Marjorie Joyner

Marjorie Stewart was born on the twenty-fourth of October 1896 at Monterey, Virginia, the daughter of George Emmanuel Stewart — a Virginia schoolteacher — and Annie Dougherty Stewart. She was raised at the family relocation to Chicago in 1912 in the principal post-Great-Migration Chicago Black South Side community.

She completed the principal A. B. Molar Beauty School at Chicago in 1916 — the first Black-American graduate of the Molar Beauty School in the principal post-1916 Chicago commercial cosmetology period — and opened the principal Marjorie Joyner Beauty Salon at Chicago in 1916.

She was married on the fourth of April 1916 at Chicago to Robert E. Joyner — a Chicago podiatrist — and was married from 1916 to her husband's death in 1973.

She was hired in 1924 by the principal Madam C. J. Walker Manufacturing Company at Indianapolis as the principal Chicago-area chief instructor of the principal Walker Company beauty-culturist school programme — and held the principal Walker Company chief-instructor position from 1924 to 1974.

She filed the principal patent application for the principal permanent-wave machine on the sixteenth of May 1928 — and was granted the principal patent number 1,693,515 on the twenty-seventh of November 1928. The principal Joyner permanent-wave machine was the principal first commercial permanent-wave machine of the principal post-1928 American hair-care commercial period and was retailed across the principal Walker Company commercial-sales programme of the late 1920s and 1930s.

She filed the principal patent application for the principal scalp protector on the eleventh of October 1929 — and was granted the principal patent number 1,820,807 on the twenty-fifth of August 1931.

She was the principal first Black-American woman to receive a United States patent for a principal commercial cosmetology product.

She co-founded with the principal Black-American journalist Mary McLeod Bethune the principal National Council of Negro Women at Washington, D.C. in 1935 — and held the principal National Council of Negro Women board membership from 1935 to her death.

She co-founded with the principal Black-American businesswoman Sarah Spencer Washington (placed in this archive) the principal United Beauty School Owners and Teachers Association in 1945 — and was the principal post-1945 principal Black-American national hair-care-education-and-business-association leader of the principal post-Second-World-War American hair-care commercial period.

She was named in 1990 the principal subject of the Smithsonian Institution Anacostia Museum permanent exhibition on the principal Black-American hair-care-commercial-and-business tradition.

She died at Chicago on the twenty-seventh of December 1994 of natural causes, at ninety-eight.

She is honored here as the inventor of the permanent-wave machine.