Marjorie Stewart Joyner

She was born in 1896, in Monterey, Virginia. she was the granddaughter of a slave and a white slave-owner. She moved to Chicago in 1912, and shortly thereafter, she began studying cosmetology. She graduated A.B. Molar Beauty School in Chicago in 1916, the first African American to achieve this. That year, at the age of 20, she married podiatrist Robert E. Joyner and opened her salon. That was where she met Madam C. J. Walker, an African American beauty entrepreneur, and the owner of a cosmetic empire.

Always a lover of women's cosmetics, Joyner went to work for her and oversaw 200 of Madame Walker's beauty schools as the national adviser. A major role was sending Walker's hair stylists door-to-door, dressed in black skirts and white blouses with black satchels containing a range of beauty products that were applied in the customer's house. Joyner taught some 15,000 stylists over her fifty-year career. She was also a leader in developing new products, such as her permanent wave machine. She helped write the first cosmetology laws for the state of Illinois, and founded a sorority and fraternity, Alpha Chi Pi Omega on October 27, 1945 as well as a national association for black beauticians.
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