Madam C.J. Walker

 “Don’t sit and wait for opportunities to come.  Get up and make them.” Madam C.J. Walker 

The subject of the Winter 2020 Traces of Indiana and Midwestern History cover story, “Sheer Will,” is the Indiana Historical Society’s Madam C.J. Walker collection documenting the remarkable African American hair-care and cosmetics industry pioneer and the company she founded. Born Sarah Breedlove in 1867 on a Louisiana Delta cotton plantation, the daughter of slaves, the future entrepreneur was orphaned at seven, had virtually no formal education, and once worked as a washerwoman. Among the products her company developed and advertised in Black newspapers and magazines, offered by direct mail as well as from a sophisticated sales force, and utiized in countless beauty salons and households, were scalp ointment to stimulate hair growth, pomade, bath oil, liquid make-up, cologne, shampoo, and hair coloring. Madam Walker opened beauty colleges in Pittsburgh, Chicago, Harlem, and Indianapolis, where she relocated her permanent headquarters in 1910, nine years before her death at age 51 from hypertension and kidney failure. Philanthropist, patron of the arts, civil rights advocate, and worldly marketeer, Madam C.J. Walker, in the words of great-great granddaughter A’Lelia Bundles, “created career opportunities for thousands of African American women.”

Traces editor Ray E. Boomhower described an 1861 White House meeting between Abraham Lincoln and 61-year-old Hoosier William Jones, hopeful of securing a patronage position in the new administration. When Lincoln was just “a gangling youth” (Boomhower’s words), Jones had hired him to clerk in his Spencer County store, located in the Little Pigeon Creek community. Lincoln’s duties had included unpacking goods, carrying items up from the cellar, butchering and salting pork, and occasionally driving a team of horses. Jones had also recently participated in the sixteenth President’s successful campaign. Lincoln greeted Jones and a companion, Nathaniel Grigsby, warmly and ushered them into a room to introduce them to First Lady Mary Todd.  Boomhower wrote:

    Before the two men could stake their claims for government jobs, Lincoln, knowing full well what they were after, told his wife: “Mary, you know I’m pestered and bothered continually by people coming here on the score of old acquaintance, as almost all of them have an ax to grind.  They go on the theory that I’ve got offices to dispense with so numerous that I can give each one of them a place. Now here are two friends that have come to pay me a visit just because they are my friends and haven’t come to ask for any office or place.  It’s a relief to have this experience.

Needless to say, Jones and Grigsby went away without even bringing up the real purpose of their visit.

Before the year was out, Indiana governor Oliver Morton commissioned Jones as a lieutenant-colonel to command the 62nd Regiment of Indiana Volunteers. The unit saw action during the siege of Vicksburg, the assault at Kennesaw Mountain, Georgia, and the battle for Atlanta.  On July 22, 1864, despite having been shot in both thighs, Jones remained on the battlefield.  While assisting in the guarding of Rebel prisoners, a cannonball decapitated him.