To fans of HBO’s “Boardwalk Empire,” the history of Atlantic City in the early 20th century is personified by Enoch “Nucky” Johnson. But the swaggering Prohibition-era political boss wasn’t the only power broker to rule the boards.
Have you heard, for instance, of Madam Washington?
Sara Spencer Washington on the cover of Apex News magazine. (Courtesy Royston Scott)
Thanks to beauty inventions like her signature pomade, Glossatina — a go-to hair product for black women across the country nearly a century ago — onetime hair salon owner Sara Spencer Washington became one of New Jersey’s first black millionaires.
Washington’s success made her a high-profile figure in the 1930s and ’40s, though she was still barred from “whites only” restaurants and beaches. But the Madam used her clout and power to push for equal rights — demanding a seat at a restaurant so others could sit, too, and starting her own calendar of social events so that black locals and tourists could enjoy the resort town.
A short documentary film about the black business pioneer, “The Sara Spencer Washington Story,” will premiere on Feb. 11 at the New Jersey Film Festival at Rutgers University and screen in April at the San Diego Black Film Festival.
“Not only was she an entrepreneur, she was a social activist,” says Royston Scott, the film’s director and Washington’s great-grandnephew. “She refused to be held back by white society.”
With Black History Month upon us — and given the highly-charged political discussions revolving around race in recent years — Washington’s story seems especially resonant. Even her business model made her an agent of change. Her beauty company, Apex, launched thousands of black women — who sold her products and opened salons with her help — into financial independence. At the 1939 World’s Fair in New York, Washington was honored as a “most distinguished businesswoman.”
Before the institutions were sold to their managers in the 1950s, Washington had Apex beauty schools in Atlantic City, Philadelphia, Newark, New York, Atlanta, Chicago, Cuba and South Africa.
In Atlantic City, she presided over a compounding lab, factory, warehouse, office, drug store and resort.
She also owned the Brigantine Hotel, and, just outside the city, opened the first black-owned golf course on the East Coast.
“I knew we had an important legacy but my mother was reticent to talk about it,” says Scott, 54. His mother, Joan Cross Washington, was the Madam’s adopted daughter and biological grandniece. A model who became the face of Apex, she lived as a debutante in Washington’s Atlantic City mansion at Indiana and Arctic avenues and became heiress to the Madam’s fortune after she died in 1953.
Scott never met his adoptive grandmother, but a painting of Washington hung in the living room when he was growing up, and his mother kept a trove of news clippings that provided snapshots of Washington’s legacy. To fill in the gaps about his famous forebear — his mother died in 2005 — Scott interviewed former Apex salespeople, models and students.
In Atlantic City, the Apex business included a compounding lab, warehouse and office. Washington also owned a local resort, farm and the Brigantine Hotel. (Courtesy Royston Scott)
Etta Nelson Francisco, who worked at Apex Drug Store and appears in the film, talks about how Madam Washington would always mentor young women on etiquette and appearance.
“She said, ‘You curl your hair, you make yourself look pretty. We are just as attractive as white people.’ … She made us all feel important.”
In addition to the Glossatina pomade, Apex products, which ranged in cost from 35 to 50 cents, included a curl removal system, skin bleach and hair growth formulas.
“A lot of black people wanted to emulate white hairstyles — straight, sleek, bobbed hair,” Scott says.
According to information compiled by the Atlantic City Free Public Library, Washington had moved to the resort town in 1913 to help her ailing mother with the promise of soothing ocean air. What would become Apex started out as a door-to-door enterprise.
Inspired by the success of another black millionaire — Madam C.J. Walker, her predecessor in the beauty products business at the turn of the century — Washington, a Virginia native, opened a hair salon in Atlantic City, where she began developing hair products and teaching.
Washington had learned dressmaking, but she also studied business at Northwestern University and earned a chemistry degree at Columbia University, Scott says. Her ads urged women to become beauty agents and sell the Apex products. With the Apex system, women were told they could make between $60 and $90 per week.
She started out in the 1920s with one Apex beauty school in Atlantic City, and her relationship with students often didn’t end at graduation.
“She would give them a loan to start a salon and give them a deal on using the Apex products so women could become self-sufficient,” Scott says. Apex produced thousands of graduates every year.
“Madam Sara Spencer Washington was an amazing, towering figure,” says Vicki Gold Levi, an Atlantic City historian. “She broke her own glass ceiling for black women. She used her money and power in a very constructive way.”
An ad for Apex beauty products. One of the most successful items in the line was Glossatina, a hair pomade. (Courtesy Royston Scott)
In addition to creating Apex Rest, a resort with a dancing pavilion, tennis courts, croquet and its own farm at Indiana and Ontario avenues, Washington bought the Brigantine Hotel and created the first integrated beachfront in Atlantic City. Previously, black beach-goers — including luminaries like Martin Luther King Jr. and Sammy Davis Jr. — were relegated to two blocks of sand between Missouri and Mississippi avenues called Chicken Bone Beach.
Washington also made waves at Captain Starn’s, a “whites-only” Atlantic City Seafood restaurant that refused to seat the haircare giant.
“She took them to court and sued them and won,” Scott says.
Dismayed that black entrants would never win the contests at Atlantic City’s Easter parade, Washington started her own event, complete with Champagne brunch and fashion show. When she was similarly displeased with the local golf course, she opened Apex Golf Course in the 1940s, the first black-owned golf course on the East Coast, now home to Pomona Golf and Country Club.
Washington and Apex appear in “The Northside,” a book about Atlantic City’s African American community, a “city within a city,” by Nelson Johnson, Atlantic County superior court judge and author of “Boardwalk Empire,” the 2002 book upon which the HBO series was based.
During World War II, Washington raised hundreds of thousands of dollars in savings bonds and bought her own $10,000 bond. As a result, Johnson says, the government invited her to Maine to christen the S.S. Harriet Tubman.
Despite the many obstacles that black citizens faced during the time, Washington, he says, was known for her business acumen and being quite persuasive — “Someone that you always took seriously, someone that you did not dare ignore.”
“The Sara Spencer Washington Story” premieres at the New Jersey Film Festival at 7 p.m. in Voorhees Hall No. 105 (71 Hamilton St.) at Rutgers University in New Brunswick on Feb. 11. Admission $12. The New Jersey Film Festival runs through March 31; njfilmfest.com
Amy Kuperinsky may be reached at akuperinsky@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @AmyKup or on Facebook.
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