Mar 20, 2025 - Sale 2697

Sale 2697 - Lot 392

Unsold
Estimate: $ 2,500 - $ 3,500
(WOMEN'S HISTORY--BEAUTY.) A Beauty Book Written by Stars of Stage and Screen. Folding illustrated leaflet, 8 pages on one 7 x 16½-inch sheet; folds, minimal wear. [Memphis, TN?], circa 1920s
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Additional Details

A catalog for Madame Mamie Hightower's Golden Brown Beauty Preparations, featuring 7 endorsements including singers Rosa Henderson and Ethel Waters.

The company was inspired by the success of Madame Walker's beauty supply empire. Circa 1921, Hessig-Ellis, a white-owned Memphis company, set up a separate division with 35 Black employees called Madame Mamie Hightower's Golden Brown Beauty Preparations.

Mamie Hightower (1867-1927) was an actual person--wife of a porter at Hessig-Ellis--but apparently served only as a figurehead (see Martha Patterson, "The American New Woman Revisited," pages 269-270). The company continued long after Hightower's death in 1927. We don't know for certain what role Mamie ever played in the company, but in 1930 after her death, her husband Zack remained a drugstore porter.