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Yvonne Durant: Hello listeners, this is Audible editor Yvonne Durant. This is gonna be quite fabulous for a couple of reasons. One, I'm going to be in conversation with A'Lelia Bundles, author, producer, speaker, board member, emcee, fabulous woman, great hair—let's say superbly gifted in so many areas. It is no surprise that she's the great, great-granddaughter of the Madam C.J. Walker and the great-granddaughter of the very fabulous once again, 'cause that's what they are, A'Lelia Walker, daughter of Madam C.J. Walker. Talk about a rich family legacy. Your family tree is golden. Welcome.

A'Lelia Bundles: I am so glad to be with you. Thank you.

YD: As I listened to the book, I got so delightfully lost in A'Lelia's glamorous life. And that's in large part due to your meticulous research. Were you ever overwhelmed and had to take a break?

AB: Oh, believe me, absolutely. You know, it took me more years than I really want to admit, Yvonne, to finally finish this book. But where some people don't have enough material to tell the stories of African American women, I had an overwhelming amount of material. And that's from their letters, business records, the newspaper articles, the interviews that I had done in the early '80s with some of the survivors. And then, all of the books that have been written in the last 40 years about Harlem Renaissance women, about African Americans. So I had a lot of material, and yes, it was overwhelming.

YD: By the way, the narration process: You've done this before. How about this, was this different, better?

AB: You know, I truly enjoyed it. I had the same director for both books—for On Her Own Ground and for Joy Goddess—and I tell you, I was amused. I amused myself in this process because, for 30 years, I was a producer at NBC and ABC News. And for about half of that amount of time, I was in the editing room, and I was the producer who was having the correspondents do their tracks. And I was the one who said, "Well, can you just redo that? Can, could you give a little more emphasis?" So, I think this was payback [laughs] for all of those years that I spent in the editing room.

YD: Right, now you know.

AB: Now I know. [laughs]

YD: By the way, I listened to it; I loved it. You did a great job. Not only in the book do you provide great detail on the Walker lifestyle, but you talk about other wealthy Black families from back in the day. And there seems to have been a tight bond among the well-off Black families. And those ties lasted lifetimes, am I right?

AB: Absolutely. I think that's something especially relevant right now when we are experiencing so much, um, threat to who we are as a people. That was a period of time, it was Jim Crow, it was coming out of Jim Crow, when people really needed to come together. They were creating institutions—that was the era of the NAACP and the National Association of Colored Women, the fraternities and the sororities.

YD: Mm-hmm.

AB: And people were trying to find ways to fortify themselves. I think that really bonded people together.

YD: What was impressive is that Madam C.J. and A'Lelia, they moved so effortlessly through society. They just walked into the room, took control of the room. Where did they get that from, that confidence?

AB: You know, that's a really important observation for me. In some ways now we have to sort of acknowledge that within the Black community there were some class distinctions, and they were not part of the so-called “old Black families.” They were people who had made their money later in life. Madam Walker was born Sarah Breedlove on the same plantation in Delta, Louisiana, where her parents and older siblings had been enslaved. She was an uneducated woman, then a self-educated woman. So, they were not part of that educated "old Black families."

"Where some people don't have enough material to tell the stories of African American women, I had an overwhelming amount of material."

But Madam Walker really was mentored by the women of the AME Church. When she was still a poor washerwoman, she had a good enough voice to be in the choir. She volunteered in the Missionary Society, and it was some of the women—especially the schoolteachers—who helped her begin to have a vision of herself as something other than an illiterate washerwoman. So she really acquired those social graces.

YD: She must have been an amazing observer, very astute.

AB: In fact, there was one woman who I think was her key mentor, a woman named Jessie Batts Robinson—who was a schoolteacher, and who was one of the first Black social workers in St. Louis—and who really helped shelter Madam Walker during a difficult time in her life. Later, Jessie Batts Robinson became the principal of the Walker Beauty School in St. Louis. So the person who had mentored her now was one of her business associates.

YD: Mm-hmm. Uh, their lifestyle, I mean, you grew up eating from their plates, monogram napkins and such. To this day, do you still have that splendor in your life?

AB: [Laughs]

YD: Has it informed the way you set your table or the way you entertain?

AB: Well, you know, I do not set my table with that silverware, but when I was growing up, I really was surrounded by things that had belonged to them. The silverware, as you say, that we used every day had Madam Walker's monogram, and our special china for holidays was Madam Walker's. But my mother was a very down-to-earth person, and really did not want to, you know, make this sort of, you know, that these things were oh so special. It was really: How do you incorporate this into your life? So I treasure that I still have these things. But the silverware, when my book club meets, I will polish the silverware [laughs] and bring it out for a special occasion.

YD: Wow. That must be wonderful. Oh, I wonder how A’Lelia sounds. Any recordings?

AB: You know, I don't have any audio recordings. There is a little bit of film of her that was made when the Walker Company made a movie in 1928. And that footage actually appears in Stanley Nelson's film, Two Dollars and a Dream, the biographical documentary about Madam Walker. Coincidentally, Stanley Nelson, the filmmaker who many people know, his grandfather was Madam Walker's attorney.

YD: Oh.

AB: And Stanley's very first film—we know him for all of these other great films—his very first documentary film was Two Dollars and a Dream. And he and his cousins found this old footage in the Walker building, and they were able to incorporate it. So we see how she moves, and how she moves with grace and with charisma.

YD: Mm-hmm.

AB: And one of her friends once said she didn't just walk into a room, she swept into a room.

YD: Yeah, I imagine that. I love the turbans and the fabric just flowing and... Oh, I so want to be in those parties!

AB: I know. Yeah, absolutely. You know, the 1920s, it's such a romantic period of time for us, and I think part of it is that we were speaking up, we were politically advocating for ourselves. The music, the art, the poetry, all of those things that in some ways had been suppressed during slavery. And those first generations outta slavery—now that people were moving to cities, and there was this critical mass of Black talent—it just exploded. And I think that attracts all of us. And you know, we've never left a renaissance, we've been having a renaissance. But right now, with some of the amazing concerts that are going on, the museum exhibits, the books that are being written, we're having a renaissance.

YD: Renaissance. Yeah. I feel that too. I enjoy getting lost in pictures. Since I wasn't at the party, I can watch pictures. I can listen to the pictures. No, I can [laughs] look at the pictures.

AB: Right. But sometimes, I think we hear what's in the pictures.

YD: Yeah, yeah. You kinda hear these conversations; I can imagine what they were saying in the salons. Like Frederick Douglass, who was known to be an early adapter of photography, I'd say your family was, too.

AB: I agree with you. Someone asked me if Madam Walker and A'Lelia Walker knew that they were making history. I really do think they did know they were making history. I mean, I think with Madam Walker, she put her own image on her product containers in 1906. And that was at a time when a Black woman using her own face and hair to advertise was really, you know, quite radical almost. To say that I'm beautiful enough to put myself on this product container. So, I think she was very aware of that. She had her photograph taken in the cars that she owned. When she traveled, she had her picture taken. She had a picture taken of the cabin where she was born, so that she could make the contrast between that slave cabin and the mansion that she built in Irvington, New York, in 1918.

"One of her friends once said she didn't just walk into a room, she swept into a room."

A'Lelia Walker similarly has... I mean, I have dozens of photographs of her. And she had a couple of favorite photographers. Robert Mercer, who's a name we don't really know today, but he took some of the most iconic photos of A'Lelia Walker. Also, Addison Scurlock. So, there's some really beautiful photos of her, and she and her friends...

One thing that amused me as I was going through the, thank goodness, the things that my family saved. It was almost like a version of Facebook where she and her friends would exchange autographed photographs. So, I have some Paul Robeson photographs and another person, um, named Ewing, who was a very famous librettist whose photograph is there. Names that people won't know today, but who were famous then.

YD: For your information, I began my career in the advertising business. I'm a copywriter by trade, and I worked a lot in hair care and beauty. I greatly appreciated the ads, the Walker campaigns, because, if you gotta see the finished product, right?

AB: Right.

YD: The before, the after. Where did she learn this? I mean, you just don't up and learn advertising, what makes a great ad, how to promote your product.

AB: No, you're absolutely right. I think there are a couple of things that I would say contributed to that early understanding of advertising. Her friend, Jessie Batts Robinson, was married to a man named Christopher Robinson who had a newspaper.

So, she was able to see what that newspaper world was like. And then her second husband, Charles Joseph Walker, hence C.J. Walker, was also an advertising person, a newspaper salesman. And early in their marriage, I think part of the reason that they did get married is that they had this common cause of promoting the product. And I think she got a lot of ideas from him.

YD: Okay. Aside from the mention of her first husband, Wiley Wilson, who said something—or maybe it was assumed—did he have a colorism issue with her skin?

AB: Yes. So, Madam Walker was married three times. Her first husband was Moses McWilliams, who was A'Lelia's father. Her second husband was John Davis, and her third husband was Charles Joseph Walker. A'Lelia was also married three times, her first husband was John Robinson, who we don't know much about.

YD: Mm-hmm.

AB: The second husband was Dr. Wiley Wilson. And the third husband was Dr. James Arthur Kennedy. And yes, Dr. Wiley Wilson definitely had a colorism issue.

YD: But he gave her a pass because she was who she was, I'm thinking.

AB: Well, you know, this for me is kinda the most interesting tension point in the book—that A'Lelia Walker, after the divorcing the first husband, had two boyfriends. Both were handsome, both were doctors, both very accomplished. Wiley Wilson was a bad boy, and James Arthur Kennedy was a good guy. Of course, her mother preferred the good guy—

YD: Right.

AB: And she was more excited by the bad boy. Now, this story has many twists and turns that will be unexpected. But Wiley was definitely looking after her money. He married her because he wanted access to her money.

YD: Well, she knew what to do. The trip to Paris, it was soon after she decided to go through the divorce that she sailed. And I was with her on that ship, too. I could see her sweeping to the dining room, and she went first class. This is not economy.

AB: At, at a time when, yes, when Black women were not traveling in first class. And so she was written about in a Paris newspaper, because she so turned heads during that trip.

YD: And I imagine, and I said this earlier, they didn't stop at the doorway and say, "Hmm, can I walk in? How should I walk in?" They just kind of swept the room. I mean, I saw her in those small rooms in Cartier, in these grand rooms and hotels and sipping champagne. The book just took me to another world; I will probably return when I need a trip to Paris—I will save a lot.

AB: [Laughs] I love that. And yes, I think she particularly enjoyed being in Europe in 1921 and 1922, because Europe was not infected by the same brand of racism in America. So, she could very easily go into Cartier. She was invited to Cartier, not just could she go, she was invited to come and to be in the private rooms. And that, that made a big impression on her.

YD: Right. Okay. Let us give some time to Carl Van Vechten. Cultural thief or friend?

AB: Well, both. [laughs] I think he's both. He certainly opened the doors for some of the young Black writers; he got contracts for them with major publishers. He promoted the careers of a number of Black musicians and actors. He photographed; he had an eye for who the talent was. He appreciated Black theater, but he also was a person who exploited, in some ways, that medium. He exploited the novels, and he wrote that infamously titled novel that was supposedly showing the range of classes of African Americans. But he was roundly denounced by people like Du Bois because of his portrayal of the underworld, and that sort of emphasis on the criminal element in the community.

YD: Uh, listeners, the title of that book was, uh, N***** Heaven. The significance behind those two words is that, that's where the Black people, worshipers, would sit in church up in the balconies. And so that was referred to as n***** heaven. This book came out of his sitting in those salons and getting to know the cultural elite. Some of them felt betrayed, and some said, "Well, it's not that. It's okay, you know?"

AB: Well, but it was extremely controversial, and I think remains controversial to this day. He was close friends with James Weldon Johnson, with Langston Hughes, and A'Lelia Walker considered him a friend. But there were other people who were quite offended and who felt that he was exploiting the community.

"I think she particularly enjoyed being in Europe in 1921 and 1922, because Europe was not infected by the same brand of racism in America."

But I tried to write about this in the book because it was a significant part of A'Lelia Walker's life. A'Lelia Walker was the inspiration for one of the key characters in the book, Adora Boniface. You know, he always had great names for his characters in his various novels. And, you know, as a result of that book, she became even more widely known by some of his author friends, like F. Scott Fitzgerald.

It's frustrating, I think, that his book defined Harlem and that period of time for many white readers who really were never going to go to Harlem and who didn't really know any Black folks. Where some of the writers—like Countee Cullen and Langston Hughes and Wally Thurman, Nella Larsen, and Zora Neale Hurston—didn't sell nearly as many books as he sold.

But it's an interesting footnote from the period that I wanted to develop in the book so that people could see the intersections and the controversy.

YD: Okay. So, A'Lelia adopted your grandmother, Mae. Did Mae ever find happiness? Because she had that first wedding; they went all out just so fabulous? And I saw that picture and I said, “That is not a happy bride for good reason.” She married and she married again, right?

AB: Right. And that was my grandfather; her second husband was my grandfather. So just to help people—because there are a lot of A'Lelias in my family—so I'm gonna help people understand this.

YD: Okay. Thank you.

AB: So, Madam C.J. Walker, born Sarah Breedlove, the businesswoman. She had one daughter, A'Lelia. And A'Lelia Walker, who was married three times, had no children, had no biological children. And as people will find in the book, it's a little complicated connection. But Sarah Breedlove and A'Lelia had known a man in St. Louis at their church named Elijah Hammond. When Madam Walker arrived in Indianapolis in 1910, Elijah Hammond's mother lived across the street from her. Through the mother of Elijah Hammond, she met Elijah's sister, whose husband had just died. And she was the third generation of women in her family with several children under the age of 18.

My grandmother Mae, who was born Fairy Mae Bryant, was one of those children. Fairy Mae Bryant had very long braids. Madam Walker's main hair care product was Madam Walker's Wonderful Hair Grower. And so she started working as a model for Madam Walker, and eventually Madam Walker's daughter, A'Lelia Walker, adopted my grandmother Mae. My grandmother Mae had the big fabulous wedding that people will read about to somebody she did not want to marry, an arranged marriage that did not work out predictably. And then her second husband was my grandfather, Marion Perry. Mae and Marion had my mother, whose name also was A'Lelia Mae Perry Bundle.

YD: [Laughing]

AB: And I'm A'Lelia Perry Bundle. So that's, if you could keep that straight, Madam Walker, A'Lelia Walker, Mae, A'Lelia Mae, and me. [laughs]

YD: Okay. But she did find happiness.

AB: Yes, she did. She did.

YD: That's great.

AB: And I'm so fortunate that I have her letters. You know, for me, that’s the bonus of telling this story is that I actually have their words, and I know what she was thinking. I know when she was frustrated. I don't have every single letter, but I have dozens of letters, and so I could see that evolution. She and my grandfather actually ended up divorcing and then remarrying. But I could see that she had become her own person, and now she was doing the things that she wanted to do.

YD: Well, that's great. I've thought about her; I cared for her. Any new projects coming up that you can share with us?

AB: So, I have said to folks that I'm not writing another book that takes 20 years to write [laughs], but I'm a writer, and so I will continue to write. So a couple of things. I was in New Orleans recently, and I went to the Free People of Color Museum. And my grandfather, who was married to Mae, had free papers from one of his great-grandmothers, and her free papers from New Orleans. And I know who she is. I think I wanna write something about her. It may just be a long poem, but I wanna write about this woman named Adelaide Rochester, who was a hairdresser in 1861 in New Orleans.

The other things that I'm working on: I have a lot of books to read that I haven't been able to read, that I listen to on Audible. But I also am planning another way to develop the story of Joy Goddess. And I'm working with some people who share my sensibilities, and who share my values and how I tell stories and the things that are important. So, I don't know whether it's going to be a play, a musical, a series, or a movie, but we're going to develop this on some platform.

YD: Well, I'm already seeing the movie.

AB: What would you like to see in the movie?

YD: I wanna see those rooms; I wanna see the musicians. I wanna see the heartbreak, the joy, the glamour. I wanna see Harlem.

AB: Mm-hmm. Well, I've tried to make it a character in the book, because I think we think Harlem just happened. But it evolved, and I wanted to show that when A'Lelia Walker first arrived in 1913, and she was the one who persuaded her mother, they needed to be there. That in 1913, Harlem was still predominantly white. But over that decade, you could see the neighborhood changing and all of the excitement that was going on.

YD: Great. I know a lot of actresses would love to be A'Lelia Walker.

AB: Well, who would you like, who do you think would be good?

YD: I see Viola Davis; she could do it. Who do you see?

AB: You know, I'm thinking about it... But maybe the sister from Sinners, Wunmi Mosaku. She was gorgeous.

YD: Ah, she played Annie.

AB: Yes.

YD: Oh, yes. She could take it away.

AB: Mm-hmm.

YD: She could be A'Lelia.

AB: So many great actors now though. So many. [laughs]

YD: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

YD: Tell me five books that you've listened to on Audible that you love.

AB: Oh, my goodness. Well, so my book club, while I was writing the book and editing Joy Goddess, I didn't have time to just sit down and read a book. And so then I became, you know, a big fan of Audible. Here's what I've read recently: The Battle for the Black Mind by Karita L. Brown, about the history of black education; The Sable Cloak, a novel by Gail Milissa Grant, a wonderfully told story. It almost reminds me a little bit of Sinners, just some of the atmospherics. Savings and Trust by Justene Hill Edwards. Black AF History by Michael Harriot. And The Barn by Wright Thompson. Those are the ones, the most recent ones in my queue. And I could go on if you want. [laughs]

YD: Well, okay. We'll take that into consideration that you're an avid listener. We like that a lot.

AB: Absolutely.

YD: In closing, is anything else you wanna share with our listeners?

AB: You know, I just am so grateful that people are liking the book. I think as an author, you write the book, you don't know how it's going to be received. You don't know what people are going to key in on. And every day I get an email, or somebody does a reel sitting on their front porch saying how much they're enjoying the book. And that just makes all of this work worth it. Somebody wrote me and said, "Dear Ms. Bundles, how dare you keep me up all night when I have to go to work tomorrow?" [laughs]

YD: [Laughs] I love that.

AB: So that is my favorite thing so far. [laughs]

YD: I couldn't stop, and I'd rewind going back to the party. I don't know if you could tell, I'm a party animal.

AB: [Laughing]

YD: Listeners, fun fact: Joy Goddess was a name given to A'Lelia Walker by the poet Langston Hughes. And we love it. We love a Joy Goddess. Thank you so much for chronicling your family, for giving them to us. Just really beyond words to describe what this did to me. How I was impressed by it.

AB: Oh, thank you, you so much.

YD: And listeners, you can find Joy Goddess on Audible now.