She Took Pot Roast Rods and Changed an Industry
- Hairline Illusions
- Feb 1
- 6 min read
The Story of Marjorie Stewart Joyner: Inventor, Educator, and Architect of Professional Beauty Standards
Black History Month 2026 | Hairline Illusions & HIASTI
Most people in the beauty industry know the name Madam C.J. Walker. Fewer know the name of the woman who stood beside her, outlived her by 75 years, and quietly built much of the professional infrastructure that still supports our industry today.
Her name was Marjorie Stewart Joyner. She was an inventor, an educator, a civil rights activist, and a relentless advocate for professional standards in beauty. She held two U.S. patents, supervised over 200 beauty schools, taught approximately 15,000 stylists across her career, and helped draft the first cosmetology laws in the state of Illinois.
She lived to be 98 years old. She never stopped working.
A Granddaughter of Slavery
Joyner was born on October 24, 1896, in Monterey, Virginia. She was the granddaughter of an enslaved Black woman and a white slave owner. Her family lived in poverty. After her parents divorced, she was raised between relatives in Ohio and Virginia before moving to Chicago in 1912 at just sixteen years old.
In Chicago, she enrolled in the A.B. Moler Beauty and Culture School. In 1916, she became the first African American to graduate from the institution. She was twenty years old. That same year, she married podiatrist Robert E. Joyner and opened her own beauty salon on South State Street.
What happened next shaped the rest of her career. Joyner quickly realized that her formal training had only prepared her to work on white women's hair. She had received no instruction in the textures, structures, or care needs of Black hair. That gap in her education drove her to seek out Madam C.J. Walker's beauty school, where she learned to use hair oil and a hot comb to straighten textured hair. In return, Joyner taught Walker how to set hair into the fashionable Marcel waves popular at the time.
That exchange between two brilliant women became the foundation of a professional relationship that would span decades.
A Pot Roast, a Problem, and a Patent
In the 1920s, permanent waves and curls were in high demand. The problem was the process. Creating a permanent wave required a stylist to work one curl at a time using a single heated iron. It was painfully slow, physically uncomfortable, and inefficient for both the stylist and the client.
Joyner knew there had to be a better way.
The idea struck her while she was cooking dinner. She looked at the long, thin rods holding her pot roast together and heating it from the inside, and saw a solution. What if she could apply that same concept to hair? Multiple rods, applied simultaneously, heating from above, curling several sections of hair at once instead of one at a time.
She built her first prototype using actual pot roast rods and an old-fashioned air dryer hood. After refining the design, she created a device that could accomplish the work of multiple curling irons used simultaneously. The result was a permanent wave or curl that lasted for days.
Joyner used the machine in her salon for years before anyone told her she should patent it. On May 16, 1928, she filed her petition and drawings. She received U.S. Patent No. 1,693,515 for the Permanent Wave Machine, becoming one of the first African American women to hold a patent. She later secured a second patent for a scalp protector designed to make the procedure more comfortable.
In her own patent petition, she stated her purpose clearly: "The object of the invention is the construction of a simple and efficient machine that will wave the hair of both white and colored women."
Her machine served everyone. That was the point.
Building the Infrastructure of an Industry
Joyner's patent rights were assigned to the Madam C.J. Walker Manufacturing Company. She never received significant financial compensation for her invention. But compensation was never the driving force behind her work.
After Walker's death in 1919, Joyner rose to become vice president and national supervisor of more than 200 Walker beauty schools. She remained affiliated with the Walker Company for over fifty years, training and mentoring an estimated 15,000 stylists during her career.
Her contributions extended far beyond the salon chair. In the early 1940s, Joyner helped write the first cosmetology laws for the state of Illinois, establishing a legal and professional framework for the industry. In 1945, she co-founded the United Beauty School Owners and Teachers Association alongside civil rights leader Mary McLeod Bethune. That same year, she founded the Alpha Chi Pi Omega Sorority and Fraternity, an organization dedicated to raising professional standards and expanding educational opportunities for beauty culture students and practitioners.
Black women at the time were excluded from white beauty organizations. That exclusion blocked them from learning new techniques, attending trade shows, and advancing professionally. Joyner's response was not to ask for admission. She built her own institutions. When denied entry to a beauty contest held by a white trade show, Joyner organized her own trade shows. She took African American hairdressers to Paris to learn from European experts.
She did not wait for doors to open. She built new ones.
A Voice Beyond the Beauty Chair
Because African American hairdressers earned their own income without relying on white-owned businesses, women like Joyner had the economic independence to be politically vocal. She used that freedom fully.
Joyner was a founding member of the National Council of Negro Women in 1935. She developed a lasting friendship with Eleanor Roosevelt and worked with her on improving race relations in the United States. In the 1930s, she was appointed to a women's leadership position on the Democratic National Committee, where she advised several New Deal agencies on outreach to Black women.
She became the director of the Chicago Defender's charities, overseeing food drives, clothing drives, and fundraisers across the city. For six decades, she organized and directed the annual Bud Billiken Parade, which grew into one of Chicago's largest cultural celebrations for the African American community.
Her slogan for voter registration captured her philosophy: "Who you vote for and how you vote is your business. That you vote is our business."
A Lifelong Learner
At the age of 77, Joyner fulfilled a lifelong dream. She earned a bachelor's degree in psychology from Bethune-Cookman College in Daytona Beach, Florida. The woman who had taught 15,000 professionals never stopped being a student herself.
In 1987, the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. opened an exhibit featuring Joyner's permanent wave machine and a replica of her original salon. On October 24, 1990, her 95th birthday, the city of Chicago proclaimed the day in her honor.
In 2023, she was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame.
Joyner once said, "If I've set an example for other people, not just Black people, not just poor people, not just women, I want it to be that you shouldn't be limited in what you try to do. If I can take pot roast rods and have a one-of-a-kind invention, believe me, people can do what they set their minds to do."
Marjorie Stewart Joyner died on December 27, 1994, of heart failure at her home in the Bronzeville neighborhood of Chicago. She was 98 years old.
Why Her Story Matters
Joyner's legacy is not just a single invention. It is the professional ecosystem she spent a lifetime building: schools, laws, associations, trade shows, international training opportunities, and fraternal organizations that elevated beauty work from an informal trade to a regulated, respected profession.
She understood something essential. Innovation without education does not sustain an industry. A great tool in untrained hands is just a tool. The systems we build around knowledge, around standards, around access to professional development, are what transform skill into science and practice into profession.
This Black History Month, we honor Marjorie Stewart Joyner. Inventor. Educator. Institution builder. A woman who took pot roast rods and changed an industry.
References
National Inventors Hall of Fame. "Marjorie Stewart Joyner." invent.org/inductees/marjorie-stewart-joyner
National Archives Museum. "National Inventor's Day: Marjorie S. Joyner." visit.archives.gov/whats-on/explore-exhibits/national-inventors-day-marjorie-s-joyner
Kratz, Jessie. "Marjorie S. Joyner: More than an Inventor." Pieces of History, U.S. National Archives. prologue.blogs.archives.gov/2020/02/11/marjorie-s-joyner-more-than-an-inventor/
BlackPast.org. "Marjorie Stewart Joyner (1896-1994)." blackpast.org/african-american-history/joyner-marjorie-stewart-1896-1994/
Lemelson-MIT Program. "Marjorie Joyner." lemelson.mit.edu/resources/marjorie-joyner
Wikipedia. "Marjorie Joyner." en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marjorie_Joyner
National Museum of African American History and Culture. "Annie Malone and Madam C.J. Walker: Pioneers of the African American Beauty Industry." nmaahc.si.edu/explore/stories/annie-malone-and-madam-cj-walker-pioneers-african-american-beauty-industry
DocsTeach, National Archives. "Patent Analysis: Marjorie S. Joyner's Permanent Wave Machine." docsteach.org/lesson/patent-analysis-marjorie-s-joyners-permanent-wave-machine/
Library of Congress. "Black Beauty: A Brief History of the African American Beauty Industry." blogs.loc.gov/inside_adams/2020/09/black-beauty-industry/
U.S. Patent No. 1,693,515. Permanent Waving Machine. Filed May 16, 1928.
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