory and spread a formula for success. Letters of appreciation from customers and agents demonstrate how much their hair meant ←32 | 33→to them. Mrs. Carter Robinson of Philadelphia, for example, writes, “I want to thank you for the most satisfactory results and real benefits derived from your treatment …. Trusting providence may let you live long to bring good results and happiness to all users of your goods.”100 Annie Kiser of Atlanta, Georgia, extolls Walker’s products: “I was almost bald headed when I began to use your goods, so I cannot praise them enough. They are a Godsend to humanity.”101 Belle Delashment from Illinois also rejoices at her results: “I am very pleased with your Wonderful Hair Course. My hair has grown at the rate of one inch per month ←33 | 34→ ←34 | 35→steadily, and it has become so straight and glossy. I am just delighted.”102 Walker’s advertisements urgently invited women to join her circle of success.
Advertising became increasingly overstated and image oriented around the year of her death. An advertisement placed in The Crisis in October 1919, “A Million Eyes Turned Upon it [sic] Daily: Madam C. J. Walker’s Wonderful Hair Grower,” shows well-dressed men and women, or would-be customers and agents, extending their hands to Walker’s sun-like company logo placed in the midst of an imaginary vista of the Atlantic Ocean.103 The advertisement boasts about the company’s success with inflated phrases, such as “We Belt the Globe” and “agents everywhere.” Walker’s illustrated figure as a logo is a reminder of her success story, suggestively connecting her products with middle-class status and wealth. In this way, even after her death, the company continued to rely on her charismatic image to sell its products and services.
Figure 1.2: “A Million Eyes Turned Upon It Daily: Madam C. J. Walker’s Wonderful Hair Grower” (advertisement). Crisis 18, no. 6 (1919): 323. https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/workers/civil-rights/crisis/1000-crisis-v18n06-w108.pdf (accessed May 31, 2019).
Walker’s advertisements circulated regularly among a large body of black women, so the number of new agents and customers kept expanding throughout the 1910s. A report from the Madam C. J. Walker Manufacturing Company stated that from August 1 to September 1, 1919, the company had sent 212 combs from the factory, with 128 going to new agents, 2 to old agents, 58 to foreign agents, and 4 to the New York Office; the company had also mailed 234,465 boxes of “Growers, Shampoos, and Gloss” to customers in the span of a single month.104 Behind every purchase were agents with their families and waiting customers. Walker’s advertising, highlighting the beauty, health, wealth, and power that were attainable through her products and skills, invited ambitious women to try her methods to improve their appearance and, thus, make an investment that would lead to a better future.
Agents in Walker’s Grassroots Network
The Great Migration from 1900 to 1930 brought hundreds of thousands of black people to the northern United States, nearly tripling the African American population there from 385,020 to 1,146,885—9.6% of all African Americans.105 Unfortunately, for many of the blacks arriving from the South, the North was not the Promised Land they had hoped for. White employers’ inherent racism meant that factory and clerical jobs, with higher pay and shorter working hours, were usually given to white European immigrants rather than to blacks who had newly arrived from the South.106 Because of barriers to education and alternative employment opportunities, African American women went back to low-paying domestic work, which reminded them of when they were enslaved.107
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Walker offered an occupational alternative to