A’Lelia Walker’s Sterling Silver Flask and the Annual Howard-Lincoln Football Game

A’Lelia Walker’s Monogrammed Flask (from the Madam Walker/A’Lelia Walker Family Archives of A’Lelia Bundles http://www.aleliabundles.com)

A’Lelia Walker (1885-1931), the only daughter of entrepreneur and philanthropist Madam C. J. Walker, rarely missed a Howard-Lincoln football game between 1918 and 1931. This rivalry –as legendary among African Americans as the Harvard-Yale competition was to Ivy Leaguers–brought thousands of alumni and friends together each Thanksgiving Day, alternating between Philadelphia (the closest big city to Lincoln’s rural Pennsylvania campus) and Washington, DC.

Happy Birthday A’Lelia Walker (June 6, 1885)

A'Lelia Walker loved flowers! Orchids. Gladiolas. Dahlias. (from the Walker Family Archives of A'Lelia Bundles http://www.aleliabundles.com)

My great-grandmother and namesake, A’Lelia Walker (1885-1931), loved getting flowers on her birthday! Orchids. Dahlias. Gladiolas. Roses.

She had everything else–houses, diamonds, furs, cars–plus great friends, a gregarious spirit and a love of life. Well, almost everything, but you’ll have to wait for my new book, Joy Goddess, to learn the rest of the story!

In fact, I’ve been working so hard on the book, that I’d actually forgotten today was her birthday until my good friend, Janet Sims-Wood, posted a story on Facebook noting that today also is the birthday of Portia Washington Pittman, Booker T. Washington’s only daughter. Heavens, I thought, when I read that. Both of these daughters of larger

TheRoot.com names A’Lelia Walker a “Gutsy Black Heroine”

Thanks to Linda Villarosa and TheRoot.com for including A’Lelia Walker on its 2011 Women’s History Month list of “Gutsy Black Heroines.”

http://www.theroot.com/multimedia/black-womens-history

A’Lelia Walker

A’Lelia Walker circa 1927 from A’Lelia Bundles’s Walker Family Archives

A’Lelia Walker–entrepreneur Madam C. J. Walker’s only daughter, was a patron of the arts and an iconic figure of the Harlem Renaissance. Poet Langston Hughes called her the “joy goddess of Harlem’s 1920s.” Her great-granddaughter and namesake, journalist A’Lelia Bundles, is writing the first truly comprehensive biography of Walker. For more information, visit www.aleliabundles.com

Welcome to A’Lelia Walker’s Blog

Visit us at www.madamcjwalker.com and www.aleliabundles.com