It is my intention again this year to focus on success stories of individuals who, by dent of their work ethic, commitment, and drive, transformed their earthly sojourn into meaningful and productive lives. I had never heard of Madam C.J. Walker prior to seeing a bookmark from the National Trust for Historic Preservation. Now, my readers can learn of this remarkable soul with true grit and determination.
Sarah Breedlove, later known as Madam C.J. Walker, was born to sharecroppers and former slaves. She transformed herself from an uneducated farm laborer and laundress into one of the 20th Century’s most successful and self-made women entrepreneurs. She was orphaned at age seven and often said, “I got my start by giving myself a start.”
This remarkable spirit had only three months of formal education which she learned during Sunday school at the church she attended during her youth. She began working, as a child, as a domestic servant.
She was born December 23, 1867 on the same Delta Plantation where her parents, Owen and Minerva, worked as slaves before the end of the Civil War. From the cotton fields, she married Moses McWilliams at age 14 in part to escape abuse from her cruel brother-in-law, Jesse Powell. They had a daughter four years later and named her A’Lelia Walker. When her husband, Moses, died in 1887, she moved to St. Louis where she worked for $1.50 a day.
About this time, Sarah began to suffer from a scalp ailment that caused her to lose most of her hair. She then experimented with homemade remedies and purchased products. She was seeking a way out of poverty. She did not seek government handouts, nor welfare. In 1894 she married John Davis, but that ended in divorce.
A year later she moved to Denver and married ad-man Charles Joseph Walker and renamed herself Madam C.J. Walker. With $1.25 she launched her own line of hair products and straighteners for African-American women called “Madam Walker’s Wonderful Hair Grower.”
Charles helped with advertising and establishing a mail order business. But the pair divorced in 1910 and she moved to Indianapolis and built a factory for her Walker Manufacturing Company at 640 North West Street. She was an advocate of black women’s economic independence and held training programs for her national network of licensed sales agents.
Ultimately, she employed 40,000 African-American women and men in the U.S., Central America, Cuba, Jamaica, Panama, Haiti, and the Caribbean. She founded the National Negro Cosmetics Manufacturers Association in 1917.
Sales exceeded $500,000 in the final year of her life. Her worth topped $1 Million and included a mansion in Irvington, N.Y. and properties in Harlem, Chicago, Pittsburgh and St. Louis. She was in a position to contribute to the YMCA, covered tuition for six African-American students at Tuskegee Institute in Alabama and became active in the anti-lynching movement.
Just prior to dying of kidney failure May 25, 1919 at age 52, Walker revised her will bequeathing two-thirds of future net profits to charity as well as thousands of dollars to individuals and schools.
Her home in Irvington, N.Y., Villa Lewaro, is part of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. Entrepreneur Madam C.J. Walker was the first free-born person in her family. Her vision, perseverance, and work, saw her rise to become America’s first self-made female millionaire. Her net worth was estimated at $10 Million.
She is remembered as an American cosmetics and business pioneer. Villa Lewaro is named in honor of her daughter, A’Lelia Walker Robinson, and the home became an intellectual oasis for notable leaders of the Harlem renaissance and continues to embody the American entrepreneurial spirit of today.