Former Site of Poro College

Category: Community

Poro College trained African American women to work as sales agents for a highly successful black-owned line of beauty products. Founded in 1917 in St. Louis by Annie T. P. Malone, Poro expanded quickly and moved to Chicago in 1930. Malone, like fellow beauty product tycoon Madame C. J. Walker, provided jobs and social mobility for black women at a time when nearly all working black women held low-paying, back-breaking domestic service jobs. The Irvin C. Mollison Public School now stands on the site. The accompanying photograph shows the Poro product line in the 1920s. (Chicago History Museum, ICHi - 24667).