page_title: Annie Turnbo Malone
section_title: Career
hierarchical_section_title: Annie Turnbo Malone / Career
caption_attribution_description: English: Annie Malone, 1921
context_page_description: Annie Minerva Turnbo Malone was an American businesswoman, inventor and philanthropist. She is thought to be one of the first African American women to become a millionaire. In the first three decades of the 20th century, she founded and developed a large and prominent commercial and educational enterprise centered on cosmetics for African-American women.
context_section_description: By the beginning of the 1900s, Turnbo moved with her older siblings to Lovejoy, now known as Brooklyn, Illinois. While experimenting with hair and different hair-care products, she developed and manufactured her own line of non-damaging hair straighteners, special oils, and hair-stimulant products for African-American women. She named her new product “Wonderful Hair Grower”. To promote her new product, Turnbo sold the Wonderful Hair Grower in bottles door-to-door. Her products and sales began to revolutionize hair-care methods for all African Americans.
  In 1902, Turnbo moved to a thriving St. Louis, where she and three hired assistants sold her hair-care products door-to-door. As part of her marketing, she gave away free treatments to attract more customers.
  Due to the high demand for her product in St. Louis, Turnbo opened her first shop in 1902 at 2223 Market Street. She also launched a wide advertising campaign in the black press, held news conferences, toured many southern states, and recruited many women whom she trained to sell her products.
  One of her selling agents, Sarah Breedlove Davis, later known as Madam C. J. Walker, operated first in St. Louis and later in Denver, Colorado until a disagreement led Walker to leave the company. Walker took the original Poro formula and created her own brand of it. This development was one of the reasons which led then Turnbo to copyright her products under the name "Poro" because of what she called fraudulent imitations and to discourage counterfeit versions. Poro may have received this name from a Mende word for devotional society or it may be a combination of the married names of Annie Pope and her sister Laura Roberts. Due to the growth in her business, in 1910 Turnbo moved to a larger facility on 3100 Pine Street.
  In 1918, she established Poro College, a cosmetology school and center. The building included a manufacturing plant, a retail store where Poro products were sold, business offices, a 500-seat auditorium, dining and meeting rooms, a roof garden, dormitory, gymnasium, bakery, and chapel. It served the African-American community as a center for religious and social functions.
  The College's curriculum addressed the whole student; students were coached on personal style for work: on walking, talking, and a style of dress designed to maintain a solid persona. Poro College employed nearly 200 people in St. Louis. Through its school and franchise businesses, the college created jobs for almost 75,000 women in North and South America, Africa and the Philippines.
  By the 1920s, Annie Turnbo Malone had become a multi-millionaire. In 1924 she paid income tax of nearly $40,000, reportedly the highest in Missouri. While extremely wealthy, Malone lived modestly, giving thousands of dollars to the local black YMCA and the Howard University College of Medicine in Washington, DC. She also donated money to the St. Louis Colored Orphans Home, where she served as president on the board of directors from 1919 to 1943. With her help, in 1922 the Home bought a facility at 2612 Goode Avenue (which was renamed Annie Malone Drive in her honor).
  The Orphans Home is located in the historic Ville neighborhood. Upgraded and expanded, the facility was renamed in the entrepreneur's honor as the Annie Malone Children and Family Service Center. As well as funding many programs, Turnbo Malone ensured that her employees, all African American, were paid well and given opportunities for advancement.
  Her business thrived until 1927, when her husband filed for divorce. Having served as president of the company, he demanded half of the business' value, based on his claim that his contributions had been integral to its success. The divorce suit forced Poro College into a court-ordered receivership. With support from her employees and powerful figures such as Mary McLeod Bethune, she negotiated a settlement of $200,000. This affirmed her as the sole owner of Poro College, and the divorce was granted.
  After the divorce, Turnbo moved most of her business to Chicago's South Parkway, where she bought an entir
caption: Annie Malone, 1921[18]
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