A'Lelia Bundles, great-great granddaughter of Madame C.J. Walker. The Madame Walker Theatre on Indiana Avenue is celebrating its 80th anniversary.

A'Lelia Bundles has worked a producer and executive at both NBC and ABC News, but she is best known locally as the great-great granddaughter of Madam C.J. Walker, who built a beauty products empire in the city in the early part of the 20th century.

Bundles, 55, lives in Washington, D.C., now, but still returns to Indianapolis regularly to serve on !the board of the Madame Walker Theatre Center.

She was born in Chicago but spent most of her youth in Indianapolis, graduating from North Central High School.

Bundles was in town last month for the 80th anniversary celebration of the Walker building's completion. It originally housed manufacturing space and administrative offices, as well as rental space for neighborhood businesses and a lavish theater.

Why did you write a biography ("On Her Own Ground: The Life and Times of Madam C.J. Walker," published in 2001) of Madam Walker?

I'm the family historian. I'm the one who's the writer. I'm the storyteller. I really think that's why it happened. And, I was interested in the story. I love history. I think many times it's the women in the family who tell the history.

You're writing a book about A'Lelia Walker, Madam Walker's daughter, your great-grandmother. What was she like?

She was an entirely different person. She ran the company, but when she moved to New York, she was part of the arts scene and she loved to give parties. She ran a great salon. The book is called "Joy Goddess" because Langston Hughes called her the Joy Goddess of Harlem in the 1920s ...

She was a very flamboyant person, nearly 6 feet tall, very stylish. She had a great laugh, great smile. People loved to come to her parties. Lots of writers wrote about her. Painters painted her. She had a lot of charisma. She was the first black celebrity heiress.

Your journalism career dates from the mid-1970s. That doesn't quite make you a pioneer, but what was it like for an African-American and a woman in television news then?

You're right. I was not the first generation. When I got to NBC, there were still very few women who were in producers' jobs, and there were very few who were on air. Women at both NBC and ABC had sued the networks because they would be hired as research assistants and they were still research assistants while men got promoted. ... By the time I went to work for the networks, I was prepared from a work and educational point of view. From there it was just a matter of navigating the politics of the network.

How did you get started in journalism?

I tried to interview at the TV stations (in Indianapolis), and I couldn't get an interview. This was 1974. I had graduated from Harvard. I thought I should have gotten some kind of interview. But Frank Lloyd at WTLC gave a lot of us a chance. At that point, I think Barbara Boyd might have been on the air and Alpha (Blackburn) might have been on the air, but that was about it. I just moved on. "I guess if they're not interested in me, I'll find something else." I can't say it was the worst thing to happen to me. I really did want to get back to the East Coast.

Would you say things have improved a lot for women and for African-Americans since you began?

There are still not very many people of color who are executive producers and senior producers, which is where the real decisions are made as to what gets on air. That became really apparent during Katrina.

What were some of your best stories?

I traveled a lot, whether it was hurricanes or covering Jesse Jackson's first presidential campaign in 1984. There was an interesting group of journalists who were on the bus or on the plane. I covered an earthquake in Colombia and child murders in Atlanta. I was the lead producer on that for the year and a half it was news.

And I also worked on TV magazine shows. Those were in the days when you had several weeks to work on one story. I did one of the first pieces on adult children of alcoholics when that was still a new topic. I liked that because it gave me a chance to go in-depth. When you worked nightly news, you had about 90 seconds. Then, when I switched to ABC and Peter Jennings in 1989, I worked on the long stories, which were four minutes instead of 1 1/2 minutes.

What was it like growing up in Indianapolis?

We lived in a neighborhood that was an all-middle-class black neighborhood, but I went to a predominantly white elementary school and high school. For the most part, we all got along. There were people who were prejudiced, and we had our moments, but that didn't affect us because we were protected and loved within our own neighborhood.

When you got on a bus and went to the white school, you had the white kids you got along with and the ones you didn't get along with. "They had the problem," my parents would always tell me. And I had wonderful teachers. When I came back to do book signings in 2001, five or six of my teachers came to see me.

You were here for the 80th anniversary celebration of the Walker building. What memories do you have of it?

Whenever I think about this building, even though I don't live in Indianapolis anymore, it really is what ties me to the city .'. For years after the company left the building and it had become the Madame Walker Theatre Center, I would walk in the building and I could still smell one of the products, which was called Brilliantine. It smelled like candy; it was a very sweet smell.

What's the future of the Walker building?

We don't have an endowment. That is our next big push, to hire a development person. We'd like to be able to sustain ourselves in the future. The number one thing we have to do is improve the theater, so that we can move from the vaudeville era to having some fly space in the back. That's $10 to $12 million. We've had some success with Patti LaBelle and Babyface.

And the area around the Walker building, including Indiana Avenue?

Absolutely. We're looking at proposals right now. With a new mayor, we're waiting to see what his priorities are. But in past years, when I have asked, "Is there any kind of master plan for that part of the city?", I've been told there is no master plan. It seems to me that really is the last undeveloped piece of property near Downtown. It's very near to the stadium. It's very near to the convention center. It's very near the state capitol.

Abe Aamidor / The Indianapolis Star