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The show starts now.
Hey everyone.
I am so excited for this
episode of the Shontavia Show.
I have with me Ms. A'lelia Bundles,
who is the author of On Her Own Ground,
The Life and Times of Madam CJ Walker.
It's the 2001 New York Times Notable Book.
And it's about her entrepreneurial
great-great grandmother,
Madam CJ Walker,
who was the inspiration for Self-Made,
the 2020 Netflix series
starring Octavia Spencer.
Many of you who listened to
this show are entrepreneurs.
I hope you already know
about Madam CJ Walker.
If you don't,
Madam CJ Walker is an
American entrepreneur,
philanthropist and political and social
activist from the early 19 hundreds and
late 18 hundreds.
She's recorded as the first female
self made millionaire in America in the
Guinness Book of World Records and
was just so dynamic in so many ways.
A'lelia Bundles is at work on her
fifth book about the life of her great
grandmother.
And the name of that book is
The Joy Goddess of Harlem,
A'Lelia Walker and the Harlem Renaissance,
about her great
grandmother A'Lelia Walker,
whose parties arts patronage and
international travels helped define that
era.
Ms. Bundles herself is a
former network television news,
executive and producer at
both ABC News and NBC News.
Ms. Bundles is a brand historian for MCJW,
which is a line of haircare products
inspired by Madam Walker's legacy.
She's also a vice chairman of Columbia
University's Board of Trustees and
Chair Emerita of the Board of
the National Archives Foundation.
And clearly one of the most busy women
in America with so many different
things on your plate right now.
Thank you so much for being here.
Well,
thank you.
And you talk about busy.
You are like the must be the hardest
working woman in show business.
You have so many dimensions.
I love that.
Well,
thank you.
Thank you very much.
And one of my inspirations
really is Madam CJ Walker,
her story and her legacy.
She was a phenomenal entrepreneur,
but the other thing that was so
dynamic for me with her story is
what she did outside of business.
She was also an activist
and a philanthropist,
and that's so important right now.
It's June 2020.
Look at the state of the
United States right now,
and the support around the world because
similar things are happening all over
the world.
Madame Walker was integral in so
many of the early civil
rights movements and protests.
She established a branch of the YMCA
in Indianapolis's black community.
She contributed to scholarships
for black colleges,
including the Tuskegee Institute.
She would be vocal and speak
publicly about politics,
about economic inequity,
about social issues.
And one of the things I actually didn't
know until I started doing some research
for this interview is that
she helped organize a protest,
the Negro Silent Protest
Parade in New York,
where about 10,000 African-Americans,
protested,
social injustice and other inequities
that were happening at that time,
including the lynching of
black people in the South,
in Waco and in Memphis.
And it's so timely to be having
this conversation right now.
Because you see businesses.
I don't know if it's
performative or if it's real,
but supporting the movement now,
this social justice movement
against racism,
against police brutality.
And I wonder your thoughts about that,
about connecting entrepreneurship
and business to social justice.
Well,
you know,
let us hope that all of these corporations
who are now pledging their money
to,
uh,
funds that will change policing and
that are involved in social justice,
that there is,
you know,
some substance behind that.
And,
but I guess I could say it's better that
they're doing that and then not doing
that because things have changed.
It's very different from
when Kaepernick first
started taking a knee,
when people backed away
and were critical of him.
So that's just really not an
option for most places that really
want business from people of color.
And it's interesting to see the
makeup of the demonstrators.
So that feels like progress right now.
I hope it's a tipping point,
but we feel like we've had
many tipping points before.
Madam Walker's case,
she was really that part of that
first generation out of slavery,
she was born in December 1867,
two years after the end of the Civil War,
but on the same plantation where her
parents and older siblings had been
enslaved,
but that generation was essentially
creating a world for themselves.
They were left with no land,
no money,
after they had helped to
create the wealth of America.
And they had to start again from scratch
to create businesses as they moved to
cities.
So she was among people like Booker T.
Washington,
like C.C.
Spaulding,
the founder of--one of the
founders of North Carolina Mutual.
Like Alonzo Herndon,
a founder of Atlanta Life Insurance and
people who were creating pharmacies and
businesses.
So she could see,
she was part of that generation
realizing that their economic health
was very much tied to
their health as people,
their citizenship,
their politics,
their,
and their ability to survive in an
era when lynching was happening.
So we,
we see that as black people
succeeded in business,
they were often targeted in the
way that Tulsa is the most dramatic
example of this wholesale burning
down of a business district,
but successful black people
in business were targeted.
And Madam Walker was really
trying to help create economic
independence for black women who
otherwise would have been maids and
sharecroppers and laundresses
working for other people.
So she realized she created this wonderful
hair grower and she realized that
women were really glad to have
products that were targeted for them,
but they also needed education and
they needed financial independence.
And that became very much a
part of her message to women.
So do you think she,
and you're a historian,
you have researched her life extensively.
Do you think she felt an obligation
to not only provide economic
independence,
but also social equity.
To,
to fight against racial injustices?
Do you think she felt an
obligation to do that?
Do you think it was rare at that time?
Because I'm wondering,
looking at our black business owners
and our entrepreneurs and our very,
very successful African-Americans today,
we see some of those things happening.
I don't know everything that's happening.
Things are happening behind the scenes,
but what responsibility do we have today?
And are there things we can learn from
Madam Walker's life about connecting your
money to social justice
and to reducing oppression
and seeking justice for other people?
You know,
it is,
with this,
the era of social media and we can't,
there's so much going on right now.
It's impossible to keep up,
but it has been amazing to me
to see the number of people,
especially entertainers and athletes
obviously have big
followings and big platforms.
But the number of people
who are saying it is my
obligation to use my platform,
otherwise,
what is this platform for?
And they are getting enough support from
people that they feel that they need to
do it,
but it's not just the entertainers
and athletes who have a platform,
and in many instances have
a great financial means.
It's also business
people like Robert Smith,
like Melissa Bradley,
who created Ureeka,
like Richelieu Dennis,
the founding CEO of Sundial Brands,
who now owns Essence and who has a
venture capital fund for women of color
entrepreneurs.
Even,
um,
The Lip Bar,
a black owned lipstick company,
they're giving part of their,
um,
profits right now for social justice.
So I think that people are seeing that.
In Madam Walker's case,
her history is one where
the seeds were planted for
activism.
She lived in Delta,
Louisiana,
and her family minister was a black state
Senator elected during Reconstruction,
but he was chased out of Louisiana
by the Ku Klux Klan because he was
speaking up for black people.
And her brothers left at the same time
that they were older and they left at the
same time as the family minister.
So she had seen racial violence.
I don't have a lot of details about that,
but I know from Senate hearings,
exactly what was going on.
I can't pinpoint that 11 year old Sarah
Breedlove was standing on the bank of
the river,
waving goodbye to her brothers,
but I have to think that's
probably what happened.
Then after she got to St.
Louis,
her brothers were barbers.
That meant they were in the leadership
role when black men dominated the
barbering trade and they belonged to St.
Paul African Methodist Episcopal church,
a church that had a history of activism.
So she saw that activism there,
and it was the women of the church
who mentored this poor washerwoman
Sarah Breedlove McWilliams,
her first husband's name,
and began to give her a vision of herself
as something other than an illiterate
washer woman.
So by the time she's founded her business,
she was modeling herself in many
ways after the club women's movement.
And when she held her first
convention of her sales agents in
1917,
she gave prizes to the women
who sold the most products,
also to the women who had contributed
the most to charity in their churches.
And she said to them,
I want you as Walker Agents
to show to the world that we
care,
not just about ourselves,
but about others.
And at the end of the convention,
the women's sent a telegram
to President Woodrow Wilson,
urging him to support legislation
to make lynching a federal crime.
So she connected the dots
between financial independence,
being able to speak up for
yourself and political activism.
Gosh,
that's beautiful.
And in doing so,
you know,
we talk so much about generational
wealth in the black community and
creating things that we own so that
we can create generational wealth.
And so what you're talking about with
Madam Walker is creating generational
wealth within her own family,
but also with all of these
sales women who worked for her.
And I'm wondering your thoughts
about generational wealth.
I don't know if you are a direct
beneficiary of millions and millions
of dollars,
and that kinda thing,
but you obviously inherited something,
right?
Some spirit,
some tenacity.
And I wonder your thoughts
about generational wealth
as a descendant of really
one of the greatest made,
home-grown millionaire
stories in American history.
Right?
Right.
So let,
let,
let me be clear.
I did not have a trust fund,
but what I do have is a spirit
of entrepreneurship and,
and five generations of
people who were in business.
And that comes from,
you know,
both sides of my mother's family,
Madam CJ Walker,
my mother's maternal side of the family.
So obviously we,
you know,
we can see what happened there,
but you know,
the company struggled through the
Depression and by the late 1950s,
it was,
you know,
not a major player,
but still the fact that a black business
survived and actually never went
out of business,
though my family was no longer in an
ownership role for about 30 years,
between the eighties
until the last decade,
when Richelieu Dennis bought the company,
bought the trademark
and began to involve me.
But we had that sense,
that consciousness of black ownership.
In my mother's father's family,
his great grandfather had been
elected to state office during
reconstruction.
His grandfather had been
valedictorian of his class at Lincoln.
He owned a general store.
He owned a funeral home.
So there is a sense of entrepreneurship
in my family and in my father's family,
although his parents were
uneducated people and primarily
laborers,
they still had hustle.
My father's father was,
you know,
during the Depression,
he raised nine kids and he
always had a side hustle.
He had it,
he was an herb man.
He figured out ways to
make money in other ways.
He always owned a car,
though he couldn't drive.
But he had people take him around
or he used the motor as a saw to
cut kindling.
So there were all kinds of things in my
family that are about entrepreneurship.
And I have my own sort of
entrepreneurial spirit,
although I will say real entrepreneurs
pay other people and create and
create a livelihood for them.
But I'm just trying to,
you know,
monetize some of my speeches
and the books that I write.
What I do see generational wealth being
created as a result of Madam
Walker's legacy is the thousands
of women who became Walker sales agents,
who went to the Walker schools,
who got diplomas and who would come to
her conventions and talk about being able
to buy homes,
being able to educate their children,
doing...becoming realtors,
owning property,
and that is how generational
wealth is created.
And it's sort of,
for us,
it is a combination of having
education so that the next generation
gets a leg up.
And so I see even now
people who say to me,
who will find a diploma and say,
my grandmother went to the Walker School,
my great grandmother went to the Walker
School and we still own the house that
she bought.
You know,
so you can see that there,
that she planted those seeds for people.
Oh,
most definitely.
And still planting.
I have a nine year old daughter who for
her school project for third grade had
to write about a famous historical figure.
And she chose,
of her own volition,
Madam CJ Walker.
And that label you have behind you of
one of the products that brown label,
she modeled her label for
her product,after that one.
It was her face,
it's got her name over the
top and she came to me and
she had so many questions about
entrepreneurship and about what it
means to actually own your own thing,
whatever that thing is.
And so while you may not be
an entrepreneur yourself,
telling that story has just
impacted so many lives.
And I so appreciate you doing that,
because you may not have
people on the payroll,
but you are inspiring lots and
lots of people with that story.
That is,
that is the real gift for me,
that while I,
while four generations of women in
my family work at the Walker Company,
my mother and father both encouraged me
and my brothers to do the thing that we
loved and writing was
really the thing I love.
But I think that if I'd been sort of
pressed to go into the family business,
I don't know that I
would be as enthusiastic.
But I feel that my
contribution to the legacy
is telling this inspirational story.
So I feel like I've got,
I've been given a great gift.
So question about telling the story.
So there are many of us who are
descendants of slaves who want to tell the
stories of our ancestors,
but it's so incredibly
difficult to find those stories,
to find the historical documentation.
I wonder your experience with it.
I know--
maybe it's different because your great,
great grandmother was so well known,
but I wonder your experience finding
that type of information to be able to
now write what on your fifth
book about your family,
what that's been like for you.
You know,
it is amazing what you can find.
I think Skip Gates's--
Henry Louis Gates's show,
Finding Your Roots,
has shown us that you can,
with the,
you know,
with the right skills and
tools actually find things.
And in Madam Walker's case,
the first 38 years of her life,
there is,
there's no documentation.
But I was able to reconstruct her life by
going to more than a dozen cities and,
you know,
reading things from Senate hearings
about how her family minister
escaped and reading city directories.
And now that there are literally
hundreds of newspapers that have
been digitized on newspapers.com,
on Proclassed,
on Genealogy Bank,
people would be stunned to
find that their family members,
whether it's the church news or whatever,
that they can find things about their,
their families and their oral histories.
And I tell people,
when you,
when you're cleaning out grandma's house,
do not just say nobody wants those papers.
Because all of those little
documents tell a story.
I'm able to tell Madam Walker's story,
because we have almost 50,000 documents
that were saved,
because she hired the right people who
were very clear about record keeping.
And so those have been digitized there
at the Indiana Historical Society.
But I also have things that my,
my mother's father saved.
And in fact,
I I'm cleaning out my house right now.
I guess we're all,
you know,
sort of finding the things,
you know,
using this time to clean.
And I found some,
um,
three by five cards today from a
speech that my grandfather gave.
Now,
my grandfather has been dead since 1992,
and this is a speech he must
have given in the 1960s,
where he's talking about
his family and there
road freedom and establishing businesses,
but it's the oral history.
So I always say to people have
the youngest person in the
family who can,
you know,
work the phone interview,
the oldest person in the family,
whether it's every Sunday,
if they're going to visit grandma
or whether it's the family reunion,
and now you might have to do it on Zoom,
but get the older members of the
family to tell you those stories and
those stories they will live because
the next generation knows them.
There are,
there are ways that we can tell our story.
No,
that's amazing.
So you've written four
books telling these stories.
You're on your fifth book now
about your great grandmother,
A'Lelia Walker,
who was Madam Walker's daughter.
And could you talk a bit
more about that book?
Why did you decide that now is the time
for your great grandmother's story?
When I was writing On Her Own Ground,
The Life and Times of Madam CJ Walker,
I thought I was going to be doing like
a double biography about both women,
and about halfway through.
I realized that A'Lelia
Walker needed her own book,
but I tried to develop the relationship
between mother and daughter with these
letters that they wrote almost
every day to their attorney.
I could tell what their conversation was,
when they were getting along,
when they were having conflicts,
where they were traveling,
all of those things.
And when I wrote about Madam Walker,
I realized that much of
what it had been written,
because there had never been
a major biography of her,
was either incorrect or inadequate.
And I'm finding the same as
I write about A'Lelia Walker.
So after Madam Walker died in 1919,
A'Lelia Walker continued to live
in Harlem until her death in
1931.
And she was trying to find her own path.
What was her contribution going to be?
Everyone compared her to her mother.
Of course,
you can never be that person
who is the founding person.
It is hard to be in the
shadow of someone like that,
and her passion,
which was a passion
that both women shared,
was music and culture.
And she turned that into The Dark Tower,
her cultural salon and her
parties with the artists and
writers and musicians and actors
of the Harlem Renaissance.
So her story deserves its own platform.
No,
that's,
that is important.
And you're right.
So I remember one of the very first
coloring books I got was a coloring book
about black history.
And I remember one of the pages in the
book about Madam Walker was that she had
invented the straightening comb,
so for years,
I thought Madam Walker had
invented the straightening comb.
And so those inaccuracies are harmful.
It's not just pages in a book
or---I don't know if you can say it,
I can say it.
I felt like the Netflix special,
Self-Made,
was inaccurate and frankly,
a little disrespectful to
the legacy of Madam Walker.
And you wrote a piece
at the undefeated.com
about that special and
about your experience,
trying to option your book,
On Her Own Ground.
And I wonder if you could
speak to that a bit.
I was so happy to see you
had written that article,
because my friends and I,
and I am in many communities
with women entrepreneurs,
including Walker's Legacy,
which I assume you're aware of.
And,
um,
it was a bit disappointing.
So I wonder if you could
speak more to that,
to that piece you wrote,
to your experience getting
the story told on screen.
Sure.
So let me say first,
I thought Octavia Spencer was great.
I mean,
I,
I was really pleased
that she was in the role.
Every time she comes on the screen,
I feel like the book that I've
written is coming to life.
And there were a few
things that I really liked.
I loved the wigs,
because wigs are really,
usually done really
badly for black people.
I loved the scene where Madam
Walker,
the character,
is in the marketplace trying to
convince women to use her product,
because I thought that really kind of
gave you a sense of what her struggle
was like.
That said there was a lot
that I just really didn't
like about the film.
So,
in the process of optioning a film,
you know,
there's a very Hollywood story,
that I had at first--we talked about it
with Alex Haley in the early eighties
when he was still riding high from Roots.
And I ended up doing research for what,
going to be a mini series and a
book that he was going to write.
He became a mentor.
I wrote a young adult
book that came out in 91,
but Alex died in 92 without
having completed his project.
But in the process,
I met his editor,
Lisa Drew,
who had been the editor for Roots,
and she became my editor
for On Her Own Ground.
And I then wrote that book.
And while I was finishing that book,
it was optioned by Columbia Tristar
and Sony and CBS Television.
But that project didn't get made.
The option came back to me.
Then it was optioned by HBO
and that fell through and the
rights came back to me.
Then we had this decade of no black
things get made because they don't sell
overseas.
That was Hollywood's conventional wisdom,
then Selma and 12 Years of Slave and
The Butler happened and Shonda Rhimes's
success with How to Get Away
with Murder and Scandal.
So you couldn't tell that lie anymore,
that nobody wants to see
black people on screen.
So then I started getting
calls and I ended up
signing with a company with
the Mark Holder was the
principal of this company.
And he seemed to really value my research
and thought Madam Walker's story was
important,
but once it was signed over
with Warner Brothers and
Netflix,
typically the writer of the
original material loses control.
And in my case where I thought I
was going to be integral to the
conversations,
the head writer,
Nicole Asher and Kasi Lemmons,
the director,
decided to exclude me from the integral,
you know,
pivotal conversations.
So that by the time I was
able to see the scripts,
everything had already been approved
by Warner Brothers and Netflix,
and this story line of this
sort of fake colorism and this
fake conflict between Madam Walker and the
person who had in real life had
been Annie Malone was set in stone.
And while Madam Walker in Annie
Malone in fact were rivals,
they were not friends,
but it was nothing like the kind of
cat fight that we ended up seeing.
So I was so glad you told this story
at the undefeated and are recounting it
now,
in part,
because so many people watch these
fictionalized representations and think
that's history.
And it seems to happen a lot with us,
with our stories.
And we don't get that many opportunities
to tell our stories and to,
to see you speaking truth to
what the real legacy was and
what your experience was,
was comforting for those of us who,
uh,
feel very strongly about accurate
representations of black history,
particularly like these types of stories.
So I appreciate you setting the record
straight a bit on what the true story
was or is.
I'm just,
I'm curious what you,
what you thought about it,
because I know the journey that I took,
but I also was very conscious as I
was raising my objections during the
scripting process.
And as the show was
getting ready to come on,
I knew that there were
people who had expectations.
So I'm,
I'm just curious what your
thoughts were about it.
Well,
so a few things,
and I was so concerned about the
story being told in a way that
was sensationalized.
That,
I mean,
to your point,
the colorism between Annie
Malone and Madam Walker
in the series,
I thought was unhelpful.
I thought some of the artistic
choices were just weird,
like the music,
and the boxing though,
you know,
I'm no artist.
So who knows whether I
think makes any sense.
And I also,
and this gets back to the point
about me being a parent of children
who are interested in these stories
because their father and I talk to them
about these stories,
but also as the daughter of a black
entrepreneur who has a black hair care
company in the South.
I wanted it to be done in a way where
I could share it with my children.
Where we could talk about
the visual representation.
My children are young,
so they're not going to sit
through a four hour documentary.
They're not going to sit
through a PBS special.
I love that the PBS special Boss,
I don't know if you have seen
that Boss was phenomenal--
I'm in that!
Of
course,
of course you are you're in that,
but my nine year old is not
going to sit through that.
I hoped that this representation,
because as you mentioned,
Octavia Spencer was so dynamic,
her acting is always just right on point,
right.
I just was disappointed that I can't
share it with my children and not because
of cursing,
or,
I mean,
there's one kind of like sex scene,
but not because of those things,
but because it was
historically inaccurate.
So that's how I felt about it.
Well,
you know,
and I had,
again,
my expectations from the beginning,
I was,
I was hoping for Hidden Figures and
I got Real Housewives of Atlanta.
The number
of kids who--
I help kids with their National
History Day projects every
year.
I,
you know,
I can't resist a kid
who emails me and says,
I'm doing research,
I'm doing a paper on Madam Walker.
So I really was thinking
about all of those kids.
And I was imagining that we would have
kind of a curriculum and that mothers and
daughters would be able
to watch it together.
And then mothers started saying to me,
well,
I'm going to watch it with my daughter.
And I thought,
well,
I don't really think so.
And so that broke my heart,
that I,
that people couldn't really,
you know,
watch it.
Yes.
And I,
again,
I there's so much I could say about that.
I don't want to beat a dead horse,
but I was glad to see that
you agreed with everybody in
my network.
I'm not going to say
exactly what was said,
but what was that?
And,
you know,
maybe I don't know if we should have
had such high expectations or not.
I don't know.
They seemed to be,
there were a lot of people of color in
the writer's rooms and doing all these
things.
So we had these high expectations,
but at any rate,
I do appreciate your historical
telling of the stories
of your ancestors.
And I wonder along those lines,
what's next.
So you're working on your fifth book.
Are there other stories that you want
to tell either about your own family or
are there other stories you want to tell,
are there other stories you think need
to be told that aren't being told right
now?
So I'm almost finished with
the Joy Goddess of Harlem,
the Biography of A'Lelia Walker.
So I should be finished
with that in the fall.
And then that will be out next year.
And that's a very different
story from Madam Walker's story,
it's really the,
sort of the culture and the social scene,
and as well as some
politics during the 1920s.
And that is my last really deep
dive into telling a detailed
historical book,
I'm not doing that,
because I
really do want to enjoy the next decade,
but there are stories to be told.
And so I have some idea of,
you know,
some poems kind of long poems about some
of these other people in my family who
aren't famous,
but who's,
you know,
who are the people who
made a way out of no way.
And I,
and all of our stories need to be told
because I'm a big believer that we,
if we understand our family history,
that helps us understand
the larger American history.
And we certainly are in a time
when we need to be able to draw
on the strengths of the ancestors.
They give me strength when I
know what they went through.
And I think a lot of people just
aren't able to draw on that.
And so they take the okey-doke and
they let somebody else define who they
are and who our people are.
And we need to know this,
the strength that we've brought that
is very much a part of our DNA that is
going to sustain us in these
really difficult times.
I love that.
And you've mentioned something a couple
of times that I just want to explore
a little and that's this
concept of ownership.
So you mentioned that
even optioning your book,
right,
to all these different entities.
You talked about Robert F.
Smith.
You talked about Sundial Brands,
and I've heard Mr. Smith talk so many
times about intellectual property
and about owning the things we create.
You talk about our ancestors
and drawing on their strengths.
They were the most innovative,
creative dynamic people on this planet,
to even be able to survive in the
circumstances that they were in.
And so what does that concept of
ownership mean to you as you think about
storytelling and entrepreneurship
and creating the type of
businesses and communities
that can help our communities,
in particular,
move forward?
Yeah.
You know,
this is always like,
how independent can you be?
And I am now a woman of a
certain age and there's really,
nobody can fire me,
you know,
that can't be done.
And everybody is not in that position.
I think that I,
that I'm able to speak up.
And I was able to write that
article because nobody owns me.
And I think there are a lot of people
who think the same things that I think,
and who've had the same
experiences that I've had,
who don't feel they are
in a position to speak up.
So those of us who can
speak up to do that,
and we have to figure out
ways to sustain ourselves,
to surround ourselves with
people who are supportive,
to move those people out of the way
who are not supportive so that we
are owning ourselves.
No,
that is great,
great advice.
So you mentioned your book is almost done.
People will be able to
buy that on your website.
I presume,
and Amazon and everywhere else.
Where can people find you now?
Are you on Twitter,
on Instagram?
Where can we find you to learn more
about your work and hear about the things
you're working on right now?
So my websites are ALeliabundles.com,
ALeliabundles.com
and MadamCJwalker.com,
MadamCJwalker.com.
And I'm on Twitter and
Instagram @ALeliaBundles,
no fancy,
you know,
obscure names,
without the apostrophe.
And you know,
and I'm also on Facebook
and this is an in---
it's been an interesting
journey for me on,
on social media.
I have a pretty robust personal
Facebook page where I post a lot of
politics.
I don't do that so much
on my author's page,
on Facebook.
And on Twitter,
I am because I'm a longtime journalist,
I really use that as a
source of information so I
can know what's trending.
I don't really get into
political arguments with people,
though,
I'm finding right now,
it is impossible not to comment.
We must comment.
We must stand up.
We must.
Yeah.
So final question about that saying,
we must stand up.
I see so many business owners
struggling a bit with this.
Because they think--
and entertainers.
I'm surrounded by so many creators,
entertainers,
entrepreneurs,
and they're worried about their brands.
They're worried about it's
going to harm business.
And why do you think it's so important?
Particularly for business owners.
It frustrates me to no end,
I follow you on Twitter.
I see your tweets.
And I now am posting,
it feels like every minute
or so about something.
Why do you think it's so important for
people now to use their platforms in this
way?
Yeah.
Well,
I mean,
you have to figure out what your core
values are and everybody doesn't,
can't speak up in the same way.
A highway has many lanes
and so it may be that one
person is quietly doing something and
they don't feel comfortable being out
there because the loan from
the bank may not come through.
I mean,
there are real reasons why some people
have to have to play the game a little
bit differently,
but we really cannot,
um,
don't have the luxury
of not doing something.
You know,
I'm particularly grateful that
Richelieu Dennis decided that he
wanted to have some involvement in
continuing Madam Walker's legacy,
because his core value is
building up the community,
his community commerce and
the way of philanthropy,
the work that they deal
with market women in Africa,
the investment that he's making
in women of color entrepreneurs,
everything about what they are doing
is to lift up our community and to
invest in our community.
Excellent.
Thank you so much for
being here with me today.
This has been amazing.
I appreciate the conversation.
I look forward to us staying in touch
because I want to know what you're doing
next.
I'm happy to share.
Thank you so much for listening to
this episode of The Shontavia Show.
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