Marjorie Stewart Joyner (October 24, 1896 – December 7, 1994) was born in 1896, in Monterey, Virginia. She was the granddaughter of a slave owner and a slave. In 1912, she moved to Chicago and began studying cosmetology. She graduated A.B. Molar Beauty School in Chicago in 1916, the first African American to achieve this. There she met Madam C.J. Walker, an African American beauty entrepreneur, and the owner of a cosmetic empire. Always an advoca...
more
Marjorie Stewart Joyner (October 24, 1896 – December 7, 1994) was born in 1896, in Monterey, Virginia. She was the granddaughter of a slave owner and a slave. In 1912, she moved to Chicago and began studying cosmetology. She graduated A.B. Molar Beauty School in Chicago in 1916, the first African American to achieve this. There she met Madam C.J. Walker, an African American beauty entrepreneur, and the owner of a cosmetic empire. Always an advocate of beauty for women, Joyner went to work for her and oversaw 200 of Madame Walker's beauty schools as the national advisor.
In 1926, she started looking for an easier way for African American women to straighten their hair. She took her inspiration from a pot roast cooking with rods inserted to speed the process. Joyner experimented initially with pot roast rods and soon invented a permanent wave machine that could be used to curl or straighten hair by wrapping it on rods above the person's head and then cooking them to set the hair. This...
less
