- [Announcer] This program was made possible in part by the Stacey Fund for Local Productions.

- [Narrator] Orphaned at an early age, Annie Malone never completed high school, but would go on to create a company that stretched across the globe and generated a fortune.

A fortune she used elevate those around her.

- People need to know that this particular woman at a time when racism was thick as a cloud, that discrimination was thick as a cloud, she maneuvered herself all around that, personally.

And she convinced other people in the power in themselves to do the same thing and be positive about it.

That's powerful to me.

(wind swooshing) - I lived in public housing, most of my life.

And so it was a great, great adventure to go and visit my grandmother and grandpa Moody.

As a kid, I would see these canisters of Poro products.

I would also see marketing things, calendars of a Poro calendars, combs, Poro combs, but never really put any, you know, all that together when I was young, cause it wasn't really talked about.

After my grandmother passed, when I had all this stuff and opening up these boxes and I mean, it was tons of stuff, brochures and letters.

I realize that, okay, this was Annie Malone.

Well, I can talk about this.

She was really something.

So this needs to be shared.

So that inspired me to really share the story.

Once I learned it, once I learned the story, I was totally unaware of the story that was never taught in black history.

Annie Malone was never mentioned that I know of in Peoria.

- [Narrator] Annie's parents were both ex-slaves living in Kentucky.

When the civil war broke out, her father joined the union army.

While her mother moved the family to Metropolis Illinois.

It was there during the late 1800s Annie was born.

Unfortunately, both parents passed early in her life.

- When Annie Malone was orphaned, she came to live here with her older sister, Ada Turnbo, who married my great grandfather, William Moody.

And so that was the beginning of the Peoria connection.

On the moody side, they were one generation from slavery, as well on the Turnbo side, one generation from slavery.

Ada was a seamstress.

So she was a professional woman, self-employed.

William, he worked right up the street from here at Julian Hotel is where it used to be a cafe back in the day, and he worked there, and this was her surrogate family and the values, and the visions, and the confidence, and the support that she had really helped launch on Aunt Annie to become a business icon.

- [Narrator] Annie attended Peoria high, but was never able to complete her studies due to health issues.

Instead, she received a different type of education from Ada's mother-in-law Sarah Moody.

Sarah taught her the uses of herbs to alleviate various difficulties, including those caused by a popular hairstyle.

- And at that time there were a lot of, you know, there's a lot of changing styles.

Women wanted to straighten their hair because the corn rows had a sense of the being on a plantation or being in a survival position at that time.

So the whole idea of straightening hair meant, gave a sense of freedom.

- Women of color frequently used goose grease and fat and lye and lard on their hair to try to control their locks.

And as a result, there were lots of fungi that grew would pull their hair out.

It took their hair out.

It damaged their scalp to the point that it would not grow.

- She along with her older sister and some other folks, you know, were involved in the whole idea of putting together a formula for straightening the hair that didn't in negatively impact the scalp.

- And she got to the point where she would help people in her community grow their hair back or take away whatever disease was in their hair.

From the herbs that she used on their hair.

She got very interested in that and expressed a desire to make that her life's goal.

There started her a wonderful hair grower and her business.

- [Narrator] Annie and her younger sister, Laura, moved into a small building in the all black community of Lovejoy, later renamed Brooklyn.

The town was located across the river from St. Louis, which was then home to the fourth largest population of African-Americans in the nation.

Both sisters also entered short-lived marriages that might have inspired the company's name, Poro.

- Its two sources, actually.

It's a combination in each case, her name, she married Mr. Pope, and that's the PO.

And her sister, Laura married a gentlemen by the name of Roberts and it's P O R O Poro.

- [Narrator] Or it could have been a derivative from a west African term for physical and spiritual growth.

No one is sure.

St. Louis also offered the advantage of hosting the 1904 world's fair, allowing Annie to market her wares to customers from outside the borders of the city and state.

Her product line was such a success that by 1917, she was able to begin construction on a new headquarters building and manufacturing plant that encompassed a full city block.

It was also the first African-American college dedicated to cosmetology in the country, but it offered much more.

- She brought lots of property, not just to build that building, but to accommodate staff and to accommodate growth, if she wanted to do that.

She built a huge building that had more than a hundred rooms to it, which was the most magnificent building anyone ever built of color at the time.

- This is also a reproduction of a booklet that I own.

And this is the building up close.

It was four stories with a mezzanine that the interior of this is just completely, just magnificent.

We have it looks like it's straight out of Wall Street here.

We see a bust of Frederick Douglas.

There's an image of Booker T Washington, which shows a little bit of who impacted her.

- And it's no longer just a door to door operation.

This has gone not only nationwide, but also through many continents.

So she has to have them distributed.

So she built what's called an annex and garage onto her Poro College, which also aided in her distribution.

- In her school, there were a number of different things taught.

Not just how to use the products and apply the products.

She was one who tried to teach her students what they needed to be successful in their lives, in their communities.

She would teach them investment skills.

She would also encourage them to invest in their community by buying property, by buying bonds, by saving money.

It was something to have an advertisement that said Poro trained.

It was very important that you belonged to this particular group of women, because they were totally different than the average woman.

It was said at one point that if you were Poro trained, if you attended the Poro College and graduated from it, you were able to earn 10 times more than a domestic worker or a laborer in the 1920s.

That's pretty significant.

She definitely changed the economic paradigm for women of color and men.

There were men who attended the college as well.

The building was huge, but the cool thing about it was, it didn't just provide education for her students.

It provided resources for her community.

You had meeting rooms that people could easily use.

She gave concerts.

She was quite a patron of the arts.

- There were many events.

There was a lot of political activity and religious events and cultural events, arts, those types of things.

And plus it was like a think tank.

When black leaders would come together there, they would be able to meet in a conference room.

- It had an ice cream parlor in it.

There was an auditorium in it.

There was a sewing room to learn.

They made clothing for many of the uniformed jobs that were here in St. Louis.

They had a bread company upstairs.

They made their own bread.

Not only that, but on top of her college, on the roof, there was this gorgeous area that she used to plant the plants and many of the herbs and the spices that she would use in her own products.

She thought of this from the ground up.

- [Linda] She was the first African-American woman, a woman that I know of to actually formally educate people in the hair care and beauty culture.

She had a number of schools throughout the United States, at least 32 different locations in the United States.

She had holdings and people selling products all over the world.

- The same idea that Mary Kay uses with Mary Kay Ash and her presentations and many of the outbursts that go, or the podcast that she does with loving yourself and, you know, putting God first, these were things that Annie was already doing.

She built that plan, this was her plan.

And so every day before they would go to work, she would have an area of reflection in her auditorium where they would start the day with prayer and song and just love and community.

- The place that I called the farm was a house that aunt Annie bought for Ada and her husband.

She had that erected at the same time that she was building Poro College, their relationship with her, with my grandfather, and her nephews were more of a brother and sister type.

And Ada was more of a mother type of relationship.

So she was very, very close.

When she moved to St. Louis, she still had a lot of interactions with her nephews, with my grandfather.

I mean writing all the time, visits all the time.

And they would bring from St. Louis, they would bring their students out, and they would stay for days.

His students, and some of the staff.

I have pictures.

You can see students on the top porch on the roof of the house.

- [Narrator] In addition to the farm and home, Annie sent her nephews to college and law school, plus her kindness extended to Poro employees as well.

Those who reached five years of service with the company received a diamond ring.

While those who laid down roots in the community by opening a savings account or purchasing a house were given extra cash to help.

Poro was more than a product line.

It was a means to fill Annie's philanthropic nature, both within her family, company, and to the surrounding community as well.

She supported countless charities, financed the education of students at black colleges and gave one of the largest private donations to Howard University.

- [Linda] She always wanted to help people, that was her basis I think for all things that she did.

She was the person who helped in the community.

Philanthropic.

She helped to fund a wing at the Barnes Hospital here in St. Louis so that people of color would not have to have their children in the basement of the hospital, which was the practice at that particular time.

When she saw something that she felt she could improve, she did.

- That's the way she was with people and just to help and encourage in every way possible.

She gave tremendous amounts of money at the time to some of the HBCUs, to Howard, and some other schools.

And she was very involved behind the scenes in helping people.

- There wasn't indoor plumbing in many places in St. Louis.

And if there was indoor plumbing, it wasn't available to the Negroes.

It just, it wasn't available to you.

So she put an awful lot of money and dedication to the YMCAs of St. Louis.

And these Ys that they developed were a place to shower, clean, to use the restroom and facilities.

- She gave the YMCA three donations.

One was 10,000, one was 15,000, the last one was 25,000.

And so they asked her, the governor of Colorado and the welcoming committee.

They said, well, Ms. Malone, why did you decide to give $25,000, which then was the largest donation made by any organization.

Why would you decide to give $25,000 to the YMCA?

And she said, well, this is not my money, this is God's money.

That was the foundation of who she was.

She was a devout Christian.

I just ran across some papers, and its to her Poro dealers.

And in that she talks about how faith has helped her get through things and how faith will help the dealers get through things.

She talked about how important prayers are.

How important it is to pray and have positive words versus negative words.

She was extremely, extremely religious, like the Moody families.

They were extremely religious.

They were members of the African Methodist Church as well, Presbyterian Church, churches.

And that was really ingrained in her at an extremely early age.

And she demonstrated that throughout her life, into her last days.

- [Narrator] Back in 1914, as Poro was expanding across the world, and three years before construction of the new headquarters building, Annie became engaged to Aaron Malone.

The marriage was also short, only lasting 13 years.

Unfortunately, it's end marked the beginning of several events, sending Poro on a downward spiral.

- Real dapper kind of guy.

Initially he was a Bible salesman, a principal in Quincy, Illinois.

Well dressed, educated.

He went by the name Prof.

He considered himself a professor.

- Aaron was an amazing speaker.

So he could go into a room and charm the pants off people because he knew how to speak.

Annie was not, she was more reserved.

He loved that attention and he shined very well at it.

And she was better at the thinking and more introverted type thought processes, which was a perfect marriage, when you looked at the balance.

However, greed stepped in.

- [Linda] And even though she gave him more responsibility, he became somewhat of a cad.

And I'm trying to put that nicely.

A womanizer, and absconding, even with funds that were not legitimately, his to spend.

- After a certain, very published media account of him having a Valentine's dinner with somebody on the Poro dime, the newspaper, and the court records say that she had changed the locks on the private quarters in Poro.

- Behind the scenes, he was not tending to business.

She was out being philanthropic and extending the Poro College messaging around the country.

And he was supposed to be taking care of business, you know, paying the IRS, what the IRS was due and taking care of those things.

And because of not taking care of those things, he was glad-handing, wanted to run for political office, and was basically living off the money that her empire had built.

- It was reported in 1924 that the 1923 year she paid more taxes than the entire state of Missouri.

White, black, man, woman, she paid more taxes than any other human being in Missouri.

- [Narrator] In 1927, Aaron filed for divorce and demanded half the company in settlement.

- And not only did he file for divorce, but he asked the state of Missouri to take the business into receivership.

The state took it into receivership, and there were lots of different kinds of lawsuits back and forth to stop the receivers from taking records and formulas.

They wanted the formulas to her wonderful hair grower, and there were all sorts of injunctions to stop that as well.

It was settled outside of court.

She basically settled by giving him $200,000 and some property and asked him to go away.

And she walked away with the full ownership of the business.

She stayed in St. Louis until 1930.

And when she left here, she left St. Louis for Chicago and bought four houses in a row.

Called it South Park Poro block is what they called it, and continued her business in Chicago.

- [Narrator] Two years after moving, The Great Depression gripped the country, creating less demand for Poro products.

Later, a fire destroyed one of her buildings while competing products were gaining a share of the market.

- [Linda] There were very, very few people who ever addressed anything for people of color.

By the 1930s, there were plenty of people who were not even of the African-American persuasion that were pushing products, selling products, and they were definitely competing entities that diversified her market even greater.

And in a class addressing a 1934 class.

'34, she warned those graduates that if you are not careful about how you care for this particular business, this hair care industry, you will lose it.

People of different ethnicities will come for this market.

- [Narrator] Even more devastating was the discovery that the company owed the federal government 100,000 in unpaid taxes, which forced Annie to sell the St Louis properties.

During these troubles, she reached out to her Peoria family.

- But the relationship deepened when she moved to Chicago and when she wasn't able to take over the business and she asked her nephews to take, actually her nephews and them, they were lawyers.

They were accountants.

I mean, they were professionals thanks to Aunt Annie.

And so they tried to save the business.

She was very, very, very close to them.

That surprised me.

I was able to see, and still examining and understanding how modest and humble, but how loving and close she was to her family and her family was to her.

- [Narrator] In may of 1957, Annie Malone suffered a fatal stroke.

The company she founded continued until the 1990s.

Today in St. Louis, her charity lives on.

Back in 1919, she donated $10,000 for a new building to house black orphan children.

Today, that organization is known as the Annie Malone Children and Family Services Center, and each year in May, they host a parade in her memory.

- You know, we can see her giving nature.

She was just a philanthropist philanthropist.

She was just an unbelievable person behind the scenes.

And most of it we don't know about because she was just doing this behind the scenes without any fanfare.

- She was a visionary, and really had a deep commitment on the terms of making things better for her race, and help them become more like her, business icons.

- It was something that she put her whole heart into, and it wasn't just as a black woman, it was as a human being.

Having the heart and wanting to always see the best in people, no matter what is extremely difficult, especially when people show you a very ugly side.

She walked a very fine line in this world.

She wasn't perfect, but she was perfectly Annie.

- I want to change the perception of African-Americans.

I want African-Americans to know that they can become the next Annie Malone, with a vision and a plan and a spiritual foundation.

I want the world to know how great this lady was.

(inspiring music) - [Announcer] This program was made possible in part by the Stacey Fund for Local Productions.