Annie Malone is mostly unknown today, but during the first quarter of the 20th century she had a profound impact on the empowerment of African-American women. Malone was a business tycoon, style trend setter, educator, philanthropist and role model. A documentary film made in 1927 presented an in-depth celebration of her extraordinary career \u2013 but the film\u2019s disappearance mirrors Malone\u2019s absence from most historical texts.
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Born in Metropolis, Illinois, in 1869, the tenth of eleven children of former slaves, Annie Turnbo was orphaned at a young age and raised by an older sister. Due to chronic poor health, she was unable to complete her formal education.<\/p>\n
But despite her incomplete schooling, the young Annie Turnbo showed an extraordinary gift for cosmetic chemistry. Concerned about the damaging formulas used by women of color to achieve straightened hair, she experimented with formulations \u2013 including recipes created by an herbalist aunt \u2013 that would bring about the desired results without created damage to the hair or scalp. By 1902, her product \u2013 dubbed, somewhat inelegantly, \u201cThe Great Wonderful Hair Grower\u201d \u2013 was made available through door-to-door sales in black communities. Beginning her operations in a tiny cabin in Lovejoy, Illinois, she generated unusually rapid success and soon moved to St. Louis. She titled her hair styling process the \u201cPoro Method,\u201d named in honor of a West African secret society. <\/p>\n
Success came unusually quickly to this remarkable entrepreneur. By 1914, she married Aaron Malone, a school principal and one-time Bible salesman. In 1917, she founded Poro College of Beauty Culture in St. Louis, the first American educational institution devoted entirely to African-American cosmetology. Throughout the 1910s and 1920s, Annie Malone employed scores of African-American women and encouraged dozens more to work as independent distributors. One of these women was Sarah Breedlove, who would later rename herself Madam C.J. Walker and use her Poro training to build her own hair-care empire.<\/p>\n
Malone\u2019s business fortune was without precedent. By 1920, her wealth reached $14 million, making her the nation\u2019s first African-American female millionaire. Yet she freely gave much of her fortune to charitable endeavors designed to enrich the social and educational opportunities of the disenfranchised black community. <\/p>\n
According to the Annie Malone Historical Society, Poro College was one of the most amazing institutions of its day. \u201cThe campus was located in St. Louis’s upper-middle-class black neighborhood and served as a gathering place for the city’s African Americans, who were denied access to other entertainment and hospitality venues,\u201d stated an article on the society\u2019s website. \u201cThe complex, which was valued at more than $1 million, included classrooms, beauty shops, laboratories, an auditorium, conference rooms, a gentlemen’s smoking parlor, cafeteria, dining halls, ice cream parlor, bakery, emergency hospital, a theater, gymnasium, chapel, roof garden, general office, shipping department, a manufacturing plant, laundry, seamstress shop, dormitories, and guests rooms.\u201d <\/p>\n
By 1926, the college employed 175 individuals, and the overwhelming majority of them were women. At a time when most women of color were limited in employment to working as domestic servants, Malone\u2019s Poro College provided rare non-menial employment opportunities to a truly disenfranchised demographic. <\/p>\n
In 1927, the college decided to create a film highlighting its remarkable history and the career achievements of its indefatigable founder. This was a highly unusual project, considering that few historically black institutions were the subjects of films made during the silent era.<\/p>\n
Of all the silent films that are now considered lost, “Poro College in Moving Pictures” is the most mysterious. There is no record to identify the film\u2019s creative talent, nor are publicity stills known to exist \u2013 thus, we have absolutely no clue what this film might have looked like. At seven reels, it was an uncommonly long production for a nonfiction work, especially for one that was made exclusively for black cinema audiences, and this would make it one of the more unusual endeavors of the so-called \u201crace film\u201d genre. An advertisement for the film promised a view of \u201ccommercial and cultural progress\u201d in its depiction of Malone\u2019s rise from humble beginnings to history-making wealth \u2013 but whether the film relied on dramatic recreations to recall Malone\u2019s life is unknown.<\/p>\n
It is known that Malone was present to introduce screenings of “Poro College in Moving Pictures,” and the film was still being shown on a city-by-city basis into the early 1930s, at a time when most silent films were no longer being screened. Sadly, Malone\u2019s fortunes took a turn for the worst as the film was in circulation \u2013 a messy divorce and problems with taxes saw her wealth evaporate. By the time of her death in 1957, Malone was mostly forgotten by an African-American community focused on moving into a new era of social and political empowerment.<\/p>\n
It is unclear when “Poro College in Moving Pictures” vanished \u2013 most likely, there was only one print and its whereabouts were forgotten as Malone\u2019s financial problems disrupted Poro\u2019s operations. But as a film record of Malone\u2019s rise to economic power and the celebration of African American women gaining a level of educational and financial strength during the Jim Crow era, Poro College in Moving Pictures was an invaluable documentary that offered imagery and lessons not found in any mainstream movie of the era. Of the too-many films that are believed to no longer exist, the loss of this motion picture is among the most heartbreaking. <\/p>\n