Joe Louis Dudley, who expanded the kitchen table business he started with his then-wife into the largest black-owned hair care company in the Southeast and founded a school that trained tens of thousands of hairdressers, died in February. He died on the 8th at his home in Kernersville, North Carolina, a suburb of Winston-Salem, at the age of 86.
The cause was complications from Parkinson's disease, said his daughter Ursula Dudley Oglesby.
In the 1960s, Joe and Eunice Dudley were newlyweds and sold SB Fuller beauty products door-to-door in New York City. Fuller, who has no connection to the venerable Fuller Brush Company, which sells products door-to-door, is a Chicago-based black businessman who preached the gospel of progress through hard work and who wanted women to buy cosmetics. He made millions of dollars during his time there. their home.
Absorbing his training and message, the Dudley family took Fuller's door-to-door business to North Carolina. And when Fuller had manufacturing problems, it began making its own products, including Scalp His Cream, Oil His Shampoo, and pomade. I mixed these up at home and poured them into old mayonnaise jars.
Mr. Dudley stirred the mixture in a steel drum with a spatula the size of a canoe paddle. Dudley typed up the labels, and after the product had cooled overnight to harden, the children screwed on the lids of the jars.
Dudley's kitchen was not intended for cooking meals, according to Dudley's phone calls.
But soon they moved operations out of the kitchen. After a stint in Chicago, where they took over the failing Fuller business, the Dudleys returned to North Carolina and built their first factory in Greensboro, adding Fuller products to their line.
They opened Dudley Beauty Schools in North Carolina, Chicago, and Washington, DC.
They also acquired radio stations, hotels, travel agencies, and built event centers. Like his mentor, Mr. Fuller, Mr. Dudley was a sales evangelist and a man of devout Christian faith. He recruited local college students as well as down-on-his-luck people to work for him, including those who were incarcerated and those with drug problems.
Employees were required to open savings accounts, and sales meetings often began with a song. It was Mr. Dudley's habit to turn pop tunes into Dudley cheers, as he did with Donna Summer's disco hit “Bad Girls.”
Now the people of Dudley know how to build
Learn how to build
And they accomplish it through sheer force of will.
with strength of will
We didn't come to Kernersville to sit
sitting
we became the talk of the town
We're bad, Dudley.
bad dudley
we are big bad dudley
Beep, beep
Yes Yes
Toot, Toot
Mr. Dudley set a goal of becoming a millionaire by the age of 40, and he achieved that goal. For several decades, the company's annual sales reached his $40 million.
Comedian Chris Rock once visited the Dudley factory in Kernersville while making the 2009 documentary “Good Hair.” In this film, he explores the mysteries and rituals of black hair care, as well as troubling standards of beauty and race, to answer his young daughter's question, “Why isn't my hair pretty?” I was aiming to do that.
The Dudley Company's headquarters was a center for black beauty products, and Locke went there to learn about the Relaxer, a particularly powerful curling iron. He was appalled by the economic situation. He was told that a 7,000-pound vat of relaxer was worth $18,000.
In the film, as the camera pans to the Dudley mansion, Mr. Locke declares, “If you can make a black woman happy enough, you can live like a king.”
Joe Louis Dudley, named after the boxing legend, was born on May 9, 1937, on the coast of Aurora, North Carolina, the fifth of 11 children. His parents, Clara (Yates) and Gilmer Dudley, were farmers who grew tobacco and sweet potatoes. The family of 14, including Joe's enslaved grandfather Balram Dudley, lived together in a crowded three-room farmhouse. Joe, who stutters, was suspended from school in his first year when his teacher labeled him “mentally retarded” using the cruel terminology of the time.
“Prove them wrong, Joe,'' his mother encouraged him, he often recalled. “Prove them wrong.”
He studied business administration at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical College (now North Carolina A&T State University), a historically black university. It took him six years to graduate because he also worked at a poultry factory for a time.
Later, while living with his aunt in Brooklyn, one day he saw a smart-looking young man selling beauty products in his neighborhood. Intrigued, he bought his $10 kit from the man's company, which turned out to be his SB Fuller, and began promoting himself.
It was difficult at first because Mr. Dudley still had a stutter. Sympathetic housewives taught him how to read product names, and he practiced in front of the mirror at night until he overcame the obstacle. He met Eunice Mosley, a fellow Fuller salesman, and they married in 1961.
Lafayette Jones, president emeritus of the American Institute of Health and Beauty AIDS, a black manufacturers organization, said by phone that Mr. Dudley was “the leader of black hair care royalty.”
In addition to his daughter, Oglesby, Mr. Dudley is survived by his son, Joe Louis Dudley Jr.; another daughter, Jeania Dudley Giddy; his siblings, Elsie Little and William, Cornelius, Mardesia, MacArthur and George Dudley; and three grandchildren. He and his wife divorced amicably in his year 2000 and remained business partners.
Mr. Dudley received the Horatio Alger Award in 1995. The award is an annual honor in Washington that the organization recognizes “leaders who have overcome adversity.” That same year, music producer Quincy Jones and longtime Miami Dolphins coach Don Shula also received the award.
In 2007, a fire damaged part of Dudley's Kernersville plant, where 90 percent of its products were made, and then the recession hit. With the assistance of Ms. Oglesby, a Harvard-trained attorney, the Dudley family reorganized and downsized, and Ms. Oglesby became president and chief executive officer of the newly formed Dudley Beauty Corporation. .
Mr. Dudley was still working at the time of his death. Dudley has no plans to retire.
