Madame C. J. Walker
 |
Sarah Breedlove |
Madame C. J. Walker (
December 23,
1867–
May 25,
1919), was an
African American philanthropist and
tycoon.
Born
Sarah Breedlove in
Delta, Louisiana, the first member of her family born free, she was raised on farms there and in
Mississippi and started out by picking
cotton on a
plantation. She was orphaned at age seven, married at age fourteen (to Moses McWilliams), and widowed at twenty, at which point she moved to
St. Louis, joining her brothers. She worked as a laundress for as little as a dollar and a half a day, but she was able to save enough to educate her daughter.
She became interested in hair tonics while trying to treat a scalp ailment that left her temporarily bald. In 1905, Sarah moved to
Denver,
Colorado, working as a hair tonic sales agent for Annie Malone, another black woman entrepreneur. She married her third husband, Charles Joseph Walker, a St. Louis newspaperman, changed her name to "Madame" C. J. Walker, and founded the Madame C.J. Walker Manufacturing Company to sell hair care products and
cosmetics. By
1917, it was the largest business in the
United States owned by an
African American. The
Guinness Book of Records cites Walker as the first female American self-made
millionaire.
Walker had a mansion called "Villa Lewaro" built in the tony New York suburb of
Irvington on Hudson, New York, and spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on furnishings.
["Madam C.J. Walker -- Beauty Culturist Dies," The Chicago Defender, May 31, 1919]Yet Walker saw her personal wealth as not an end in itself, but a means to help promote and expand economic opportunities for others, especially
African Americans. She took great pride in the profitable employment—and alternative to domestic labor—that her company afforded many thousands of black women who worked as commissioned agents for Walker's company. One of her employees,
Marjorie Joyner, started under her influence and went on the lead the next generation of African American beauty entrpreneurs. Walker was also known for her philanthropy, supporting educational and social institutions including the
NAACP, the
Tuskegee Institute and
Bethune-Cookman College.
Walker's daughter
A'Lelia Walker carried on this tradition, opening her mother's and her homes to writers and artists of the emergent
Harlem Renaissance and promoting important members of that movement.
Madame C. J. Walker said of herself:
I am a woman who came from the cotton fields of the South. From there I was promoted to the washtub. From there I was promoted to the cook kitchen. And from there I promoted myself into the business of manufacturing hair goods and preparations....I have built my own factory on my own ground. [
1]
Bundles, A'Lelia P. (2001)
On Her Own Ground: The Life and Times of Madam C.J. Walker. Scribner; ISBN: 0-684825821.
*
A Biography of Madame C. J. Walker*
Detroit Free Press: Hairline: Black hair in time ...*
Gale: Black History
