Celebrating Women!

“Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less.”

Marie Curie

My friend, Roy, had the knack of taking things apart and putting them back together just to see how they worked. He once took an old lawnmower engine he had found in his yard and, using some junk he found lying around, made a small, motorized scooter. He was adept at identifying problems and then finding a solution to those problems. That’s the kind of skill inventors have. If they can find an easier way to do something to improve their lives or the lives of others, they do it.

I have never had an inventive side. I am more of a fixer.? The problems I identify deal with building teams and leadership within teams. I know how to get people to work together to improve on projects. Sarah Breedlove and Hedy LaMarr were inventers who took extreme situations and found solutions.

??????????? Sarah, who is better known as Madam C.J. Walker, knew how to invent and bring teams together to better her world and the lives of African American women. She invented products and found ways to market those products. Sarah changed her world both personally and financially but she also changed the world of African American women throughout the United States, South America, and the Caribbean.

Sarah had a heart for invention. She was born to uneducated sharecroppers in 1867 in the Louisiana Delta, where both of her parents had once been slaves before the Civil War. Sarah was orphaned at age seven. According to Sarah, “I got my start by giving myself a start.” She and her sister survived by working in the cotton fields in Vicksburg, Mississippi. These were not easy times to be a black person in America, especially in the south.? At 14, Sarah married a man named Moses McWilliams just to escape the abuse by her brother-in-law Jesse Powell.

Moses and Sarah had a child together named Lelia, later known as A’Lelia Walker, who born June 6, 1885. Two years after her birth, Moses died, and Sarah had to find a way to survive. She moved to St. Louis to join her four brothers who had all found careers as barbers. Sarah wanted to educate her daughter, so she got a job as a laundress making only $1.50 a day. This provided her with the means to make sure A’Lelia got a public school education.??

??????????? Sarah began settling into life in St. Louis and developed friendships with other black women in her community. Friendships and the freedom of enjoying everyday life were not what Sarah or many black Americans were used to. Slavery had only been abolished a couple of decades earlier and many black Americans still had to deal with the restrictions created by Jim Crow laws and racism.

??????????? Sarah’s fortunes would begin to change when she developed a scalp condition which caused her hair to fall out. Sarah went to her brothers and a black female entrepreneur named Annie Malone for guidance. Annie was a chemist who developed and sold products for black women. Sarah began selling products for Annie and moved to Denver with her daughter.

After marrying Charles Joseph Walker, she moved back to St. Louis and started her own business. Sarah told people she had a dream for a healing formula for scalp conditioning and hair growth, and this caused her to break off from Annie and create her own product line.? Sarah changed her name to Madam C.J. Walker and her fortunes began to quickly change.

??????????? Madam C.J. Walker spent nearly two years traveling the southern states, south America, and the Caribbean promoting and marketing her products. Contrary to some sources, Madam Walker never invented chemical perms or a straightening comb. What she did do was invent products and create marketing programs that were similar to Avon today. Can you imagine traveling the southern states as a black woman during Jim Crow? Walker was passionate and her heart for invention drove her success.

??????????? In 1910, Madam Walker settled in Indianapolis, which was the nation’s largest manufacturing center.? She donated money to open a YMCA devoted to colored people in the city. Her daughter moved to Harlem and opened the upscale Madam C.J. Walker Salon. Madam Walker once wrote to lawyer F. B. Ransom that her establishment rivaled the salons on Fifth Avenue.

In 1916, she moved to Harlem and left the business operations to F.B. Ransom and Alice Kelly. But that didn’t mean she was idle.? Madam Walker always had something new to create or work toward. She took special interest in the NAACP’s anti-lynching movement and contributed $5000 to the cause, an enormous amount for the day.? She even visited the White House in 1917 to promote an anti-lynching campaign.

??????????? As her business thrived she decided to hold a business convention for black women in Philadelphia to celebrate her sales agents and those who worked in her salons. This was the first convention for female black entrepreneurs in the United States. Madam Walker had a way of identifying problems and finding solutions. By the time of her death in 1919, her company was worth well over one million dollars. Accounting for inflation, that would be nearly $26 million in 2020 dollars.? A century later, Walker’s life became the inspiration for a Netflix series, Self Made, starring Octavia Spencer.?

??????????? Walker’s heart of invention helped black American women feel and look beautiful. Her products ushered in a change for women who were the first descendants of freed slaves. At her convention in Philadelphia she told the delegates, “This is the greatest country under the sun.”

Despite being born to freed slaves and dealing with extreme racism, she was able to live the American Dreams.? At the end of her life she stated, “There is no royal flower-strewn path to success…and if there is, I have not found it for if I have accomplished anything in life it is because I have been willing to work hard.” Her heart of invention led her to amazing success. In addition to the Netflix docudrama, she has also been the subject of many books.

??????????? Walker’s heart of invention was not limited to products. She also developed new marketing strategies.? Her success was achieved without a formal education. She inspired women throughout the United States to work hard to escape their living conditions. If you ever thought you could not rise above your circumstances because of your environment or a modest upbringing, look to Madam C.J. Walker for inspiration. Her life was one of invention.?

??????????? Hedy LaMarr was best known as a movie star and one of the most beautiful women in the world. She never had to struggle like Sarah Breedlove, but her beauty, and the fact she was a woman, hindered her ability to try and help the allies during World War II.

??????????? LaMarr was an actress during the 1930s and 1940’s where she played in Oscar-nominated films such as Algiers, and Sampson and Delilah. However, her greatest legacy was not her beauty or fame, it was her mind and technical ability.?

??????????? LaMarr was born in Austria to Jewish parents.? Early on she exhibited a brilliant mind, but her beauty took center stage.? She studied acting and landed a few stage and film roles. She was married at nineteen to an older man who was wealthy and domineering. Hedy fled her unhappy situation on a bicycle in the middle of the night and eventually ended up in London.

In London, Hedy met Louis B. Mayer, the infamous MGM studio head. Though not being fluent in English, LaMarr somehow talked her way into a Hollywood contract. Settling in Beverly Hills life she began socializing with the elite, including Howard Hughes and John F. Kennedy. Hedy was not only beautiful she had a mind that wanted to invent and perform scientific experiments.

??????????? For a time, she dated Hughes, who encouraged her scientific pursuits. When Hedy was not acting, she was working with experiments in her studio provided trailer. She had found her calling in that environment. Hedy once told a journalist, “Inventions are easy for me to do. I don’t have to work on ideas, they come naturally to me.”

Hedy’s desire to experiment and invent led her to work another innovative soul named George Antheil. They both were concerned about the looming war and began to tinker with ideas to combat the axis powers. They filed a patent to protect radio communications for the Allies. It was a device for frequency hopping.? This prevented allied torpedoes from being detected by the Nazis. While it wasn’t implemented by the Navy during WWII the technology formed the basis for today’s Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and GPS systems

??????????? Hedy’s inventions were never as recognized as her movie career. The U.S. military has publically acknowledged her patent and contribution to technology but she was never truly recognized for her amazing inventions.

??????????? In 1997, Hedy became the first female awarded the BULBIE Gnass Spirit of Achievement Award, which many consider the Oscars for inventing. Hedy received many accolades throughout her life for her beauty and her movies but this accolade was for her invention.

??????????? Not everyone has the desire or ability to invent something that solves problems or makes lives better. We do, however, have the ability to change ourselves, to reinvent ourselves for the better.

Both Madam C.J. Walker and Hedy LaMarr lived to create and invent. One helped usher in the idea of female black entrepreneurs and the other defied the expectation that a woman could either possess extraordinary beauty or extraordinary intelligence. Although their paths were different, they both have unexpectedly changed our world, all because they led lives with a heart of invention.

Questions:

1.???? Have you ever had an idea that you thought would make a great invention? What stopped you from developing it?

2.???? Have you ever had to reinvent yourself?? Why??

3.???? Have you ever been underestimated?? What did you do about it??

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