Walker, A'Lelia

original name Lelia McWilliams

(born June 6, 1885, Vicksburg, Miss., U.S.—died Aug. 16, 1931, Long Branch, N.J.) American businesswoman associated with the Harlem Renaissance as a patron of the arts who provided an intellectual forum for the black literati of New York City during the 1920s.

Walker grew up in St. Louis, Missouri, and attended Knoxville College in Tennessee before going to work for her mother, Madame C.J. Walker (Sarah Breedlove Walker), who had made a fortune in the hair-care business. When her mother died in 1919, Walker inherited the business and the lavish family estate, Villa Lewaro, in Irvington, NewYork. In the 1920s she entertained writers and artists at Villa Lewaro and at her apartment and her town house in New York City. Her regular guests at the town house—which she named The Dark Tower after Countee Cullen's column by that name—included Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, James Weldon Johnson, Jean Toomer, and other writers associated with the Harlem Renaissance.