The biography was written by Jane R Pitt and published in 2000.
The review will be given in the format of a monologue by Carol Smith Headrick from Stillwater. Ms. Headrick will assume the role of Martha Harper and tell her life story as if it were her own.
“We are very excited to have secured Ms. Headrick for the April review,” said Jennie Buchanan, program chair of the group. “We actually had to book this performance over two years ago. She is a very popular presenter and travels the state each spring presenting a different character.”
Harper was one of the most successful and innovative female entrepreneurs of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. An undereducated servant girl, she became an early entrepreneur and a pioneer in the beauty industry.
She struggle for twenty-five years as a servant to change her life and that of other working-class women. She pioneered the idea of a public hairdressing salon based on health-conscious precepts, advocating practices that were progressive even by today’s standards. She is credited with creating America’s first retail franchise network. She encouraged women to own businesses as well as to enrich themselves spiritually, professionally, and personally.
Headrick is now retired from the faculty of the Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders at Oklahoma State University in Stillwater. She is a member of the Friends of the OSU Library Board of Directors, the Human Rights Committee for Stillwater Group Homes, and The Browning Society in Stillwater.
The Coffee Cup Bunch meets the first Wednesday of every month. The meetings are free and open to the public.
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