In 1924, a Black woman paid nearly forty thousand dollars in Missouri state income tax, more than anyone else in the entire state. White industrialists and railroad barons counted their fortunes, but this woman had quietly built an empire that rivaled the most powerful men in America. Her name was Annie Turnbo Malone, and on a full city block in St. Louis, she had constructed a palace that left visitors speechless, a building so magnificent and technologically advanced that newspapers called it one of the biggest events of the season.
What made her story remarkable was where she started. Annie Malone was born just a few years after the Civil War, the daughter of formerly enslaved parents who had escaped Kentucky in search of freedom. She grew up an orphan, too sick to finish high school, with nothing but her curiosity and her chemistry experiments to guide her. By her fifties, she had become the wealthiest Black woman in America, driving one of the first Rolls-Royces in St.
Louis while building mansions that made even the most privileged families gasp with envy. Annie Manurva Turnbo was born on August 9, 1869, on a small farm near Metropolis, Illinois. Her father, Robert Turnbo, had served with the Union’s first Kentucky cavalry, fighting for the freedom so many had been denied. After the war, he and his wife Isabella settled in Metropolis and raised eleven children.
Annie was their tenth. The family had survived slavery and war, but they could not survive poverty and illness. Both parents died while Annie was still young, leaving her an orphan passed from one sibling to another until she landed in Peoria with her sister Ada. Annie was a fragile child, often too sick to attend school.
She enrolled in Peoria High School but was forced to withdraw before graduation. Her body was too weak, but her mind was not. Lying in bed during her illnesses, she developed a fierce curiosity about chemistry, about how substances could be combined and transformed. While other girls worried about social calls, Annie mixed compounds and tested formulas.
She also spent hours practicing hairdressing on her sisters, watching them wince in pain from the harsh products available at the time. Black women used goose fat, bacon grease, and chemical straighteners that burned their skin and destroyed their hair follicles. Annie watched the bald patches and scarring and asked herself a simple question: why should it be this way? By 1900, she had moved with her siblings to Lovejoy, Illinois, just across the Mississippi River from St.
Louis. There she tested formula after formula until she developed something revolutionary. Her product, which she called Wonderful Hair Grower, could straighten Black hair without burning or damage. She also developed special oils and what some believe was one of the first versions of the pressing comb.
These were scientific innovations created by a woman who had never finished high school. But no store would carry her products. In Jim Crow America, Black entrepreneurs were shut out of traditional distribution channels. Department stores and pharmacies would not stock items made by a Black woman.
Annie loaded her products into a buggy and went door to door, demonstrating her treatments on porches and in kitchens across Illinois and Missouri. Word spread from neighbor to neighbor, from church to church. By 1902, her business had grown so large that she chose St. Louis, which was preparing to host the 1904 World’s Fair and millions of visitors.
She opened her first shop at 2223 Market Street. The World’s Fair was a turning point. Twenty million visitors came to see the wonders of the modern age, and thousands of Black visitors discovered Annie’s products and brought samples home to their communities. As her business expanded, she copyrighted her products under the name Poro in 1906.
The name had deep significance, possibly from a West African word referring to physical and spiritual growth. Whatever its origin, Poro would become synonymous with Black excellence in beauty and business. Annie divorced her first husband after realizing he was more interested in her wealth than in her. That pattern would repeat with devastating consequences years later.
She focused on building her business, and by 1910 Poro had outgrown its Market Street location. Black women from coast to coast were becoming Poro agents, earning incomes far exceeding what they could make as domestic servants. In 1914, Annie married again. Aaron Eugene Malone was a former teacher who joined the company as president.
Together they planned something unprecedented: a purpose-built campus that would serve as both business headquarters and a monument to Black achievement. In 1917, construction began on the most magnificent structure ever built by a Black entrepreneur. The site was at 4300 St. Ferdinand Avenue in the Ville, St.
Louis’s historic Black neighborhood. The building was designed by Albert B. Groves, a distinguished architect, and Annie worked closely with him, insisting the structure reflect both the excellence of her products and the dignity of her people. When Poro College officially opened in 1918, the St.
Louis Argus called it one of the biggest events of the season. The building covered an entire city block, three acres of prime real estate. It rose four stories with a mezzanine basement and a magnificent rooftop garden. The main floor housed thirty-one booths for shampooing, massaging, manicuring, and hair styling.
Students received complete training in the Poro system, learning hair care, posture, speech, professional dress, and business management. But the building offered far more than a beauty school. There was an auditorium that seated eight hundred people, a fully equipped gymnasium, a chapel, a cafeteria and bakery that fed hundreds daily, an ice cream parlor, medical offices that provided health care to a community often shut out of white hospitals, and dormitories housing students from across the country. High above it all, in an apartment within the building itself, Annie and Aaron Malone made their home.
She could step from her private quarters onto the rooftop garden and gaze out over the city she was helping to transform. The price tag was $350,000, the equivalent of nearly six million dollars today. The Broadax newspaper reported something even more remarkable: not a dollar was owed to any living soul. Annie Malone had built her palace outright, with no mortgage, no debt, and no white investors to answer to.
As the 1920s dawned, Poro College became the beating heart of Black St. Louis, a city within a city. In an era when Black people were forced to use separate water fountains and separate entrances, here was a place where they were honored guests. The auditorium hosted the finest Black performers and speakers of the age, from Dr.
Mary Fitzbutler Waring, president of the National Association of Colored Women’s Clubs, to opera singer Anita Patti Brown to diplomat Lester Walton. Newspaper reporters were sometimes assigned specifically to cover the college’s social calendar because events occurred so frequently. Annie understood that her building served a purpose beyond profit. In a segregated city, Black people needed gathering spaces that affirmed their worth.
The college also became an engine of economic advancement. By 1920, Poro employed three hundred people locally, and seventy-five thousand Poro agents worked across North America, the Caribbean, Africa, and the Philippines. A domestic servant in the 1920s might earn a few dollars per week scrubbing floors for white families. A Poro agent could earn ten times that amount working for herself, setting her own hours and building her own clientele.
Annie Malone had created a pathway to financial independence for tens of thousands of Black women. Among those who walked through Poro’s doors was a young woman named Sarah Breedlove Davis, better known as Madame C. J. Walker.
Walker worked as a Poro agent in St. Louis before starting her own competing company. The relationship between the two pioneers became complicated, with Walker allegedly taking elements of the Poro formula and system. But Walker’s eventual fame obscured Malone’s foundational role in the industry.
For decades, Walker received credit as the first Black female millionaire, achievements that more properly belong to Annie Malone. By the early 1920s, Annie had achieved something unprecedented. In 1920, Poro reported assets of $14 million, roughly equivalent to $186 million today. In 1924, she paid nearly $40,000 in Missouri state income tax, making her one of the highest-paying taxpayers of any race in the state.
She drove one of the first Rolls-Royces in St. Louis. Headlines buzzed when her nieces arrived at charity events in their own luxury vehicles. She bought homes for her siblings, educated her nieces and nephews, and showered loyal employees with lavish gifts.
But Annie Malone understood that fortune carried obligation. She donated $25,000 to Howard University’s medical school, at the time the largest gift the institution had ever received from a Black donor. She gave $25,000 to help build the St. Louis Colored YMCA.
She contributed to the Tuskegee Institute, to orphanages, to churches and missions. She financed two full-time students at every historically Black college in America year after year. Her most personal focus was the St. Louis Colored Orphans Home, perhaps because she herself had been an orphan.
She donated the first $10,000 to build the home’s new facility and served as president of its board from 1919 to 1943. The institution would eventually be renamed the Annie Malone Children’s Home. In September 1927, disaster struck St. Louis.
A devastating tornado tore through northern parts of the city, ripping through heavily populated Black neighborhoods. More than seventy people died, over a thousand were injured, and thousands were left with nowhere to go. Annie was not even in St. Louis when the storm hit, but the moment she heard the news, she sent a telegram with instructions that revealed the true character of her enterprise.
Open up the doors of Poro College, she commanded. Be of assistance to as many people as you can. For weeks afterward, Poro College served as a principal relief unit for the American Red Cross. Up to five thousand people found shelter within its walls.
Staff members who had been trained to style hair instead served meals, distributed clothing, and comforted the grieving. She had built something that could hold her people when the world fell apart around them. But another storm was brewing, one that would not come from the sky. For years, the marriage between Annie and Aaron Malone had shown signs of strain.
Aaron had served as president and chief manager of Poro, giving him significant control over daily operations. But the company had always belonged to Annie. As the 1920s progressed, Aaron began positioning himself to claim credit for Poro’s success, cultivating relationships with Black leaders and politicians, planting seeds of doubt. In 1927, the same year as the tornado, Aaron filed for divorce and demanded half of everything: half the company, half the buildings, half the fortune Annie had accumulated through decades of work that began long before she knew his name.
The lawsuit sent shock waves through Black America. Aaron marshaled his supporters, parading Black leaders who testified to his essential role. He painted himself as the architect of the empire. The court placed Poro College into receivership, meaning neither Annie nor Aaron could fully control the company.
But Annie had not survived orphanhood, illness, racism, and poverty only to be defeated by a greedy husband. Poro workers, most of them Black women who owed their economic independence to Annie’s vision, rallied to her defense. Church leaders spoke out in her support. The Black press sided with her.
And crucially, Mary McLeod Bethune, the most prominent Black woman in America, threw her considerable influence behind Annie. Bethune understood the larger implications. If Aaron could successfully claim half of his wife’s fortune simply because he had served as a manager, what message would that send to Black women everywhere? After months of legal battle, Annie negotiated a settlement.
She paid Aaron $200,000, equivalent to more than $3 million today. The divorce was granted, and Annie was confirmed as the sole owner of Poro College. But the victory came at a cost, and she had learned a painful lesson about trust. After the divorce, Annie made a decision that would reshape the final chapter of her career.
She would move her headquarters to Chicago. Chicago, in my opinion, is the capital of Negro America, she told the Afro-American newspaper. The people here are accomplishing things. In 1930, she arrived in spectacular fashion, traveling in caravan style with approximately 150 Poro employees and their families.
She had acquired property on South Parkway, now Martin Luther King Jr. Drive: not one building, but four magnificent Gothic mansions occupying an entire city block. Robert S. Abbott, founder of the Chicago Defender, welcomed her with a lavish reception.
She had arrived. But the world had changed. The stock market had crashed months before her arrival, plunging America into the Great Depression. Her customers suddenly had to choose between hair treatments and food for their children.
Sales declined month after month. Yet Annie refused to abandon her workers. While other companies laid off staff by the thousands, she kept her people employed as long as she possibly could. She continued her charitable work as well, even when prudence might have counseled otherwise.
Meanwhile, legal troubles multiplied. In 1937, a former employee filed suit against her, claiming credit for Poro’s success, an echo of her ex-husband’s claims. To settle the lawsuit, Annie was forced to sell her beloved St. Louis property.
The building that had sheltered tornado victims and trained tens of thousands of women passed out of her hands forever. In January 1940, a fire swept through one of her Chicago mansions, causing $50,000 in damage. She was now in her seventies, facing rebuilding once again. Perhaps the cruelest blow came from the government she had always faithfully supported.
During the 1920s, the federal government had imposed a 20 percent excise tax on luxury goods, including hair care products. Disputes arose about what Annie owed. By 1943, the government claimed she owed nearly $100,000 in back taxes. The legal battles dragged on for years.
By 1951, the government had seized control of Poro. Most of the property was sold to pay the disputed taxes. Annie watched helplessly as her life’s work was dismantled piece by piece. Yet even in her darkest days, she refused to surrender completely.
She kept some version of Poro operating on a modest scale. By the time of her death, Poro Beauty Colleges were still functioning in more than thirty American cities. She maintained her connection to the St. Louis Colored Orphans Home, which was renamed the Annie Malone Children’s Home in 1946 in her honor.
She continued to appear at churches and civic gatherings throughout the forties and fifties, giving speeches about women’s empowerment and economic independence. The fact that her own fortune had been lost made the message more poignant, not less. Those who knew her in her final years described a woman of remarkable dignity. She dressed impeccably, carried herself with grace, and never complained.
The Rolls-Royce was long gone. The mansions had passed to other hands. She lived modestly in Chicago, counting her pennies like everyone else. But she never expressed bitterness.
Every scholarship student who graduated, every orphan who found a home, every woman who built a career as a Poro agent, all of them were her legacy. Thomas Dorsey, the father of gospel music, reportedly wrote his famous hymn Precious Lord, Take My Hand while sitting at a piano inside one of her Chicago mansions in 1932 after learning of the death of his wife and infant child. That was the kind of legacy no government could seize. On May 10, 1957, Annie Turnbo Malone suffered a stroke at Provident Hospital in Chicago.
She was eighty-seven years old. She died that same day. Childless herself, she had bequeathed her business and remaining fortune to her nieces and nephews. But the estate that had once been worth $14 million was now valued at just $100,000.
The rest had gone to charity, to legal battles, to taxes. She was laid to rest at Burr Oak Cemetery in Alsip, Illinois, beneath a simple grave marker befitting a woman who had always believed that true wealth was measured not in monuments but in lives transformed. In the decades following her death, her story faded from public memory. Madame C.
J. Walker received most of the credit for pioneering the Black beauty industry. The buildings she had built were demolished. Poro College in St.
Louis was razed in 1965 to make way for a public housing complex. The Chicago mansions eventually met the same fate. The physical evidence of her achievements disappeared, and with it much of her story. But history has a way of correcting itself.
In recent years, scholars and community members have begun to reclaim her rightful place. The Annie Malone Historical Society, founded by Linda Nance, has worked tirelessly to preserve her legacy. In 2020, the Netflix miniseries Self-Made brought renewed attention to the rivalry between Annie Malone and Madame C. J.
Walker, sparking public curiosity about who these women really were. Historians have increasingly recognized that Annie Malone, not Walker, was likely the first Black female millionaire in America. Every May since 1910, St. Louis has hosted the Annie Malone Mayday Parade, one of the oldest and largest Black parades in the nation.
The Annie Malone Children and Family Service Center continues to serve the community she loved, providing foster care, adoption services, crisis intervention, and family support. When tornadoes strike St. Louis as they did in 1927, the organization named for her still opens its doors. Annie Malone’s mansions were never just buildings.
They were declarations of possibility in a world designed to deny Black achievement. When she constructed Poro College, she was announcing that Black Americans could build institutions rivaling anything in America. When she purchased the Gothic mansions in Chicago, she was claiming space in a neighborhood that had once excluded Black residents. The mansions are gone now, but their meaning endures.
Every Black-owned business that rises today, every Black entrepreneur who dreams big, every woman who builds an empire from her kitchen table walks a path that Annie Malone helped to clear. She taught that obstacles are invitations to innovate. When stores refused her products, she created a direct sales model that employed tens of thousands. When banks would not lend to Black businesses, she built her empire without debt.
She taught that generosity is not weakness. She never regretted a single donation. She taught that legacy is measured in lives, not ledgers. Her fortune was lost and her buildings demolished, but the people she helped went on to help others, and that chain of impact continues to this day.
She was born just four years after slavery ended, the orphaned daughter of people who had been property under American law. She died having built and lost a fortune, having raised up tens of thousands of women, having given away more than most people will ever earn. She lived ninety years in a country that did everything possible to hold her back, and still she prevailed. The orphan girl who dreamed of chemistry became the empress of an industry.
The sick child who could not finish high school built colleges that trained tens of thousands. The woman who lost everything still managed to leave behind more than most will ever have. That is the legacy of Annie Malone, and that is the story that deserves to be told until everyone knows her name.