Last of De' Mo-Hee-Kins (Part II)

GRANNY

"I am a woman who came from the cotton fields of the South. From there I was promoted to the washtub. From there I was promoted to the cook kitchen. And from there I promoted myself into the business of manufacturing hair goods and preparations. I have built my own factory on my own ground"


Before Oprah, as Aunt Jemima reincarnate, planted the grinning Harpo flag atop the icy summit of Mount Kapital, Madame C.J. Walker straightened her kinky self into a social force of a less accommodating nature.

The legend of Sarah Breedlove, a.k.a. Madame Walker, begins in 1867. The daughter of emancipated slaves, she was orphaned at seven years of age, scrabbled in the cotton fields of Delta, Louisiana and Vicksburg, Mississippi, and married at fourteen to escape her older sister's abusive husband.

When her own husband died (from unexplained causes common to black men of the era), the young widow two years later ventured to St. Louis, joining four barber brothers. Working as a laundrymaid, she pinched pennies and shepherded her daughter, Lelia, through segregated public schools. She got mixed up with a local radical group called the National Association of Colored Women.

Breedlove also started losing her hair.

Like many black women of the era, she went to great lengths to straighten her hair in an attempt to ape white folk. Typically, she'd parse her hair into sections, wrap string tightly around them, twist the bundles, then vigorously comb out the flattened curls. Not surprisingly, the procedure put undo strain on the scalp.

Turning lemons into lemonade, she started tinkering with home remedies. An adept marketer, she told one newspaper, "One night I had a dream, and in that dream a big black man appeared to me and told me what to mix up for my hair. Some of the remedy was grown in Africa, but I sent for it, mixed it, put it on my scalp, and in a few weeks my hair was coming in faster than it had ever fallen out. I tried it on my friends; it helped them. I made up my mind to begin to sell it."

In 1905, she became a sales agent for Annie Malone (another AfroAmerican entrepreneur who stumbled into history's dust bin) before moving to Denver to join her recently widowed sister-in-law (another mysterious death). Meanwhile, she perfected her "Wonderful Hair Grower." Other products later included "Glossine," "Temple Grower" and "Tetter Salve."

The next year, she married Charles Joseph Walker. A newspaperman, he created advertising, promotional and mail-order campaigns for her products, marketing them through AfroAmerican publications. The short-lived marriage also resulted in a brand name -- the Madame C. J. Walker Manufacturing Company.

Walker's business philosophy was unashamed --- the best way for black women to gain access to the transformed marketplace was to look "acceptable." Slaves could be slobs; freemen could not. Anticipating the transformative powers of modern consumer products, Walker's mix of potions and polstices hoisted rural women from dusty cotton fields into tidy enclaves of burgeoning bourgeoisie.

Living in a dark, pre-radio, -television and -Internet age, she hawked her wares one neighborhood at a time. Targeting segregated communities in the South and Southeast, she sold door to door, gave demonstrations, and developed a successfully body of sales strategies.

The foundation of her marketing plan was a comprehensive product line. Its structure was comprised of a disciplined, motivated sales force known as Walker Agents -- always dressed in uniforms of white blouses and long black skirts -- trained in Walker Schools. Like Avon Ladies and Mary Kay Associates of later generations, these women grabbed the brass ring of financial opportunity.

Once they were making money, Walker pressed them to give back to the community. She organized them into clubs for business, social, and philanthropic purposes, stimulating their activities and fostering prestige by offering cash prizes to the most generous clubs. Delegates from local clubs attended national conventions at regular intervals to learn new techniques and share business experiences.

"I have made it possible for many colored women to abandon the washtub for a more pleasant and profitable occupation...The girls and women of our race must not be afraid to take hold of business enterprise," Madame Walker told National Negro Business League delegates in 1913.

At a stop in Pittsburgh in 1908, she opened a branch office and Lelia College to train her "hair culturists." Two years later in Indianapolis, she established a national headquarters to take advantage of the city's central location and transportation facilities for her new factory. Eventually, her products formed the basis of a thriving national corporation employing more than 3,000 people (the largest black-owned business in the country) with nearly $500,000 in annual revenues.

In 1919, after suffering from high blood pressure and hypertension, and, ultimately succumbing to kidney failure, Walker bequeathed two-thirds of her estate to charitable and educational institutions. Her daughter, Lelia, received the remainder, along with the company presidency.

TAR BABY


Well, we're movin' on up (Movin' on up)
To the East side... (Movin' on up)
To a deluxe apartment in the sky...
Movin' on up (Movin' on up)
To the East side... (Movin' on up)
We finally got a piece of the pie
-- "Movin' On Up"


Oprah's scramble up America's social ladder is pixel legend

Sired in Mississippi backwoods, reared on a farm by her grandmother, this billionaire bastard began her "broadcasting career" reading to aged, more than likely female, church-goers. At six years of age, she fled, Harriet Tubman-style, north to her mother's Milwaukee household. After masculine abuse, she escaped, only to be sent to a juvenile home.

Alas, there was no room at the Innsbruck.

The thirteen-year-old was sent down the river to Nashville. Forced to live with a disciplinarian father, Oprah suffered midnight curfews and demands to read and write a weekly book report. "As strict as he was," she later said, Vernon Winfrey "had some concerns about me making the best of my life, and would not accept anything less than what he thought was my best."

A lonely child, Oprah found solace in books. While in seventh grade, she was spied reading during a lunch-break. Touched, the observant teacher landed her a scholarship to a "better" school. With a flair for performance and an ability to respond in complete sentences, she began winning local beauty contests.

Crowned Miss Fire Prevention, she marched into WVOL radio. The good-old-boys, no doubt tickled by the sight of the sassy 17-year-old, thought it would be a hoot to have her read something. Miraculously, she was hired. Two years later, the historically-black Tennessee State University sophomore became Nashville's first female and first AfroAmerican news anchor.

After graduating -- and capturing the Miss Black Tennessee title -- she followed the Drinkin' Gourd north to Baltimore. Like other black folk, she was deemed ill-equipped for the WJZ-TV information society. She cried when stories were sad; laughed when they were funny, and, generally, mangled the mother tongue. After two years -- and hair loss resulting from a botched permanent by TV makeover experts -- the failed journalist was cast out into the cold and sleet of "People are Talking."

Naturally, Oprah found the pony in the shit-pile.

After eight years, she took her early-morning magic to WLS-TV. In the time it took to whup Phil Donahue upside the head with a curling iron, she turned "AM Chicago" into a television phenomenon. In 1985, the expanded, one-hour therapy session was renamed the "Oprah Winfrey Show." A year later, it went national and became the number one talk show in syndication.

A gracious competitor, Donahue later told her, "More than a great star, you are a 20th century political figure. Your good works have touched all of us." He does not sing alone. Another fervent member of the chorus of praise is Deborah Tannen. In an article celebrating the century's brightest lights, she praised Oprah as "a beacon, not only in the worlds of media and entertainment but also in the larger realm of public discourse."

The secret, Tannen wrote, was the electronic return (reminiscent of the George Clinton and the Funkadelic's "Mothership Connection") to African-inspired matriarchy. The cultural movement was best exemplified in the transmorgrification of the talk-show format from male "report-talk" to female "rapport-talk," a "back-and-forth conversation that is the basis of female friendship, with its emphasis on self-revealing intimacies." In essence, America's afternoon Big Mama "turned the focus from experts to ordinary people talking about personal issues."

"Girls' and women's friendships are often built on trading secrets," she explained. "Winfrey's power is that she tells her own, divulging that she once ate a package of hot-dog buns drenched in maple syrup, that she had smoked cocaine, even that she had been raped as a child. With Winfrey, the talk show became more immediate, more confessional, more personal. When a guest's story moves her, she cries and spreads her arms for a hug."

Oprah also makes a mean fist.

In Speilberg's "The Color Purple," she championed oppressed (read white) womanhood. Surrounded by misogynists, rapists, playboys and buffoons, she battled the tyranny of (read black) men and triumphed over hearth and home. Her strutting, grammatically-challenged Sofia captured the imaginations of conservative and feminist alike as they rushed into the flabby arms of comforting misogynist stereotype.

Later, Oprah recounted the wonder of landing the part and making the movie, noting, "It was a spiritual evolvement for me," she said. "I learned to love people doing that film." America loved her back with an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress and a Golden Globe Award.

Like a bottle of Dom Perignon, the movie launched her voyage of discovery. By the time Oprah arrived in the New World several years later, she'd become queen of the HARPO Entertainment Group (which includes HARPO Productions, Inc., HARPO Films and HARPO Video, Inc.), owner of her talk show, a television and movie producer, and logo for what former President Bill Clinton dubbed the "Oprah Bill," establishing a national database of convicted child abusers.

Meanwhile, the Black Madonna stumbled upon the continent of publishing.

She started an on-air book club that created instant best-sellers and earned her the National Book Foundations 50th anniversary gold medal for service to books and authors. She also became a partner in Oxygen Media, Inc., a cable channel and interactive network marketed to women. Her accumulated treasure -- which included a $50 million "bag lady fund" in ready cash -- assured a place in the aristocracy of Forbes' Magazine 2003 billionaire list.

Still, like Aunt Jemima, Oprah remains a solo act.

Despite adoring fans, the convertible Jaguar, designer clothes, high-style hairdos and a three-bedroom condo on Lake Michigan, pale-faced minions remain her closest friends. Comprising this "tight-knit" group are a handful of primarily 20-something producers and assistants, mostly white, who revere Oprah "as a combination sorority sister and guru." Debra DeMaio, executive producer, considers herself "very destined to have met" Oprah, adding, "I have pretty much unconditional love for her."