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By: Elizabeth Guerrero
Raised by an older sister after her parents died, Annie Turnbo Malone was the tenth of eleven children. Despite not graduating high school, Malone found a love for chemistry and used that passion to make a tremendous impact on the African American community between the end of the 19th century and the start of the 20th.
Her first hair product was made to straighten the hair of African American women without causing any damage to it along the way. Her greatest invention was named her “Wonderful Hair Grower”. Malone’s entire company progressed wonderfully and the next step was to tell the world about her products. This was not an easy task for a Black woman at the turn of the century. Malone was not allowed to use regular channels to announce her company to the public. Instead, she went door-to-door seeking support. When her line of beauty products got a wonderful response at the World’s Fair, her company spread across the country.
By the end of World War I, Malone was a millionaire. She used her wealth to donate to charity and uplift her community. She helped out many African American organizations including the St. Louis Colored Orphans Home which is now known as the Annie Malone Children’s Home. Another one of her big projects and arguably her greatest project was the construction of Poro College. It was a place for the African American community to come together and seek things that were denied to them at the time because of their race. The building was so great and rich that it can be described as its own city. It was mainly a cosmetology school but it also housed dining halls, gardens, laundromats, dormitories, classrooms, conference rooms, an emergency hospital, a chapel, and so much more. Women were offered training in cosmetology and students were taught how to have a positive self-image among other things. By the 1950s, there were 32 branches of the Poro cosmetology school all around the country.
The reason why Malone’s name is overlooked in the beauty product industry is because her product was imitated by Madam C. J. Walker who actually began as one of Malone’s clients but ended up creating her own brand using Malone’s formula. Regardless, both are marked down in history as two of the first African American women to become millionaires.
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