Madam C. J. Walker

File:Sarah breedlove.jpg

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 daughter of former slaves, Owen and Minerva Breedlove, she was raised on farms there and in Mississippi, picking cotton. She was orphaned at age seven, married at age fourteen, and widowed at twenty. Through tenacity and faith she sculpted a life not only of personal success, but as one of a role-model at a crucial time in America' history.

Born into poverty as the daughter of sharecroppers, orphaned at the age of seven, abused by her caretaker, uneducated, Sarah Breedlove lived with vision, determination and an outstanding work-ethic. She was instrumental as a role model for African-Americans, especially women, of her day. Employing and training many in her cosmetics company, she gave them hope and brought dignity and meaning into their lives. She is respected as a great pioneer in the fight for equality among genders and races in America.

Madame C. J. Walker, never forgetting the poor and less fortunate, became a charitable philanthropist giving to such institutions as Tuskegee Institute, Charlotte Hawkin’s Palmer Memorial Institute, Bethone’s Daytona Normal and Industrial for Negro Girls and Lucy Laney’s Haynes Institute in Augusta, Georgia. She also contributed to homes for the aged in St. Louis and Indianapolis and to the Young Women’s Christian Association, as well as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. [1]

At the time of her death in 1919 in New York, she was believed to be the wealthiest black woman in the country. On Jan. 28, 1998, the United States Postal Service issued the Madam C.J. Walker Commemorative stamp as a part of its Black Heritage Series. [2]

Family Background

Sarah Breedlove, who later became known as Madam C. J. Walker, was born into a former-slave family to parents Owen and Minerva Breedlove. She had one older sister, Louvenia and brothers Alexander, James, Solomon and Owen, Jr. Her parents had been slaves on Robert W. Burney's Madison Parish farm which was a battle-staging area during the Civil War for General Ulysses S. Grant and his Union troops. She became an orphan at age 7 when her parents died during an epidemic of yellow fever. To escape the epidemic and failing cotton crops, the ten year old Sarah and her sister moved across the river to Vicksburg in 1878 and obtained work as maids. At the age of fourteen, Sarah married Moses McWilliams to escape her sister's abusive husband. They had a daughter, Lelia (later known as A'Lelia Walker, a central figure in the Harlem Renaissance), born June 6, 1885. When Lelia was only two years old, McWilliams died. Sarah's second marriage to John Davis August 11, 1894 failed and ended sometime in 1903. She married for the third time in January, 1906 to newspaper sales agent, Charles Joseph Walker, whom she divorced around 1910. [3]

Business

After the death of her husband, Sarah Breedlove McWilliams traveled to St. Louis to join her four brothers who had established themselves as barbers. Working as a laundrywoman, she managed to save enough money to educate her daughter. Friendships with other black women who were members of St. Paul A.M.E. Church and the National Association of Colored Women exposed her to a new way of viewing the world. [4]

During the 1890s, Sarah began to suffer from a scalp ailment that caused her to lose most of her hair. Embarrassed by her appearance, she experimented with a variety of home-made remedies and products, including those made by another black woman entrepreneur, Annie Malone. In 1905, Sarah became a sales agent for Malone and moved to Denver, where she married Charles Joseph Walker.

Changing her name to Madame CJ Walker, she founded her own business and began selling Madam Walker's Wonderful Hair Grower, a scalp conditioning and healing formula. To promote her products, she embarked on an exhausting sales drive throughout the South and Southeast selling her products door to door, giving demonstrations, and working on sales and marketing strategies. In 1908, she temporarily moved her base to Pittsburgh and opened Lelia College to train her "hair culturists."

Eventually, her products formed the basis of a thriving national corporation employing at one point over 3,000 people. Her Walker System, which included a broad offering of cosmetics, licensed Walker Agents, and Walker Schools offered meaningful employment and personal growth to thousands of Black women. Madame Walker’s aggressive marketing strategy combined with relentless ambition led her to be labeled as the first known African-American woman to become a self-made millionaire.

Philanthropy

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.

Madam CJ Walker

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.

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. [5]

Further reading

Bundles, A'Lelia P. (2001) On Her Own Ground: The Life and Times of Madam C.J. Walker. Scribner; ISBN: 0-684825821.

External links

• A Biography of Madame C. J. Walker
• Detroit Free Press: Hairline: Black hair in time ...
• Gale: Black History

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