The Right to Be Beautiful: Annie Malone, Beauty Culture, and New Negro Womanhood

Résumé En

In the four decades that followed Reconstruction, African Americans saw their newly acquired rights be taken away through segregation laws and voting requirements that intentionally disenfranchised Black men. Racial violence also served as a tool of social control. Despite this racial violence, the period was also a time of remarkable intellectual dynamism as African Americans rallied under the banner of Racial Uplift to advance their cause and try to achieve, to a certain extent, equality with White people. One specific way by which they “lifted” themselves “up” was attempting to reconstruct their public image which had been vilified for years through mockery and degrading caricatures in the media. This undertaking, known as the New Negro Movement, was even more crucial for Black women who were the victims of both racist and sexist stereotypes. While studies on the elaboration of the New Negro Woman have focused on literary productions by and about women of the Black upper middle class, this chapter sheds light on the work of beauty entrepreneur Annie Malone, mentor of the famous Madam C.J. Walker, who used her beauty advertisements to promote her own vision of New Negro Womanhood through beauty culture, modernity, and respectability.