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A'Lelia Bundles quotes

A'Lelia Bundles


"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."
A'Lelia Bundles

People Police Hair Body
"Madam Walker was a master marketer. But her brilliance was in taking it to another level by training women, by traveling, by making very motivational speeches and by providing independent income for women who otherwise would have to be maids and sharecroppers."
A'Lelia Bundles

Motivational Women Training Who
"She was born Sarah Breedlove on a plantation in Delta, Louisiana, where her parents had been slaves. At 14, she married to get a home of her own, to get away from a cruel brother-in-law with whom she was living. At 17, she had her only child, A'Lelia, who I'm named after."
A'Lelia Bundles

Home Parents Born Who
"Don't sit around and wait for the opportunities to come. You have to get up and make those opportunities come."
A'Lelia Bundles

You Wait Sit Opportunities
"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."
A'Lelia Bundles

Eyes Today Learning Prayer
"There was a period of 10 years where the conventional wisdom was Black shows don't sell overseas, therefore nobody is interested."
A'Lelia Bundles

Wisdom Black Nobody Where
"One of the key things for me about Madame Walker's life is that she really does represent this first generation out of slavery when black people were reinventing themselves, and as a woman who was the first child in her family born free, she was trying to figure out a way, and she moved from Delta, Louisiana."
A'Lelia Bundles

Life Family Me People
"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."
A'Lelia Bundles

Life Love People Window
"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."
A'Lelia Bundles

Love Long People Crown
"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."
A'Lelia Bundles

Hair Parents Dad Manufacturing
"I have lived almost seven decades. So I've had my hair journey where I wasn't comfortable with my hair."
A'Lelia Bundles

Journey Hair Comfortable Lived
"It takes a long time, I think, to get to the place where you realize you may love the hairstyle that somebody else has."
A'Lelia Bundles

Love Long You Time
"I wrote my first report about Madam Walker when I was a senior in high school in 1970."
A'Lelia Bundles

School First About High
"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."
A'Lelia Bundles

Women Community Black 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."
A'Lelia Bundles

I Am Hair Way Looking
"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."
A'Lelia Bundles

Love Hair Know Daughters
"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."
A'Lelia Bundles

Life History Women You
"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."
A'Lelia Bundles

Place Famous More Race
"Madam Walker, as part of the first generation out of slavery, really was inventing the way that she operated in the world."
A'Lelia Bundles

World Way Generation Slavery
"I think a lot of times, the historical piece is often a way to comment on the present."
A'Lelia Bundles

Way Think Historical Present
"The real Annie Malone was not a light-skinned woman."
A'Lelia Bundles

Woman Real Annie
"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."
A'Lelia Bundles

Time Woman Who Just
"If a CEO takes an interest in you and he happens to be an Asian man, then that's great, but as an African-American woman, you want to make sure that if the executive vice-president of the company is an African-American woman that you get to know her."
A'Lelia Bundles

Man You Great Woman
"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."
A'Lelia Bundles

Success World People Game
"Every ethnic group has a mythology... Until 'Roots'... there was nothing in the popular culture to refute the paragraph in elementary school history class that said, 'Slaves picked the cotton, were happy and life wasn't so bad.'"
A'Lelia Bundles

Life History Culture Bad
"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."
A'Lelia Bundles

Hero See Intellectual Beyond
"Madame Walker was mythologized like George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, but I want to show that she was fabulous on her own."
A'Lelia Bundles

Want Like Own She
"Many people have told me that once they learn of Madam Walker's accomplishments they are surprised, even embarrassed, that they have never heard of her. But they shouldn't be. Her extraordinary story was simply omitted from the history books."
A'Lelia Bundles

History Me People Never
"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."
A'Lelia Bundles

Life Way Flaws Person
"Madam Walker was a woman who transformed herself in a very American, rags-to-riches way."
A'Lelia Bundles

Woman Way American Who
"To her credit, Madam Walker discerned that black women wanted to conform to white Victorian models of beauty. She was aware of the double- sidedness of her products - helping black women appear more European in look, with straight hair - but she always maintained that she was simply selling products that promoted hair growth."
A'Lelia Bundles

Beauty Women Growth Look
"A lot of people think Oprah is channeling for Madam Walker, and there are lots of parallels."
A'Lelia Bundles

People Think Madam Lot
"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."
A'Lelia Bundles

Life Love Women People
"Madam Walker's legacy lives in her philanthropy as well as in an amazing line of hair care products."
A'Lelia Bundles

Amazing Hair Care Legacy
"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."
A'Lelia Bundles

Business People Hair Care
"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."
A'Lelia Bundles

Women Society Woman Way
"People will buy products for quality, and they will buy products for bargains."
A'Lelia Bundles

People Quality Will Buy
"God puts pack rats together with non-pack rats."
A'Lelia Bundles

God Together Pack Rats
"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."
A'Lelia Bundles

History Woman Who Something
"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."
A'Lelia Bundles

Education Age War Time
"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 Bundles

Women Grow Hair Back
"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."
A'Lelia Bundles

People Money Who Place
"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."
A'Lelia Bundles

Me Great People Political
"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."
A'Lelia Bundles

Getting Hair Late Like
"Wearing your hair natural is a positive statement about who you are. It's not a protest to somebody else. It's affirming you."
A'Lelia Bundles

Positive You Hair Who
"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."
A'Lelia Bundles

Good Me You Thoughts
"Natural hair is just my personal preference."
A'Lelia Bundles

Hair Just Personal Natural
"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."
A'Lelia Bundles

Life Hope People Will
"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."
A'Lelia Bundles

Business Community Black More

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