In this volume, Julia Kirk Blackwelder focuses on the beauty 
education industry in racially segregated communities from World 
War I through the 1960s. In this revealing study of two black 
beauty companies of the Jim Crow era, Blackwelder looks at the 
industry as a locus of black entrepreneurial effort and an 
opportunity for young women to obtain training and income that 
promised social mobility within the African American community. 
Blackwelder demonstrates that commerce, gender norms, politics, 
and culture all intersected inside African American beauty schools 
of the Jim Crow era.
 
    The book centers on Marjorie Stewart Joyner of the Madam C. 
J. Walker beauty chain and James H. Jemison of the Franklin 
School of Beauty, two educators who worked throughout their 
business lives to liberate women from the clutches of racial 
prejudices. They stood at the helms of enterprises that brought 
self-reliance and pride of accomplishment to generations of 
African Americans.

    Blackwelder’s well-documented story shows how succeeding 
generations of black women advanced into dignified economic 
independence though work that they and their clients valued for its 
intangible worth.

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JULIA KIRK BLACKWELDER is associate dean of the College 
of Liberal Arts and a professor of history at Texas A&M 
University, College Station. Her two earlier books published by 
Texas A&M University Press also focused on aspects of women 
and work.



What people are saying about this book

". . . reveals a little-known yet significant dimension of American 
beauty culture."—Kathy Peiss, author, Hope in a Jar