Quotes

It takes a long time, I think, to get to the place where you realize you may love the hairstyle that somebody else has.

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.

Why is she Mrs. C.J. Walker? It really was a matter of her trying to insist that people respect her, because during that time, white people would call any black woman 'Sally.' 'Aunt Sally.' So this was like... you can't call me that.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I have lived almost seven decades. So I've had my hair journey where I wasn't comfortable with my hair.

I wrote my first report about Madam Walker when I was a senior in high school in 1970.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Madam Walker, as part of the first generation out of slavery, really was inventing the way that she operated in the world.

I think a lot of times, the historical piece is often a way to comment on the present.

There was a period of 10 years where the conventional wisdom was Black shows don't sell overseas, therefore nobody is interested.

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.'

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.

Madame Walker was mythologized like George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, but I want to show that she was fabulous on her own.

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.

Madam Walker was a woman who transformed herself in a very American, rags-to-riches way.

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 lot of people think Oprah is channeling for Madam Walker, and there are lots of parallels.

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.

Madam Walker's legacy lives in her philanthropy as well as in an amazing line of hair care products.