Photo credit: Anya Chibis
We’re honored to spotlight A’Lelia Bundles, Emmy-winning journalist, acclaimed biographer, and fierce champion of Black women’ s history.
For more than four decades, Bundles has preserved and elevated the legacies of her groundbreaking foremothers, most notably in her bestselling book On Her Own Ground: The Life and Times of Madam C.J. Walker, which inspired the Netflix series Self Made starring Octavia Spencer. As the founder of the Madam Walker Family Archives, Bundles curates the largest private collection of photographs, letters and memorabilia chronicling the life of her great-great-grandmother, the pioneering beauty entrepreneur and philanthropist Madam C.J. Walker.
A’Lelia’s most recent work, Joy Goddess: A’Lelia Walker and the Harlem Renaissance (Scribner, 2025), is a sweeping biography of her great-grandmother A’Lelia Walker, an iconic patron of the arts who created space for Black artists, writers, and musicians during one of the most culturally vibrant eras in American history. With Joy Goddess, Bundles cements herself as a leading voice in reframing the narrative of Black women’s influence, both on stage and behind the scenes.
A graduate of Harvard and Columbia Journalism School, Bundles spent three decades in network television news serving as a producer and executive at NBC and ABC News. Her work in media, along with her extensive board service from Columbia University to the National Archives Foundation, reflects a lifelong commitment to truth-telling, public history and legacy-building.
In this PrimeTime interview from this past November, Bundles joined Tracy Chiles McGhee to illuminate the roots of Black women’s philanthropy in dollars as well as in love, labor and leadership. Drawing from Madam C.J. Walker’s early days as a washerwoman and clubwoman to her bold anti-lynching activism, Bundles reveals how Walker wove giving into the fabric of her vision for empowerment. She also shares how those values were passed down to A’Lelia Walker, whose cultural salons shaped the Harlem Renaissance.
Bundles reminds us that philanthropy is not reserved for the wealthy. Her own life echoes that truth, as she continues to invest her time, talent and storytelling brilliance in lifting up generations past and present.
Watch the powerful conversation here, available on Unerased | Black Women Speak Amplified YouTube channel. And be sure to add Joy Goddess to your summer reading list!
