“I AM, I CAN, AND I WILL”

Last week, an extraordinary African-American humanitarian, businessman and man of GOD left this world to be with his maker.

Dr. Joe Louis Dudley, Sr., 86, founder of the world renowned Dudley Hair Care Products Company, and author of the inspirational book, Walking by Faith: I Am, I Can and I Will.

Dudley Products has been a household name with African-American families for over 50 years and counting (his daughter runs the corporation now). They are popular in 19 countries, including the U.S..

Dr. Dudley was not just the founder of a major Black corporation, making the top 30 of Black Enterprise Magazine’s Top 100 Black-owned businesses list at one point, but an extraordinary human being who deeply believed that to love GOD is to love people, and to help your fellow man become successful, was life’s ultimate calling.

Joe L. Dudley became a millionaire by the time he was 40, and helped other people who were otherwise not as gifted, but could be taught, and would work hard. That included a prison inmate who read Dr. Dudley’s book, and eventually became wealthy.

Most millionaires get excited when they make more millions. Joe Dudley got excited when he helped make more millionaires. Not just any kind of millionaires, but ones who were committed to the same GODly principles of life that he was.

No, I did not know Dr. Dudley personally. We did meet, however, when I went to his mansion in Kernersville in March, 2019 to do an interview with him for a film project that ultimately never got off the ground. I remember him graciously greeting me in his trademark blue suit. We talked extensively as I set up my camera equipment in his living room. He wanted to know more about me, what motivated me, why I was a journalist.

When I made clear that I was working on a film about a mutual friend he generously helped a few years earlier, Dr. Dudley was more than happy to give me as much time as I needed.

The man Dudley helped was a Black radio talk show host named Tom Pope. Pope ran a Black radio network that had gone bankrupt, costing Pope and his wife literally everything they owned. Pope had gone broke to the point of contemplating taking his own life. Dr. Dudley learned of Tom Pope’s plight, and wanted to help. But he didn’t want to just give Pope money.

Dr. Dudley wanted to help rebuild Tom Pope the man, with the time tested principles he built his empire with.

Dudley met with Pope in Washington, D.C., then met with him again at his  Kernersville home. To help Pope save his business, Dr. Dudley offered his second home in Florida for Pope and his wife to live in, free of charge, and allowed him to build a radio studio there from which Pope could create a new radio network. Dudley picked up the costs, and charged Tom Pope absolutely nothing.

Not a penny in return.

What manner of man does that?

When Tom Pope later wrote his autobiography titled From Incognito Gangster to God: An American Story of Redemption and Restoration, he devoted four pages to Dr. Dudley, thanking him for helping him when he was “bruised and broken.”

This is the kind of man Dr. Joe Louis Dudley, Sr. was.

Born in Aurora, N.C. in 1937 in a three-room farmhouse, the fifth of eleven children raised by Gilmer and Clara Dudley, young Joe Louis Dudley - named after the great heavyweight champion of his day -  actually failed the first grade and was held back, was labeled mentally retarded, and suffered a speech impediment. 

The future was hopeless for this young disabled Black boy.

But his dear mother believed in him, always imploring her child to “Prove’ em wrong. Joe!” 

When he reached 20, young Dudley bought a “how to sell door-to-door” kit in order to pay his way through N.C. A&T University in Greensboro, where he later earned a degree in business administration.

By the time Dudley graduated A&T, he was fully invested in selling Fuller Products door-to-door. In 1961, he married his wife, Eunice, who was also selling door-to-door to get through school. It wasn’t long before Joe and Eunice were making their own products on their kitchen table at home, eventually having their young children helping with packaging, and hiring people in the neighborhood and college students to do the door-to-door sales.

Dudley Products was born,  and would later become an empire with factories, and cosmetology schools across the globe.

So principled a man was Dr. Joe L. Dudley, Sr. that he proudly sent all three of his children to the best universities in America, provided they understood that when they became successful in their own right, they had to pay him back.

And they did!

This Monday, Dr. Joe L. Dudley will be laid to rest in Greensboro, the city where his success was born. He’ll be fondly remembered for the many honors he’s received, only exceeded by the many, many people he has helped.

“Loving GOD is loving people,” he said to me during that wonderful visit to his home in 2019. I’llnever forget that.

I pray that the world never forgets Dr. Joe Louis Dudley, Sr., the tremendous inspiration he continues to be for so many of us in the African-American community, and the great history that he has made helping his fellow man.

GOD bless you, Dr. Dudley. And thank you, Sir!