Early life A'Lelia Walker was born Lelia McWilliams in
Vicksburg, Mississippi, in 1885, the daughter of Moses and
Sarah (née Breedlove) McWilliams. Her 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. Her mother married John Davis in 1894 and divorced in 1903. In 1906, her mother married Charles Joseph Walker, a newspaper advertising salesman, and became an independent hairdresser and cosmetic cream retailer. A'Lelia grew up in St. Louis and attended
Knoxville College in Tennessee before entering the family business, having taken the Walker name.
Madam C. J. Walker Manufacturing Company A'Lelia Walker ran the East Coast operations of
her mother's company. A new million-dollar headquarters and manufacturing facility, opened in late 1927 in Indianapolis, placed additional expenses and financial pressure on the operation, and she sold a great deal of valuable art and antiques. succeeded her mother as the head of the company. Today, the company's building is known as the
Madame Walker Theatre Center and is a
National Historic Landmark.
Patronage A'Lelia Walker counted among her friends many accomplished African American musicians. She 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. She 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. During the 1920s, she hosted many musicians, actors, writers, artists, political figures, and socialites in her Manhattan townhouse. The elegant
brick and
limestone building had been designed by
Vertner Tandy, a founder of
Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity and the first black architect licensed in New York State. Almost from the time of her arrival in Harlem in 1913, her dinner parties, dances, and
soirées included well-known Harlem figures like
James Reese Europe,
J. Rosamond Johnson,
Bert Williams and
Florence Mills, as well as members of the
Harlem Renaissance such as
Langston Hughes,
Countee Cullen, and
Carl Van Vechten. She commissioned Austrian designer
Paul Frankl to create the interior. She also entertained at her pied-à-terre at 80 Edgecombe Avenue in Harlem and
Villa Lewaro, her country house in
Irvington, New York in
Westchester County – a
Italianate mansion which she had built for her mother in 1916 to 1918, again designed by Tandy. Villa Lewaro was named for Walker (
Lelia
Walker
Robinson) after Italian tenor
Enrico Caruso told her after a visit to the property that the newly built
Irvington-on-Hudson mansion reminded him of the houses of his native country. Walker also founded the Harlem Debutantes Club. She attended Knoxville College and was a member of St. James Presbyterian Church in Harlem, where she married Dr. Wiley Wilson. She supported local missionary work among Baptist women in New York City. She attended a Baptist church and served on various committees, occasionally speaking for women's days and professional events. ==Personal life==