A'Lelia Walker

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A'Lelia Walker (1885 in Vicksburg, Mississippi-August 16, 1931) was an African-American business woman and patron of the arts.

She was born Lelia McWilliams to Moses McWilliams and 17 year old Sarah Breedlove, a.k.a. Madam C.J. Walker. She changed her last name to match that of her famous mother and stepfather a few years after attending Knoxville College in Tennessee. In the early 1920s she added an A and an apostrophe to her name to become "A'Lelia."

She married three times: to a man named John Robinson whom she divorced in 1914; to a doctor named Wiley Wilson whom she married in 1919; and to a doctor named James Arthur Kennedy, from 1926 until just a few months before her death in 1931.

She never had any biological children, but in 1912 she did adopt daughter Mae Bryant, for whom she later staged an elaborate "Million Dollar Wedding" in 1926.

In 1919 she inherited a very successful hair care and beauty supply business from her mother Madam C.J. Walker.

Noting her beauty, lavish clothing, and glamorous lifestyle, some dubbed her the "Mahogany Millionairess." Her high life also inspired singers, poets, and sculptors of the Harlem Renaissance. Langston Hughes called her the "joy goddess of Harlem's 1920s"; Zora Neale Hurston outlined a play about her and her mother; and Carl Van Vechten based his Nigger Heaven character, Adora Boniface, on her.

During the 1920s she played host to many important artists of the Harlem Renaissance at The Dark Tower, a converted floor of her 136th Street townhouse near Lenox Avenue. Her business began to suffer in 1929 with the beginning of the Great Depression.

After years of the high life -- as well as ignoring doctors’ warnings that she needed to lose weight and lower her blood pressure--Walker’s six-foot body gave out. She died on August 16, 1931, at 46 years of age. Walker had been a guest at a birthday party for a friend at a house in Long Branch, New Jersey.