Did Self-Made Base Madam C.J. Walker's Rival, Addie Monroe, on Annie Malone?

Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons/Amanda Matlovich/Netflix
Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons/Amanda Matlovich/Netflix

From Town & Country

From the beginning, Netflix's Self-Made: Inspired by the Life of Madam C.J. Walker sets up Addie Munroe (Carmen Ejogo) as Madam C.J. Walker's (Octavia Spencer) foil and rival. Munroe appears to come from a wealthier background, benefit from bigots' colorism, and lack all of Walker's kindness and warmth. When Walker relocates, Munroe follows, attempting to sabotage her at every turn.

While most of Self-Made is adapted from the very true story of America's first female self-made millionaire Madam C.J. Walker (and more particularly, from Walker's great-great-granddaughter A'Lelia Bundles's book, On Her Own Ground), there was no one in her life named Addie Munroe. There was, however, Annie Malone—a figure who in many ways was just like Addie, and in others very different.

Annie Malone came from fairly humble beginnings.

Malone (earlier known as Annie Minerva Turnbo, then Annie Pope-Turnbo, and sometimes still referred to as Annie Turnbo Malone) was born in the small town of Metropolis, Illinois in 1869. Like Walker, Malone was born to formerly enslaved parents and orphaned at an early age, and later raised by her older sisters. She attended school through the beginning of high school, but eventually stopped going due to a downturn in her health.

She developed her Wonderful Hair Grower around 1900.

In 1900, at the age of 31, Malone moved to Lovejoy, Illinois and starting mixing and experimenting with different ingredients. She soon developed her signature product, the Wonderful Hair Grower.

Both Malone and Walker are often given credit for inventing their respective haircare systems, which called for more regular washing, applying their proprietary sulfur-based products, and regularly massaging the scalp, but as Bundles points out in On Her Own Ground, such techniques were already in existence. What the two of them did was popularize them.

Madam C.J. Walker began working for Malone in 1903.

After Malone moved to St. Louis in anticipation of the 1904 World's Fair—correctly assessing that the hubbub and large crowds would help her products catch on—she hired Walker was a sales agent.

It's not clear how or when they met before working together—it depends who you ask. Malone had it that she had "personally" cured Walker's scalp issues, and it seems plausible that she was telling the truth. To grow her business, Malone often knocked on doors, offering free scalp treatments. But Walker claimed that she was nearly bald when the solution—a sulfur-based treatment—came to her in a dream.

After Walker married C.J. (and later struck out on her own, competing with Malone), the two seem to have had some kind of falling out.

Photo credit: Smith Collection/Gado - Getty Images
Photo credit: Smith Collection/Gado - Getty Images

Malone's Poro Company would grow to become wildly successful.

The Wonderful Hair Grower was only one of the products that Malone would come to produce under the auspices her new business, the Poro Company. Malone started with door-to-door sales, expanded to retail, and finally created the first Poro College in 1918.

The landmark building housed not only a cosmetology school that trained her recruits in the "Poro method" of haircare, but the main office for her nationwide business, and a manufacturing center for her Poro products. Malone also let black organizations like the National Negro Business League, which had trouble finding a place to meet elsewhere, use her space. By the 1950s, there were 32 Poro Colleges; over the lifespan of the company, tens of thousands of people served as Poro agents.

Malone's wealth peaked in the 1920s, and it's believed that she was worth $14 million at one point during that period—though the documentation is sparse, to say the least. Some even allege that Malone became a millionaire before Walker did.

In 1927, she suffered a setback when her husband Aaron Malone, whom she'd married and 1914 and relied on as a business partner, filed for divorce and asked for half of the company. After a bitter dispute, she was able to settle with him and retain full ownership of the Poro Company. The Great Depression then brought its own set of financial hardships, as did a series of lawsuits, but Malone managed to continue running the company for decades.

She was extremely generous with her wealth.

Malone was a great philanthropist, giving thousands to help build the St. Louis Colored YWCA, donating the site for the St. Louis Colored Orphans' Home, and much more.

Still, Malone isn't remembered the way Walker is.

Whether it's because Malone's records weren't as well-preserved as Walker's were, because Walker's daughter A'Lelia kept her legacy alive, because Walker's story was more appealing than Malone's, or all of the above, Madam C.J. Walker's story often overshadows that of her former employer, Annie Malone.

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