1. A'Lelia Walker was born Lelia McWilliams in Vicksburg, Mississippi, in 1885, the daughter of Moses and Sarah McWilliams.
21 Facts About A'Lelia Walker
1. 2.
A'Lelia Walker's father died when she was two years old, and she moved with her mother to St Louis, Missouri to live with her mother's three brothers.
3.
A'Lelia Walker's mother married John Davis in 1894 and divorced in 1903.
4.
A'Lelia Walker ran the East Coast operations of her mother's company.
5.
A'Lelia Walker became president of the company in 1919, upon her mother's death, and remained in that position until she died in August 1931.
6.
A'Lelia Walker's adopted daughter Mae Walker became company president from 1931 until she died in 1945.
7.
Today, the company's building is known as the Madame A'Lelia Walker Theatre Center and is a National Historic Landmark.
8.
A'Lelia Walker counted among her friends many accomplished African American musicians.
9.
A'Lelia Walker developed an early love of classical music and opera in part because the choir director at the AME church she and her mother attended in St Louis was a classically trained opera singer and organist.
10.
A'Lelia Walker grew up in the neighborhood where Scott Joplin and other ragtime musicians gathered at Tom Turpin's Rosebud Cafe on St Louis's Market Street.
11.
A'Lelia Walker commissioned Austrian designer Paul Frankl to create the interior.
12.
A'Lelia Walker attended Knoxville College and was a member of St James Presbyterian Church in Harlem, where she married Dr Wiley Wilson.
13.
A'Lelia Walker supported local missionary work among Baptist women in New York City.
14.
A'Lelia Walker attended a Baptist church and served on various committees, occasionally speaking for women's days and professional events.
15.
A'Lelia Walker was married three times: to John Robinson, a hotel waiter, from whom she separated about 1911 and divorced in 1914; to Dr Wiley Wilson in 1919; and to Dr James Arthur Kennedy, in 1926, whom she divorced just a few months before she died in 1931.
16.
A'Lelia Walker visited Zewditu, the Empress of Ethiopia while on her way to Addis Ababa.
17.
A'Lelia Walker's adoptive daughter, Fairy Mae Bryant, was born in November 1898 and was adopted in 1912.
18.
In November 1923, A'Lelia Walker orchestrated an elaborate "Million Dollar Wedding" for Mae's marriage to Dr Gordon Jackson.
19.
A'Lelia Walker died on August 17,1931, of a cerebral hemorrhage brought on by hypertension, the same ailment that led to her mother's death in 1919.
20.
A'Lelia Walker was surrounded by friends who had traveled to Long Branch, New Jersey to celebrate a birthday party with lobster and champagne amid the Great Depression and Prohibition.
21.
A'Lelia Walker was eulogized by Reverend Adam Clayton Powell Sr.