December 11, 2025 • 41 mins
A’Lelia Bundles is the author of Joy Goddess: A’Lelia Walker and the Harlem Renaissance, the first major biography of her great-grandmother, and of On Her Own Ground: The Life and Times of Madam C.J. Walker, a New York Times Notable Book and bestseller about her great-great-grandmother, an early 20th century hair care industry entrepreneur and philanthropist. She is the founder of the Madam Walker Family Archives, the largest private collection of Walker photographs, memorabilia and ephemera. A’Lelia worked in network television news for thirty years, first at NBC News where she was a producer for news and magazine programs, and then at ABC News.
https://aleliabundles.com/
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https://aleliabundles.com/
https://www.instagram.com/aleliabundles/
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
K BLA Talk fifteen eighty. I'm trying to bring you
back to the era that we're going to be talking
about today in the Christmas spirit with a little Nat
King Cole. I love me some Nat King Cole. Okay,
I love Tupac and Nat King Cole. That's Rains right there,
all right, But this is not about me. I'm so
(00:23):
excited to welcome back. She's an author. She is the
author of a new book called Joy Goddess Alelia Walker
in the Harlem Renaissance. It is a biography and the
first major one of her great grandmother. She's the author
of on her Own, The Life and Times of Madam C. J. Walker,
(00:44):
her great great grandmother. That was a New York Times
notable book and a best seller. And she's the founder
of the Madam Walker Family Archives, which is the largest
private collection of Walker photographs, memorabilia. She's worked in network
television for thirty years. First did NBC News We could
do a whole show on that, and then at news
(01:08):
and magazine programs and at ABC News. She was a
World News Tonight producer and much much more. Former vice
chair of Columbia University's Board of Trustees, Hell Eliah Bundles,
welcome back.
Speaker 2 (01:22):
Well, very nice to be with you, and thank you
for starting off with my favorite Christmas song because that
was my mother's favorite Christmas song And my mother actually
knew Maria Cole because my mother went to Palmer Memorial Institute,
a blackboarding school in North Carolina, and Maria Cole's aunt
(01:45):
was in charge of the school. So wow, that have
all kinds of memories when I hear that song. Yay.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
Well, we were trying to take you back, take us back,
and it's funny because you have the incredible lineage. I mean,
you come from Black American the closest thing we have
to royalty right in this country. But you're but you've
made it part of your mission in a way that
(02:15):
is so interesting as to bringing forth a really three
dimensional kind of understanding of who Madam C. J. Walker
was and you know, and now who Alilia Bundle's was.
Speaker 2 (02:31):
Well, you know it really I did grow up. It's
surrounded by really amazing black folks and yes some of
them are famous, but just we know the excellence and
the talent and the accomplishments of the people who we know,
the parents, the grandparents, the aunts, the uncles, the school teachers,
(02:52):
all of those people. And I really am very fortunate
that I began to dig more deeply, not just knowing
people as family members or friends of family, but really
learning the history and the biographical information about them. So
I'm able to say Charlotte Hawkins Brown, Maria Cole's the
aunt who founded Palmer Memorial Institute, because I knew those
(03:17):
stories from my mother. But as I began to really
delve more deeply into my personal family history, Madam C. J. Walker,
as you said, was my great great grandmother and her
daughter Aliliah Walker, who's the subject of the new book
Joy Goddess Allia Walker. The Harlem Renaissance has really been
overshadowed because her mother was such an iconic figure, But
(03:39):
I wanted to tell her story and how much a
part of the Harlem Renaissance she was.
Speaker 1 (03:45):
Yeah, I mean I just spoke. I should have said, Alia Walker.
Speaker 2 (03:48):
I understand that what it happens often there are there
are three Alilia's in my family. Aliliah Walker my great grandmother,
than my grandmother May named my mother Alilia, and I
this third Alilia in our family. So it does get
a little confusing.
Speaker 1 (04:04):
Now, I remember seeing the Madam C. J. Walker story
that was on television, and I think it was Netflix.
Was a Netflix and the portrayal of Alilia Walker, your
great great grandma, who this book Joy Goddess is about,
was pretty disparaging. It kind of made it look like
(04:25):
she was just this spoiled, rich girl that didn't want
to do the work that her grandmother had done and
building this you know, pioneering million, multimillion dollar company. And
you know, I didn't really think anything of it because
I didn't know all of the accomplishments and sort of
the significance of this woman Alilia Walker, who was Madam C. J.
(04:50):
Walker's daughter.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
M Hm, yeah, you know it was. Yes, it was
self made. Was a Netflix series and Warner Brothers production
that came out in March of twenty twenty, when the
first weekend when everybody was sequestered with COVID, right, so
a lot of people watched it, and you know, and
I really do say to folks, I thought Octavia Spencer
(05:14):
was great. She really embodied Madam Walker for me, But
I was kind of hoping more for hidden figures. And
I feel like the kind of Hollywood tropes and cliches
turned it into something more like Real Housewives of Atlanta.
Uh and the you know, the character, the way the
character of Alilia Walker was written actually has zero to
(05:37):
do with the real life person. That's why I'm so
glad that this book is out now so that people
really can discover who she was, because it was, you know,
it was written for a comedian. It was played with
that kind of you know, caricature, and Aliliah Walker, as
my grandfather said, was royal with royal instincts. Other people
said she didn't just walk into a room, she swept
(06:00):
into the room. She has a charisma, you know, and
that people were drawn to her, as another person said,
like bees to flowers, and she because she had and
she'd helped her mother build the business. So you know,
that part was you know, was not portrayed properly in
the in the series, but on her own, she was
(06:21):
very much a patron of the arts. And because of
this sort of very magnetic personality of hers, she knew
the writers, the musicians, the artist, the actors of the
Harlem Renaissance, and everybody knew her. I kind of describe
her as the first black celebrity heiress. No matter where
(06:42):
she went. People knew who she was, and she was
very dignified.
Speaker 1 (06:48):
Yeah. I think part of what you sort of touch
on here is that she was what she offered was
less tangible. You know, when you make stuff happen for
other people, when you're the person behind the scenes that
connects A and B, or when you, you know, underwrite
some great work of art, you might not your fingerprints
(07:11):
might not be as easy to trace as if you're
the guy on the mic or the woman building you know,
a haircare brand from the ground up.
Speaker 2 (07:21):
Yeah, that's exactly right that she it was less tangible. Yes,
she had inherited her mother's money. It's true, she didn't
have the same sort of founders, you know, the founding
CEO drive to check all of the ledgers every day
and to you know, do those kinds of things, go
into the factory and make sure everything was operating properly.
(07:42):
She was much more interested in culture, and because she
and her mother shared this love of black culture and
of promoting black musicians and artists and in creating spaces
where they could gather. I mean that really she was
a convener. That was her role, and it is it
is hard to measure that except the people who came
(08:04):
knew that they were going to be able to perform
that other people would see them, they might meet somebody famous,
they might do some kind of you know deal. So
she was able to create that space.
Speaker 1 (08:18):
Yeah. It is interesting this the whole journey too, I
think because as Black Americans, very specifically, we don't have
the continuity of our lineage the way other people do.
We don't have coats of arms or you know, recitations
of generations going back, back, back, back back, because we
(08:41):
were robbed of that right. And so I'm fascinated by
the way you, starting as a very young child, were
drawn to not just a sort of you know, surface
level understanding of your ancestors and their journeys, but a
deep research. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (09:03):
And I am really fortunate. And my grandfather was a
great storyteller. And when Alilia Walker died in nineteen thirty one,
my grandparents moved her belongings from her apartments and her
homes in New York to Indianapolis, which is where I
grew up. But when my mother and I would visit
her father's apartment, her mother had died some years earlier,
(09:25):
but we visit the apartment and I would sneak off
into what had been my grandmother's bedroom and open the
bottom dresser drawer, and there were inside I found Ostrich
feather fan and mother of Pearl opera glasses, and you know,
other items that had belonged to Madam Walker, Alilia Walker,
and to my grandmother. So I was touching these things
(09:48):
long before or even before I could read. But then
as time went on, I was really fascinated by Alilia Walker.
I always went to predominantly white schools in the suburbs
of Indianapolis. It's got a great education, but of course
no black history. And my senior year in high school
nineteen sixty nine, you know, we were all becoming black
(10:09):
and e black, you know, as we should have been,
and I was discovering black writers and just so turned
on by it. And there were books on my shelf
that had belonged to Alia Walker. And the one I
think that really stuck with me, that you know, sort
of was like an explosion, was Jene Tumor's book Kan
(10:30):
very poetically written, and I just had never read a
black author like that, and that just made me want
to know more about Olia Walker because she knew them.
So I was kind of more interested in Alia Walker
in the Harlem Renaissance initially than I was at Madam Walker,
who was more complicated.
Speaker 1 (10:48):
More complicated and more famous. I mean, you've written, yeah,
several books about her. It's not like you passed over her.
Speaker 2 (10:55):
Right right, Well, you know I had, You're right, I
had to write about her first because I knew more
people were interested in her life and that, you know,
I had to sort of lay the foundation and so
in on her own ground. I tried to talk about
the arc of Madam Walker's life, first child and her family,
born free on the same plantation where her parents had
(11:17):
been enslaved in Louisiana, a millionaire by the time she
died in nineteen nineteen so, and how the women she influenced.
But I also tried to begin to develop the relationship,
the mother daughter relationship, because I knew eventually I was
going to write a book about Alilia Walker.
Speaker 1 (11:35):
We are talking with Alilia Bundles and she is the
author of Joy Goddess, Aliliah Walker and the Harlem Renaissance.
And we will continue the conversation when we come forward
on KBLA Talk fifteen eighty. I do appreciate you and
we're waking up with an incredible guest. She graduated magna
cum laud from Harvard College, got a master's degree from
(11:58):
Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, a member of Phi
Beta Kappa and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Aliliah Bundles, you have incredible bona fides and I'm not
even I'm not even scratching the surface of that bio.
Do you feel like as the descendant of someone so
(12:19):
acclaimed as Alilia Walker, as Madam C. J. Walker, is
there a pressure to keep up that family legacy, you know,
the the black tradition of black excellence or black.
Speaker 2 (12:33):
Elite, well dominique. Listen when I'm talking to someone who
is super, super accomplished. So thank you for those compliments.
You know, I have to say I had a very
wise mother who knew because she was the you know,
the fourth generation of women in her family to be
an executive at the Walker Company. She was a very
(12:57):
smart person. She'd majored in business and castry when she
was at Howard. I did not get the science gene
that she had, but she had those expectations and she
and my father really wanted me to follow my own
dreams and passions. So there was no pressure. The only
you know, the expectation was be a good student, be
(13:19):
a leader, you know, have you know, do some extracurricular
activities that you enjoy. And my extracurricular activity was working
for the school newspaper, and I wanted to be a journalist,
and that really I got so much encouragement from them,
and I was able with their push and their encouragement
to follow that dream and ultimately, and as you mentioned,
(13:43):
my network television career. But I had this great family
story that needed to be told. And as we know,
these these stories were not being published when I was
certainly when I was in graduating from college in nineteen
seventy four, there was nobody knocking on my door saying,
please write about Madam Walker. But I but I had
(14:05):
my master's master's paper advisor at Columbia in the fall
of seventy five, was the only black woman on the faculty,
Phil Garland, who'd worked for Jedd and Ebony, whose mother
had been editor of the Pittsburgh Curry. And it was
still who said you need to write about your family.
She's the one who validated it for me.
Speaker 1 (14:24):
Wow, that's incredible. Now, how much of a role did
your skills as a newswoman as a journalist come into play?
Because from what I can tell, you didn't just sit
down at the table one day and just write what
you remember. You you spent literally decades researching your own
family history.
Speaker 2 (14:44):
Yes, decades, to the point where many and my friends
are like, well, is she ever going to finish that book?
But I'm happy to say yes, you know these two
in particular, I'm so proud of it. But it really
did take a long time, and it was a combination
of things. In the early eighties, I was able to
(15:06):
interview some people who were still survivors Harlem Renaissance survivors
who'd known Alilia Walker, a few who'd known Madame Walker,
people like ALBERTA. Hunter, the blues singer, and Jimmy Daniels
who was a cabaret singer, and some others, And so
I got that oral history. My grandfather had saved these
things that they brought back from Alia Walker's homes in
(15:28):
New York. And then part of Madam Walker's genius is
that she hired a really great executive team. Her attorney F. B. Ransom,
her secretary so that by the time I began to
do this research, there were tens of thousands of pages
of records, personal letters, photographs, advertisements, legal documents, and those
(15:53):
things we donated to the Indiana Historical Society. They've now
been digitized. But when I started this, I was working
with photocopies and but that was kind of the foundation.
And then I supplemented it with all of these black
newspapers that are now digitized. They were a microfilm when
I started. But I really, I mean I have it's
(16:14):
really kind of pathetic in a way. I have two
rooms with the Great Search. And you know this is
because I'm you know, because you're in LA In the
early eighties, Alex Haley actually came to us because he
wanted to write about Madam Walker to do a mini series,
and I ended up being the researcher for that project
(16:37):
and what he's and though he never wrote anything, I
think he was just put into my life to sort
of push me forward. But one of this, it's some
advice he gave me. He said, when you make a
folder for every year of your character's life, and when
you have a thought, find an article, you drop it
in there. And I literally now have two rooms of
(16:58):
those folders with the cana pology, with the individual people,
more than a thousand people. I have folders because over
a period of time, all the people with whom they
came in contact, who had even a little piece of influence,
have ended up in those folders. And that organization allowed
me to really tell the story. And I am like
(17:21):
an evangelist for other people to save their family.
Speaker 1 (17:24):
Records really.
Speaker 2 (17:27):
Well, you know, I think when now, I will say
with in my family, so I'm kind of the last
man standing in my nuclear family. My mom died in
seventy six when I was in graduate school. My dad
and both of my brothers died in twenty nineteen. My
grandfather died in you know, I'm nineteen eighty five. But
(17:47):
I'm the person who cleans out the houses, and so
I have all of their stuff. But I know that
that it can be overwhelming when that happens, and people
are like, oh, grandma, you know, let's get you know
who needs this stuff. But I will tell you if
I didn't had not gone through every piece of paper
in every pile, I would not be able to tell
the story in the way that I do. So I
(18:09):
just really tell people, you know, we complain about people
erasing our history, especially right now, and if we throw
those things out without examining them, we're participating in our erasure.
Speaker 1 (18:24):
I think God sent you to talk to me this morning. No,
we have two hundred boxes of all my mom's no,
my mom is a poet, all of our papers and stuff,
and we're so seck of it. We're like, well, just
throw all this junk out.
Speaker 2 (18:38):
No, you know, just have somebody, have an archivist work
with you, and think about where you're going to, you know,
deposit those papers. I already know where I'm giving my papers.
And you know I used a lot of historical societies, libraries,
manuscript collections. I mean those those that little piece of
paper tells you go straight. I'll tell you one quick thing.
(19:02):
When my grandfather saved all this stuff, I mean, you know,
I could say my grandfather was an archivist or a
pack rat, when one could maybe say the same thing
about me. But I knew he had these things, but
he wasn't paying the storage bill. But so you know.
But years later, a family friend actually owned the moving company,
the storage company where he had not paid the bill,
(19:25):
and as they were cleaning out the back of a warehouse.
They found all of these boxes, and in one of
the boxes was Aliia Walker's travel log, her travel diary
from a trip that she took in nineteen twenty one
to Paris, London, Rome, Otis, Adoba, Cairo, Palestine and the
(19:45):
so that but I, you know, I didn't That was like,
oh my god. And then there was one other thing.
I knew that Langston Hughes had autographed a book to her,
but I didn't have the book. But I knew it
because I'd read a series of letters between Wally Thurman
and Langston Hughes where Wally Thurman says, Alilia Walker has
(20:05):
bought two copies of your book. She couldn't come to
your book party, but she wants me to have you
sign them, and they talked about signing. Well, that book
was in that box. Oh my no, it's like seventy
years later.
Speaker 1 (20:19):
Wow. Yeah. So an affirmation for sure. And you know,
that's one of the things I was talking with my girlfriend.
We're right ahead of news, traffic and sports here. She's
a ferocious reader. She reads everything like But it reminded
me that when we look at autobiographies, it's more than
just that person's story. You get a whole photograph, a
(20:42):
snapshot of an era wherever, whatever era they lived in,
you get all of the people that were connected with them.
You get a little glimpse of what was happening with
their lives or what is happening with their lives. And
the story of your great great Grandma Alilia Walker is
set in one of the most fascinating eras of American history,
(21:07):
especially for black folks, the Harlem Renaissance. Well look at
that when we come forward on KBLA Talk fifteen eighty.
She's had articles and essays published in The New York Times,
Book Review Variety, The Undefeated, dot Com, Al Jazeera Parade,
Mizoh Magazine, Essence, and more. She is the author of
numerous books, including her latest, Joy Goddess, Aliliah Walker and
(21:31):
the Harlem Renaissance. Alilia Bundles is my guess, and I'm
so happy that you can join me for this hour.
You know the last comment you made about preserving family
history and archives, and you know those old bibles where
where you have things, notes written on and things tucked away.
(21:53):
It sounds like you're saying, and I'm also gleaning this
from the numerous boards that you sit on that are
historically related. That it's as much our responsibility as the
Library of Congress or you know, the Smithsonian to preserve
our own history.
Speaker 2 (22:10):
Oh absolutely, it really does start with us. And you know,
and while my grandfather was such a key influence on me,
but everybody has access to those family members, and now,
you know, the children and the grandchildren have their phones.
They could every time they do FaceTime with grandpa, you know,
our auntie whomever, they can turn that on and ask
(22:33):
a question. And I'm really kind of you know, encouraging
people to do that. If you if it's a you know,
once a week call with a family relative, if the
if you had the kids, ask grandma a question like
what was it like when you started school? Or tell
me about your first you know, party dress, or what
was church like? You get, you know, just get them
(22:55):
to talk for a few minutes, and you know, six
months from now, they've a report that they can write.
And sometimes grandparents will tell grandchildren stories that they won't
tell their own children, so you know, you know, you
sort of plant that seed. And I'm glad that my
grandfather just loved to tell stories, but that really helped
(23:16):
me become interested. And I knew the history that I
wasn't learning in school, about reconstruction and the role that
black folks played, and you know that all of those
Birth of the Nation kind of negative images of us.
My grandfather's stories countered that because his grandfather had been
in the state legislature in Arkansas during reconstruction, he knew.
(23:40):
He was very proud of his family, his grand his
father had gone to college in the eighteen eighties at
Lincoln was valedictorian of his class. Now I say that
to say, yes, these are some major accomplishments, but every
family has stories about that person who made a way
out of no way, and we need to tell that.
(24:01):
And you know, we've never really fully been able to
rely on schools to teach our children history. It really
does start with us, yeah.
Speaker 1 (24:11):
Or even you know, books that we seek out and
library ourselves, you know, or even our news agencies. I
think about this a lot now because there is so
much misinformation where I mean, I think I'm pretty thorough.
I try to make sure at least three people are
reporting this story before I go, and you know, pairrot
(24:34):
it on the air and try to get different angles
on it. What are the conservatives saying, what are the
what are the progressive saying? But I've gotten caught a
couple of times where, you know, and I've seen CNN
get caught a couple times where you're reporting something then
it turns out that's not true or it's just not
quite right. And so I think, talk to me about that,
(24:55):
about how your insistence. You know, you're you're making fun
of yourself for taking a long time, but part of
this is your insistence on going to direct sources rather
than just taking what someone else wrote about, you know,
MS Walker or what someone else portrayed her to be.
Speaker 2 (25:18):
You know, you're absolutely right. And now with AI, we're
all fluid. There's something I saw on Instagram or TikTok
look within the last week, and it was a police
officer who was supposedly confronting ice. And I looked at
that and I said, oh my goodness. Then I started
reading the comments and there were a bunch of people
saying this is AI. So we you know, we have
(25:40):
to be doubly vigilant about that. But with Alilia Walker,
a lot of what other historians had written about her
was really an accurate It really was the caricature, so
you could see where the why the Netflix series kind of,
you know, sort of dove into that perspective. You know
(26:02):
that she was a dilettante. At one historian said she'd
never read books. I know that's not true because I
have her library and I have her letters talking about
reading books, and just you know, sort of made her
into a kind of again a caricature. But because I
had her letters, I knew what she was thinking. I
(26:22):
knew that she had thoughts about what was going on politically,
that she had been a patron of the arts, that
she'd raised money for and ambulance for black soldiers during
World War One. She wasn't her mother. She approached life differently,
but she had her own substantial accomplishments. And I had
(26:42):
to really burst some of those myths. But that was
it became a joy to find the truth and to
write the truth. And I hope, you know, I feel
good that people have told me they enjoy reading Joy Goddess,
that they're not only learning about her, but they're learning
about history and you know, maybe finding an entry point
where they can see themselves or their own family in
(27:04):
this history. And I think I wrote I write the
books that I wish had been written for me, that
have the stories that you know that we didn't get.
Speaker 1 (27:13):
Yeah, well let's see P jack P Jackson's sixty six
ten says I would love to hear the book on
audio books. Is that available?
Speaker 2 (27:25):
Yes? And I did the I did the track. I
did the narration for both books, for both Joy Goddess
and On her Own Ground. And so, you know, because
you're on air, you know how the producers behind the
scenes are, you know, sort of giving you advice and
coaching you or you know, encouraging you. So I spent
many many years in the in the editing room as
(27:48):
the producer with the correspondence. And so I as I
was recording this, because you know it takes about a
week to record to record a book, I thought, this
is payback for me tortury making them redo their lines.
Speaker 1 (28:07):
It's yeah, God's got jokes, I always say, But that's
that's lovely. Let's talk a little bit about the Harlem Renaissance.
You know, it has been portrayed, maybe more than other periods.
But when you say that, part of what you wanted
to do was delve in to what it would be
like to be you know, wealthy and popular and famous
(28:30):
during this period of history, which is which does afford
some bandwidth, especially if you're talking about Harlem. But at
the same time, we still have Jim Crow and lynchings
and all of these other things, and looking at how
that duality played out in someone's life, it kind of
must have given you quite a more in depth understanding
(28:51):
of the Harlem Renaissance as an era.
Speaker 2 (28:55):
You're so right about that duality. I mean, I think
that when we think of the Harlem Renaissan so many
times it's kind of the cotton club and rent parties
and flapper outsets, and you know, there's that glamour part
that goes with it. But Aliliah Walker was very much
steeped in the overall black community. Most of the customers
for the Walker Company women, you know, thousands of women
(29:16):
all over the country, had a range of you know,
economic circumstances, and she herself had grown up very poor,
so she was no stranger to what struggle and challenge
was like. But in this moment during the nineteen twenties
in Harlem, it was like a community like no other,
with people flocking there, all of this talent in the
(29:39):
media capital of the world, the entertainment capital of the world,
and black folks were really, you know, just fifty years
out of slavery, but all of these gifts were coalescing
and at the same time that this black excellence and
joy was going on. It is as the time that
(30:00):
we're in now, where we are still creating. We will
always create, but off stage there is racism. Part of
the Harlem Renaissance, part of that creativity is a response
to the racism of the Woodrow Wilson administration. It's a
response to the way black soldiers were treated when they
(30:20):
came back from France in nineteen nineteen. They had fought
on behalf of America. They were expecting to be treated
like full citizens, and instead they were met with lynching
and with the Red Summer of nineteen nineteen. So we're
always there's always that tension, that duality that you're talking about,
where we are still trying to create things for ourselves,
(30:44):
and we would do that because we need to do that,
but it's in some ways it's also a response to
what's going on.
Speaker 1 (30:52):
Yeah, what a great way to delve into the period,
What a great way to have a really like you said, entertaining,
but it's still history. Joy Goddess is the book Joy
Goddess subtitle Alilia Walker and the Harlem Renaissance. The author
uh is the great great granddaughter of the subject of
(31:14):
her book. Aliliah Bundles is my guest, and we'll continue
the conversation when we come forward on KVLA Talk fifteen.
Amelia Bundles is our guest. She is the author of
Joy Goddess, Aliliah Walker and the Harlem Renaissance. She's written
extensively about her great great How many greats do I need?
Is a great great or great great great?
Speaker 2 (31:33):
Madam's two great great You got it.
Speaker 1 (31:37):
Yeah, I can't even keep my own great greats straight
when I'm talking too on my own family. But certainly
it is. You know, it's a it's an impactful history.
We talk about Madam C. J. Walker. That company, actually,
the Walker Company actually closed, right, it doesn't exist anymore.
Speaker 2 (31:55):
Well so that you know, in many ways it continues,
but so the company. The trademark for Walker products was
sold to another company in the mid eighties. That entity
owned the trademark for about thirty years, but never really
developed much. They did continue to sell products and then
(32:15):
Richel Lou Dennis, who was the founder of Sundial Brands,
bought the trademark in the early two thousands, and I've
been he invited me to be a part of that development.
Really limited edition products that were sold for a while
it's the four and then another iteration was sold at Walmart.
(32:37):
But right now the products aren't currently available, but as
an entity, it you know, it does still kind of exist.
Speaker 1 (32:44):
That's wild all these all these years and years later,
that's still an impactful business model. And but for you,
that's not as much. You know, that's not something you've
been so involved with. You're journalist and author. I think
you know, when you look at the reparations movement that's
(33:05):
gotten increasingly mainstream in our country and increasingly being taken seriously,
there's the lineage model tells us we have to dig
into our own family histories to find out whether or
not we're owed reparations. And I think about your journey
and just you know, the way you describe a whole
(33:27):
room full of family memorabilia. But from the first time
you touched the Ostrich fan as a little girl to now,
the way that those artifacts and all of that information
has driven you. How do you think that's impacted you
you personally, kind of like on a soul level or
(33:47):
who I am level?
Speaker 2 (33:49):
Well, it makes me understand just how deep our roots
are in America. And these Madam Walker and a Lilia
Walker are my two famous relatives, but I have other
branches of my family really that you know, people who
were in the Revolutionary War, people who were free people
of color in North Carolina. But knowing how connected I
(34:13):
am to all of these strands of American history gives
me a great deal of pride. And I think when
we know who we come from, no one can take
that away from us. And if you don't, if someone
tells you you don't have any history, or you're insulted
by somebody who you know is very racist or who
(34:33):
is very ignorant, if you don't have your own knowledge
of self, there's no way to fight back.
Speaker 1 (34:40):
Yeah, I think that you know it's to me, it's
part of mental health too, you know, having a clear
picture of where we come from and what we're overcoming.
You write about Aleliah Walker and in your book Joy Goddess,
Where did tell where the name came from? Joy Goddess?
Speaker 2 (35:01):
Ok? So, Alilia Walker. Elily Walker's birth name was Liliah MacWilliams.
She added the a apostrophe and then she used her
He means going just because she was a flamboyant woman.
I mean, you know, that's who she was. But the
but joy goddess. The title comes from Langston Hughes's memoir
(35:22):
The Big c which he wrote in nineteen forty and
he's recounting his experiences during the Harlem Renaissance, and he
talks about Aliia Walker's parties, and he said she was
the joy goddess of Harlem's nineteen twenties. That was because
of this magnetic personality, because of her ability to bring
people together, because of the beautiful homes where she entertained.
(35:47):
And you know, there were other black folks who had
nice homes, but she was the one who had three
homes and could bring them in. Someone said one of
the letters that I found, they said, if you're ever
invited to Alilia Walker's, you turned down all other invitations.
She is the great Black Empress and one of the
(36:07):
society columnists and Alia Walker to of Olia Walker's best
friends were society columnists for the Blackness, so she knew
how to have. She was an influencer, she knew how
to have publicity. But one of them said she would
get on the phone and she would say, Darling, I'm
having a party tonight, and it wouldn't be the same
without you, absolutely not. So how could you turn down
(36:29):
an invitation to go to her house? And, as Langston
Hughes essentially said, you would take not just a plus one,
but maybe a plus two and three because everybody wanted
to be there.
Speaker 1 (36:40):
And I was very impressed by some of the folks
that you got to talk to as you are researching
for this book, and some of the places that you
got to go to and things that you touched and saw.
Romer Bearden is one of my favorite favorite artists.
Speaker 2 (36:57):
Yes, you know, that was just such a joy. This
was in the early eighties when these folks were still
living and his mother, Bessie Bearden, was one of those
society columnists. And I wrote him a letter, you know,
I was in New York for the summer during research,
and he invited me to his studio in Soho and
(37:17):
I went to the studio and it was, you know,
surrounded by his easels, and he talked to me about
how Alelia Walker and his parents would play pokers. He
remembered her and in their apartment, and you know, but
he there had he'd had a fire and most of
his papers had been burned. But he wrote me this
wonderful letter with details of them playing poker and entertaining
(37:41):
in each other's homes.
Speaker 1 (37:42):
Wow. So in a sense, by going on a quest
to uncover and preserve history, you kind of became part
of that history too. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (37:52):
No, I you know, I really loved that. And I said,
I'm not writing any more books. I'm not. I'm not
writing any more books that require the level of detail
and research that Joy God isn't on her own ground.
But I am a writer and I will continue to write.
And so I do want to tell some of these
stories where I was really really fortunate to meet some
(38:13):
of these amazing historical figures.
Speaker 1 (38:17):
And you say, this is it for now, But Joy
Goddess really seems like it's a mini series or a movie.
Speaker 2 (38:26):
For sure, you were reading my mind. You know, I
really want another bite at that apple. And I actually,
I'm really fortunate to have some good friends both who
are you know, no Hollywood, who have experience in Hollywood
and others who have experience on Broadway with theater and musical.
(38:48):
So we're we're having conversations and you know, I mean,
you're in la You know how long these these things take.
And we're in kind of an interesting, I would say,
interesting period where sometimes our story are not in favor,
but that is not stopping us from beginning to do
some outlines and figure it out because it could be
(39:09):
on any of these platforms. In some ways, Alilia Walker's
life in the heart during the Harlem Renaissance and during
the teens in Harlem is even more made for television,
even more made for a series or music or.
Speaker 1 (39:24):
I would watch it for sure, and I can see
the top Hollywood actresses scrambling and buying for these spots.
I mean and actors too.
Speaker 2 (39:34):
But you know, yes, but yes, what I hope. So,
so you know, please let's put that out there in
the universe. I am trying to make it sore into
the universe so that it has some sticking power and
this really happens. I just think people will really want
to see it. I know how much fun I had
writing about it, and people are telling me how much
(39:54):
they're enjoying learning about it. So I think that next
step is to have it on screen or on stage.
Speaker 1 (40:01):
Yes, I need that to happen. Alio, Alilia Bundles, tell
us how we can keep track of your amazing work
and how we can support it.
Speaker 2 (40:12):
Well, thank you. I am on you know, all the
platforms at Alilia Bundles the same name. I don't have
any kind of you know, catchy name, but a L
E L I A bundles, TikTok though I'm not doing
I don't do a lot on TikTok, but a lot
on Instagram, a lot on LinkedIn, Facebook, not so much
on x a little bit on threads. So I'm on
(40:32):
those places and then my website is Alilia Bundles dot com.
Speaker 1 (40:36):
All right, well, thank you so much for joining me today.
Is always a pleasure to talk with you.
Speaker 2 (40:42):
Thank you very much.
Speaker 1 (40:44):
Tavis Smiley's up next. You all know that he's got
a great show as per usual, jam packed show for you,
so you do not want to miss that. Please tap
in with me on social media at the Prima Radio
d I P R, I M A and then radio
and I'm on everywhere, especially Instagram and even TikTok. Now,
please like, follow, subscribe, and leave a smart alec comment.
(41:07):
I love that for us. Like my mama, the poet
Laureate of San Francisco, the late Great Diana Prima, used
to say, history is now. Like I always say, we're
making it together. Until next time, One love,
K BLA Talk fifteen eighty. I'm trying to bring you
back to the era that we're going to be talking
about today in the Christmas spirit with a little Nat
King Cole. I love me some Nat King Cole. Okay,
I love Tupac and Nat King Cole. That's Rains right there,
all right, But this is not about me. I'm so
(00:23):
excited to welcome back. She's an author. She is the
author of a new book called Joy Goddess Alelia Walker
in the Harlem Renaissance. It is a biography and the
first major one of her great grandmother. She's the author
of on her Own, The Life and Times of Madam C. J. Walker,
(00:44):
her great great grandmother. That was a New York Times
notable book and a best seller. And she's the founder
of the Madam Walker Family Archives, which is the largest
private collection of Walker photographs, memorabilia. She's worked in network
television for thirty years. First did NBC News We could
do a whole show on that, and then at news
(01:08):
and magazine programs and at ABC News. She was a
World News Tonight producer and much much more. Former vice
chair of Columbia University's Board of Trustees, Hell Eliah Bundles,
welcome back.
Speaker 2 (01:22):
Well, very nice to be with you, and thank you
for starting off with my favorite Christmas song because that
was my mother's favorite Christmas song And my mother actually
knew Maria Cole because my mother went to Palmer Memorial Institute,
a blackboarding school in North Carolina, and Maria Cole's aunt
(01:45):
was in charge of the school. So wow, that have
all kinds of memories when I hear that song. Yay.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
Well, we were trying to take you back, take us back,
and it's funny because you have the incredible lineage. I mean,
you come from Black American the closest thing we have
to royalty right in this country. But you're but you've
made it part of your mission in a way that
(02:15):
is so interesting as to bringing forth a really three
dimensional kind of understanding of who Madam C. J. Walker
was and you know, and now who Alilia Bundle's was.
Speaker 2 (02:31):
Well, you know it really I did grow up. It's
surrounded by really amazing black folks and yes some of
them are famous, but just we know the excellence and
the talent and the accomplishments of the people who we know,
the parents, the grandparents, the aunts, the uncles, the school teachers,
(02:52):
all of those people. And I really am very fortunate
that I began to dig more deeply, not just knowing
people as family members or friends of family, but really
learning the history and the biographical information about them. So
I'm able to say Charlotte Hawkins Brown, Maria Cole's the
aunt who founded Palmer Memorial Institute, because I knew those
(03:17):
stories from my mother. But as I began to really
delve more deeply into my personal family history, Madam C. J. Walker,
as you said, was my great great grandmother and her
daughter Aliliah Walker, who's the subject of the new book
Joy Goddess Allia Walker. The Harlem Renaissance has really been
overshadowed because her mother was such an iconic figure, But
(03:39):
I wanted to tell her story and how much a
part of the Harlem Renaissance she was.
Speaker 1 (03:45):
Yeah, I mean I just spoke. I should have said, Alia Walker.
Speaker 2 (03:48):
I understand that what it happens often there are there
are three Alilia's in my family. Aliliah Walker my great grandmother,
than my grandmother May named my mother Alilia, and I
this third Alilia in our family. So it does get
a little confusing.
Speaker 1 (04:04):
Now, I remember seeing the Madam C. J. Walker story
that was on television, and I think it was Netflix.
Was a Netflix and the portrayal of Alilia Walker, your
great great grandma, who this book Joy Goddess is about,
was pretty disparaging. It kind of made it look like
(04:25):
she was just this spoiled, rich girl that didn't want
to do the work that her grandmother had done and
building this you know, pioneering million, multimillion dollar company. And
you know, I didn't really think anything of it because
I didn't know all of the accomplishments and sort of
the significance of this woman Alilia Walker, who was Madam C. J.
(04:50):
Walker's daughter.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
M Hm, yeah, you know it was. Yes, it was
self made. Was a Netflix series and Warner Brothers production
that came out in March of twenty twenty, when the
first weekend when everybody was sequestered with COVID, right, so
a lot of people watched it, and you know, and
I really do say to folks, I thought Octavia Spencer
(05:14):
was great. She really embodied Madam Walker for me, But
I was kind of hoping more for hidden figures. And
I feel like the kind of Hollywood tropes and cliches
turned it into something more like Real Housewives of Atlanta.
Uh and the you know, the character, the way the
character of Alilia Walker was written actually has zero to
(05:37):
do with the real life person. That's why I'm so
glad that this book is out now so that people
really can discover who she was, because it was, you know,
it was written for a comedian. It was played with
that kind of you know, caricature, and Aliliah Walker, as
my grandfather said, was royal with royal instincts. Other people
said she didn't just walk into a room, she swept
(06:00):
into the room. She has a charisma, you know, and
that people were drawn to her, as another person said,
like bees to flowers, and she because she had and
she'd helped her mother build the business. So you know,
that part was you know, was not portrayed properly in
the in the series, but on her own, she was
(06:21):
very much a patron of the arts. And because of
this sort of very magnetic personality of hers, she knew
the writers, the musicians, the artist, the actors of the
Harlem Renaissance, and everybody knew her. I kind of describe
her as the first black celebrity heiress. No matter where
(06:42):
she went. People knew who she was, and she was
very dignified.
Speaker 1 (06:48):
Yeah. I think part of what you sort of touch
on here is that she was what she offered was
less tangible. You know, when you make stuff happen for
other people, when you're the person behind the scenes that
connects A and B, or when you, you know, underwrite
some great work of art, you might not your fingerprints
(07:11):
might not be as easy to trace as if you're
the guy on the mic or the woman building you know,
a haircare brand from the ground up.
Speaker 2 (07:21):
Yeah, that's exactly right that she it was less tangible. Yes,
she had inherited her mother's money. It's true, she didn't
have the same sort of founders, you know, the founding
CEO drive to check all of the ledgers every day
and to you know, do those kinds of things, go
into the factory and make sure everything was operating properly.
(07:42):
She was much more interested in culture, and because she
and her mother shared this love of black culture and
of promoting black musicians and artists and in creating spaces
where they could gather. I mean that really she was
a convener. That was her role, and it is it
is hard to measure that except the people who came
(08:04):
knew that they were going to be able to perform
that other people would see them, they might meet somebody famous,
they might do some kind of you know deal. So
she was able to create that space.
Speaker 1 (08:18):
Yeah. It is interesting this the whole journey too, I
think because as Black Americans, very specifically, we don't have
the continuity of our lineage the way other people do.
We don't have coats of arms or you know, recitations
of generations going back, back, back, back back, because we
(08:41):
were robbed of that right. And so I'm fascinated by
the way you, starting as a very young child, were
drawn to not just a sort of you know, surface
level understanding of your ancestors and their journeys, but a
deep research. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (09:03):
And I am really fortunate. And my grandfather was a
great storyteller. And when Alilia Walker died in nineteen thirty one,
my grandparents moved her belongings from her apartments and her
homes in New York to Indianapolis, which is where I
grew up. But when my mother and I would visit
her father's apartment, her mother had died some years earlier,
(09:25):
but we visit the apartment and I would sneak off
into what had been my grandmother's bedroom and open the
bottom dresser drawer, and there were inside I found Ostrich
feather fan and mother of Pearl opera glasses, and you know,
other items that had belonged to Madam Walker, Alilia Walker,
and to my grandmother. So I was touching these things
(09:48):
long before or even before I could read. But then
as time went on, I was really fascinated by Alilia Walker.
I always went to predominantly white schools in the suburbs
of Indianapolis. It's got a great education, but of course
no black history. And my senior year in high school
nineteen sixty nine, you know, we were all becoming black
(10:09):
and e black, you know, as we should have been,
and I was discovering black writers and just so turned
on by it. And there were books on my shelf
that had belonged to Alia Walker. And the one I
think that really stuck with me, that you know, sort
of was like an explosion, was Jene Tumor's book Kan
(10:30):
very poetically written, and I just had never read a
black author like that, and that just made me want
to know more about Olia Walker because she knew them.
So I was kind of more interested in Alia Walker
in the Harlem Renaissance initially than I was at Madam Walker,
who was more complicated.
Speaker 1 (10:48):
More complicated and more famous. I mean, you've written, yeah,
several books about her. It's not like you passed over her.
Speaker 2 (10:55):
Right right, Well, you know I had, You're right, I
had to write about her first because I knew more
people were interested in her life and that, you know,
I had to sort of lay the foundation and so
in on her own ground. I tried to talk about
the arc of Madam Walker's life, first child and her family,
born free on the same plantation where her parents had
(11:17):
been enslaved in Louisiana, a millionaire by the time she
died in nineteen nineteen so, and how the women she influenced.
But I also tried to begin to develop the relationship,
the mother daughter relationship, because I knew eventually I was
going to write a book about Alilia Walker.
Speaker 1 (11:35):
We are talking with Alilia Bundles and she is the
author of Joy Goddess, Aliliah Walker and the Harlem Renaissance.
And we will continue the conversation when we come forward
on KBLA Talk fifteen eighty. I do appreciate you and
we're waking up with an incredible guest. She graduated magna
cum laud from Harvard College, got a master's degree from
(11:58):
Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, a member of Phi
Beta Kappa and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Aliliah Bundles, you have incredible bona fides and I'm not
even I'm not even scratching the surface of that bio.
Do you feel like as the descendant of someone so
(12:19):
acclaimed as Alilia Walker, as Madam C. J. Walker, is
there a pressure to keep up that family legacy, you know,
the the black tradition of black excellence or black.
Speaker 2 (12:33):
Elite, well dominique. Listen when I'm talking to someone who
is super, super accomplished. So thank you for those compliments.
You know, I have to say I had a very
wise mother who knew because she was the you know,
the fourth generation of women in her family to be
an executive at the Walker Company. She was a very
(12:57):
smart person. She'd majored in business and castry when she
was at Howard. I did not get the science gene
that she had, but she had those expectations and she
and my father really wanted me to follow my own
dreams and passions. So there was no pressure. The only
you know, the expectation was be a good student, be
(13:19):
a leader, you know, have you know, do some extracurricular
activities that you enjoy. And my extracurricular activity was working
for the school newspaper, and I wanted to be a journalist,
and that really I got so much encouragement from them,
and I was able with their push and their encouragement
to follow that dream and ultimately, and as you mentioned,
(13:43):
my network television career. But I had this great family
story that needed to be told. And as we know,
these these stories were not being published when I was
certainly when I was in graduating from college in nineteen
seventy four, there was nobody knocking on my door saying,
please write about Madam Walker. But I but I had
(14:05):
my master's master's paper advisor at Columbia in the fall
of seventy five, was the only black woman on the faculty,
Phil Garland, who'd worked for Jedd and Ebony, whose mother
had been editor of the Pittsburgh Curry. And it was
still who said you need to write about your family.
She's the one who validated it for me.
Speaker 1 (14:24):
Wow, that's incredible. Now, how much of a role did
your skills as a newswoman as a journalist come into play?
Because from what I can tell, you didn't just sit
down at the table one day and just write what
you remember. You you spent literally decades researching your own
family history.
Speaker 2 (14:44):
Yes, decades, to the point where many and my friends
are like, well, is she ever going to finish that book?
But I'm happy to say yes, you know these two
in particular, I'm so proud of it. But it really
did take a long time, and it was a combination
of things. In the early eighties, I was able to
(15:06):
interview some people who were still survivors Harlem Renaissance survivors
who'd known Alilia Walker, a few who'd known Madame Walker,
people like ALBERTA. Hunter, the blues singer, and Jimmy Daniels
who was a cabaret singer, and some others, And so
I got that oral history. My grandfather had saved these
things that they brought back from Alia Walker's homes in
(15:28):
New York. And then part of Madam Walker's genius is
that she hired a really great executive team. Her attorney F. B. Ransom,
her secretary so that by the time I began to
do this research, there were tens of thousands of pages
of records, personal letters, photographs, advertisements, legal documents, and those
(15:53):
things we donated to the Indiana Historical Society. They've now
been digitized. But when I started this, I was working
with photocopies and but that was kind of the foundation.
And then I supplemented it with all of these black
newspapers that are now digitized. They were a microfilm when
I started. But I really, I mean I have it's
(16:14):
really kind of pathetic in a way. I have two
rooms with the Great Search. And you know this is
because I'm you know, because you're in LA In the
early eighties, Alex Haley actually came to us because he
wanted to write about Madam Walker to do a mini series,
and I ended up being the researcher for that project
(16:37):
and what he's and though he never wrote anything, I
think he was just put into my life to sort
of push me forward. But one of this, it's some
advice he gave me. He said, when you make a
folder for every year of your character's life, and when
you have a thought, find an article, you drop it
in there. And I literally now have two rooms of
(16:58):
those folders with the cana pology, with the individual people,
more than a thousand people. I have folders because over
a period of time, all the people with whom they
came in contact, who had even a little piece of influence,
have ended up in those folders. And that organization allowed
me to really tell the story. And I am like
(17:21):
an evangelist for other people to save their family.
Speaker 1 (17:24):
Records really.
Speaker 2 (17:27):
Well, you know, I think when now, I will say
with in my family, so I'm kind of the last
man standing in my nuclear family. My mom died in
seventy six when I was in graduate school. My dad
and both of my brothers died in twenty nineteen. My
grandfather died in you know, I'm nineteen eighty five. But
(17:47):
I'm the person who cleans out the houses, and so
I have all of their stuff. But I know that
that it can be overwhelming when that happens, and people
are like, oh, grandma, you know, let's get you know
who needs this stuff. But I will tell you if
I didn't had not gone through every piece of paper
in every pile, I would not be able to tell
the story in the way that I do. So I
(18:09):
just really tell people, you know, we complain about people
erasing our history, especially right now, and if we throw
those things out without examining them, we're participating in our erasure.
Speaker 1 (18:24):
I think God sent you to talk to me this morning. No,
we have two hundred boxes of all my mom's no,
my mom is a poet, all of our papers and stuff,
and we're so seck of it. We're like, well, just
throw all this junk out.
Speaker 2 (18:38):
No, you know, just have somebody, have an archivist work
with you, and think about where you're going to, you know,
deposit those papers. I already know where I'm giving my papers.
And you know I used a lot of historical societies, libraries,
manuscript collections. I mean those those that little piece of
paper tells you go straight. I'll tell you one quick thing.
(19:02):
When my grandfather saved all this stuff, I mean, you know,
I could say my grandfather was an archivist or a
pack rat, when one could maybe say the same thing
about me. But I knew he had these things, but
he wasn't paying the storage bill. But so you know.
But years later, a family friend actually owned the moving company,
the storage company where he had not paid the bill,
(19:25):
and as they were cleaning out the back of a warehouse.
They found all of these boxes, and in one of
the boxes was Aliia Walker's travel log, her travel diary
from a trip that she took in nineteen twenty one
to Paris, London, Rome, Otis, Adoba, Cairo, Palestine and the
(19:45):
so that but I, you know, I didn't That was like,
oh my god. And then there was one other thing.
I knew that Langston Hughes had autographed a book to her,
but I didn't have the book. But I knew it
because I'd read a series of letters between Wally Thurman
and Langston Hughes where Wally Thurman says, Alilia Walker has
(20:05):
bought two copies of your book. She couldn't come to
your book party, but she wants me to have you
sign them, and they talked about signing. Well, that book
was in that box. Oh my no, it's like seventy
years later.
Speaker 1 (20:19):
Wow. Yeah. So an affirmation for sure. And you know,
that's one of the things I was talking with my girlfriend.
We're right ahead of news, traffic and sports here. She's
a ferocious reader. She reads everything like But it reminded
me that when we look at autobiographies, it's more than
just that person's story. You get a whole photograph, a
(20:42):
snapshot of an era wherever, whatever era they lived in,
you get all of the people that were connected with them.
You get a little glimpse of what was happening with
their lives or what is happening with their lives. And
the story of your great great Grandma Alilia Walker is
set in one of the most fascinating eras of American history,
(21:07):
especially for black folks, the Harlem Renaissance. Well look at
that when we come forward on KBLA Talk fifteen eighty.
She's had articles and essays published in The New York Times,
Book Review Variety, The Undefeated, dot Com, Al Jazeera Parade,
Mizoh Magazine, Essence, and more. She is the author of
numerous books, including her latest, Joy Goddess, Aliliah Walker and
(21:31):
the Harlem Renaissance. Alilia Bundles is my guess, and I'm
so happy that you can join me for this hour.
You know the last comment you made about preserving family
history and archives, and you know those old bibles where
where you have things, notes written on and things tucked away.
(21:53):
It sounds like you're saying, and I'm also gleaning this
from the numerous boards that you sit on that are
historically related. That it's as much our responsibility as the
Library of Congress or you know, the Smithsonian to preserve
our own history.
Speaker 2 (22:10):
Oh absolutely, it really does start with us. And you know,
and while my grandfather was such a key influence on me,
but everybody has access to those family members, and now,
you know, the children and the grandchildren have their phones.
They could every time they do FaceTime with grandpa, you know,
our auntie whomever, they can turn that on and ask
(22:33):
a question. And I'm really kind of you know, encouraging
people to do that. If you if it's a you know,
once a week call with a family relative, if the
if you had the kids, ask grandma a question like
what was it like when you started school? Or tell
me about your first you know, party dress, or what
was church like? You get, you know, just get them
(22:55):
to talk for a few minutes, and you know, six
months from now, they've a report that they can write.
And sometimes grandparents will tell grandchildren stories that they won't
tell their own children, so you know, you know, you
sort of plant that seed. And I'm glad that my
grandfather just loved to tell stories, but that really helped
(23:16):
me become interested. And I knew the history that I
wasn't learning in school, about reconstruction and the role that
black folks played, and you know that all of those
Birth of the Nation kind of negative images of us.
My grandfather's stories countered that because his grandfather had been
in the state legislature in Arkansas during reconstruction, he knew.
(23:40):
He was very proud of his family, his grand his
father had gone to college in the eighteen eighties at
Lincoln was valedictorian of his class. Now I say that
to say, yes, these are some major accomplishments, but every
family has stories about that person who made a way
out of no way, and we need to tell that.
(24:01):
And you know, we've never really fully been able to
rely on schools to teach our children history. It really
does start with us, yeah.
Speaker 1 (24:11):
Or even you know, books that we seek out and
library ourselves, you know, or even our news agencies. I
think about this a lot now because there is so
much misinformation where I mean, I think I'm pretty thorough.
I try to make sure at least three people are
reporting this story before I go, and you know, pairrot
(24:34):
it on the air and try to get different angles
on it. What are the conservatives saying, what are the
what are the progressive saying? But I've gotten caught a
couple of times where, you know, and I've seen CNN
get caught a couple times where you're reporting something then
it turns out that's not true or it's just not
quite right. And so I think, talk to me about that,
(24:55):
about how your insistence. You know, you're you're making fun
of yourself for taking a long time, but part of
this is your insistence on going to direct sources rather
than just taking what someone else wrote about, you know,
MS Walker or what someone else portrayed her to be.
Speaker 2 (25:18):
You know, you're absolutely right. And now with AI, we're
all fluid. There's something I saw on Instagram or TikTok
look within the last week, and it was a police
officer who was supposedly confronting ice. And I looked at
that and I said, oh my goodness. Then I started
reading the comments and there were a bunch of people
saying this is AI. So we you know, we have
(25:40):
to be doubly vigilant about that. But with Alilia Walker,
a lot of what other historians had written about her
was really an accurate It really was the caricature, so
you could see where the why the Netflix series kind of,
you know, sort of dove into that perspective. You know
(26:02):
that she was a dilettante. At one historian said she'd
never read books. I know that's not true because I
have her library and I have her letters talking about
reading books, and just you know, sort of made her
into a kind of again a caricature. But because I
had her letters, I knew what she was thinking. I
(26:22):
knew that she had thoughts about what was going on politically,
that she had been a patron of the arts, that
she'd raised money for and ambulance for black soldiers during
World War One. She wasn't her mother. She approached life differently,
but she had her own substantial accomplishments. And I had
(26:42):
to really burst some of those myths. But that was
it became a joy to find the truth and to
write the truth. And I hope, you know, I feel
good that people have told me they enjoy reading Joy Goddess,
that they're not only learning about her, but they're learning
about history and you know, maybe finding an entry point
where they can see themselves or their own family in
(27:04):
this history. And I think I wrote I write the
books that I wish had been written for me, that
have the stories that you know that we didn't get.
Speaker 1 (27:13):
Yeah, well let's see P jack P Jackson's sixty six
ten says I would love to hear the book on
audio books. Is that available?
Speaker 2 (27:25):
Yes? And I did the I did the track. I
did the narration for both books, for both Joy Goddess
and On her Own Ground. And so, you know, because
you're on air, you know how the producers behind the
scenes are, you know, sort of giving you advice and
coaching you or you know, encouraging you. So I spent
many many years in the in the editing room as
(27:48):
the producer with the correspondence. And so I as I
was recording this, because you know it takes about a
week to record to record a book, I thought, this
is payback for me tortury making them redo their lines.
Speaker 1 (28:07):
It's yeah, God's got jokes, I always say, But that's
that's lovely. Let's talk a little bit about the Harlem Renaissance.
You know, it has been portrayed, maybe more than other periods.
But when you say that, part of what you wanted
to do was delve in to what it would be
like to be you know, wealthy and popular and famous
(28:30):
during this period of history, which is which does afford
some bandwidth, especially if you're talking about Harlem. But at
the same time, we still have Jim Crow and lynchings
and all of these other things, and looking at how
that duality played out in someone's life, it kind of
must have given you quite a more in depth understanding
(28:51):
of the Harlem Renaissance as an era.
Speaker 2 (28:55):
You're so right about that duality. I mean, I think
that when we think of the Harlem Renaissan so many
times it's kind of the cotton club and rent parties
and flapper outsets, and you know, there's that glamour part
that goes with it. But Aliliah Walker was very much
steeped in the overall black community. Most of the customers
for the Walker Company women, you know, thousands of women
(29:16):
all over the country, had a range of you know,
economic circumstances, and she herself had grown up very poor,
so she was no stranger to what struggle and challenge
was like. But in this moment during the nineteen twenties
in Harlem, it was like a community like no other,
with people flocking there, all of this talent in the
(29:39):
media capital of the world, the entertainment capital of the world,
and black folks were really, you know, just fifty years
out of slavery, but all of these gifts were coalescing
and at the same time that this black excellence and
joy was going on. It is as the time that
(30:00):
we're in now, where we are still creating. We will
always create, but off stage there is racism. Part of
the Harlem Renaissance, part of that creativity is a response
to the racism of the Woodrow Wilson administration. It's a
response to the way black soldiers were treated when they
(30:20):
came back from France in nineteen nineteen. They had fought
on behalf of America. They were expecting to be treated
like full citizens, and instead they were met with lynching
and with the Red Summer of nineteen nineteen. So we're
always there's always that tension, that duality that you're talking about,
where we are still trying to create things for ourselves,
(30:44):
and we would do that because we need to do that,
but it's in some ways it's also a response to
what's going on.
Speaker 1 (30:52):
Yeah, what a great way to delve into the period,
What a great way to have a really like you said, entertaining,
but it's still history. Joy Goddess is the book Joy
Goddess subtitle Alilia Walker and the Harlem Renaissance. The author
uh is the great great granddaughter of the subject of
(31:14):
her book. Aliliah Bundles is my guest, and we'll continue
the conversation when we come forward on KVLA Talk fifteen.
Amelia Bundles is our guest. She is the author of
Joy Goddess, Aliliah Walker and the Harlem Renaissance. She's written
extensively about her great great How many greats do I need?
Is a great great or great great great?
Speaker 2 (31:33):
Madam's two great great You got it.
Speaker 1 (31:37):
Yeah, I can't even keep my own great greats straight
when I'm talking too on my own family. But certainly
it is. You know, it's a it's an impactful history.
We talk about Madam C. J. Walker. That company, actually,
the Walker Company actually closed, right, it doesn't exist anymore.
Speaker 2 (31:55):
Well so that you know, in many ways it continues,
but so the company. The trademark for Walker products was
sold to another company in the mid eighties. That entity
owned the trademark for about thirty years, but never really
developed much. They did continue to sell products and then
(32:15):
Richel Lou Dennis, who was the founder of Sundial Brands,
bought the trademark in the early two thousands, and I've
been he invited me to be a part of that development.
Really limited edition products that were sold for a while
it's the four and then another iteration was sold at Walmart.
(32:37):
But right now the products aren't currently available, but as
an entity, it you know, it does still kind of exist.
Speaker 1 (32:44):
That's wild all these all these years and years later,
that's still an impactful business model. And but for you,
that's not as much. You know, that's not something you've
been so involved with. You're journalist and author. I think
you know, when you look at the reparations movement that's
(33:05):
gotten increasingly mainstream in our country and increasingly being taken seriously,
there's the lineage model tells us we have to dig
into our own family histories to find out whether or
not we're owed reparations. And I think about your journey
and just you know, the way you describe a whole
(33:27):
room full of family memorabilia. But from the first time
you touched the Ostrich fan as a little girl to now,
the way that those artifacts and all of that information
has driven you. How do you think that's impacted you
you personally, kind of like on a soul level or
(33:47):
who I am level?
Speaker 2 (33:49):
Well, it makes me understand just how deep our roots
are in America. And these Madam Walker and a Lilia
Walker are my two famous relatives, but I have other
branches of my family really that you know, people who
were in the Revolutionary War, people who were free people
of color in North Carolina. But knowing how connected I
(34:13):
am to all of these strands of American history gives
me a great deal of pride. And I think when
we know who we come from, no one can take
that away from us. And if you don't, if someone
tells you you don't have any history, or you're insulted
by somebody who you know is very racist or who
(34:33):
is very ignorant, if you don't have your own knowledge
of self, there's no way to fight back.
Speaker 1 (34:40):
Yeah, I think that you know it's to me, it's
part of mental health too, you know, having a clear
picture of where we come from and what we're overcoming.
You write about Aleliah Walker and in your book Joy Goddess,
Where did tell where the name came from? Joy Goddess?
Speaker 2 (35:01):
Ok? So, Alilia Walker. Elily Walker's birth name was Liliah MacWilliams.
She added the a apostrophe and then she used her
He means going just because she was a flamboyant woman.
I mean, you know, that's who she was. But the
but joy goddess. The title comes from Langston Hughes's memoir
(35:22):
The Big c which he wrote in nineteen forty and
he's recounting his experiences during the Harlem Renaissance, and he
talks about Aliia Walker's parties, and he said she was
the joy goddess of Harlem's nineteen twenties. That was because
of this magnetic personality, because of her ability to bring
people together, because of the beautiful homes where she entertained.
(35:47):
And you know, there were other black folks who had
nice homes, but she was the one who had three
homes and could bring them in. Someone said one of
the letters that I found, they said, if you're ever
invited to Alilia Walker's, you turned down all other invitations.
She is the great Black Empress and one of the
(36:07):
society columnists and Alia Walker to of Olia Walker's best
friends were society columnists for the Blackness, so she knew
how to have. She was an influencer, she knew how
to have publicity. But one of them said she would
get on the phone and she would say, Darling, I'm
having a party tonight, and it wouldn't be the same
without you, absolutely not. So how could you turn down
(36:29):
an invitation to go to her house? And, as Langston
Hughes essentially said, you would take not just a plus one,
but maybe a plus two and three because everybody wanted
to be there.
Speaker 1 (36:40):
And I was very impressed by some of the folks
that you got to talk to as you are researching
for this book, and some of the places that you
got to go to and things that you touched and saw.
Romer Bearden is one of my favorite favorite artists.
Speaker 2 (36:57):
Yes, you know, that was just such a joy. This
was in the early eighties when these folks were still
living and his mother, Bessie Bearden, was one of those
society columnists. And I wrote him a letter, you know,
I was in New York for the summer during research,
and he invited me to his studio in Soho and
(37:17):
I went to the studio and it was, you know,
surrounded by his easels, and he talked to me about
how Alelia Walker and his parents would play pokers. He
remembered her and in their apartment, and you know, but
he there had he'd had a fire and most of
his papers had been burned. But he wrote me this
wonderful letter with details of them playing poker and entertaining
(37:41):
in each other's homes.
Speaker 1 (37:42):
Wow. So in a sense, by going on a quest
to uncover and preserve history, you kind of became part
of that history too. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (37:52):
No, I you know, I really loved that. And I said,
I'm not writing any more books. I'm not. I'm not
writing any more books that require the level of detail
and research that Joy God isn't on her own ground.
But I am a writer and I will continue to write.
And so I do want to tell some of these
stories where I was really really fortunate to meet some
(38:13):
of these amazing historical figures.
Speaker 1 (38:17):
And you say, this is it for now, But Joy
Goddess really seems like it's a mini series or a movie.
Speaker 2 (38:26):
For sure, you were reading my mind. You know, I
really want another bite at that apple. And I actually,
I'm really fortunate to have some good friends both who
are you know, no Hollywood, who have experience in Hollywood
and others who have experience on Broadway with theater and musical.
(38:48):
So we're we're having conversations and you know, I mean,
you're in la You know how long these these things take.
And we're in kind of an interesting, I would say,
interesting period where sometimes our story are not in favor,
but that is not stopping us from beginning to do
some outlines and figure it out because it could be
(39:09):
on any of these platforms. In some ways, Alilia Walker's
life in the heart during the Harlem Renaissance and during
the teens in Harlem is even more made for television,
even more made for a series or music or.
Speaker 1 (39:24):
I would watch it for sure, and I can see
the top Hollywood actresses scrambling and buying for these spots.
I mean and actors too.
Speaker 2 (39:34):
But you know, yes, but yes, what I hope. So,
so you know, please let's put that out there in
the universe. I am trying to make it sore into
the universe so that it has some sticking power and
this really happens. I just think people will really want
to see it. I know how much fun I had
writing about it, and people are telling me how much
(39:54):
they're enjoying learning about it. So I think that next
step is to have it on screen or on stage.
Speaker 1 (40:01):
Yes, I need that to happen. Alio, Alilia Bundles, tell
us how we can keep track of your amazing work
and how we can support it.
Speaker 2 (40:12):
Well, thank you. I am on you know, all the
platforms at Alilia Bundles the same name. I don't have
any kind of you know, catchy name, but a L
E L I A bundles, TikTok though I'm not doing
I don't do a lot on TikTok, but a lot
on Instagram, a lot on LinkedIn, Facebook, not so much
on x a little bit on threads. So I'm on
(40:32):
those places and then my website is Alilia Bundles dot com.
Speaker 1 (40:36):
All right, well, thank you so much for joining me today.
Is always a pleasure to talk with you.
Speaker 2 (40:42):
Thank you very much.
Speaker 1 (40:44):
Tavis Smiley's up next. You all know that he's got
a great show as per usual, jam packed show for you,
so you do not want to miss that. Please tap
in with me on social media at the Prima Radio
d I P R, I M A and then radio
and I'm on everywhere, especially Instagram and even TikTok. Now,
please like, follow, subscribe, and leave a smart alec comment.
(41:07):
I love that for us. Like my mama, the poet
Laureate of San Francisco, the late Great Diana Prima, used
to say, history is now. Like I always say, we're
making it together. Until next time, One love,
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