Madam C.J. Walker (1867-1919)
Madam C.J. Walker, originally named Sarah Breedlove, was born December 23, 1867 on a plantation near Delta, Louisiana. Born to parents Owen and Minerva, who were formerly enslaved laborers, Breedlove was the first of her five siblings to be born ‘free.’ Breedlove still grew up in unfavorable conditions. Her parents worked as sharecroppers, an occupation which was almost always a guaranteed cycle of crippling poverty. When both of her parents died around age seven, apparently to unknown causes, Breedlove went to live with her sister, Louvinia, and her husband.
The environment with her sister was not suitable for any young individual. To escape abuse from her brother in law and unfavorable working conditions that mimicked slavery, Ms. Breedlove married Moses McWilliams at the age of 14. Less than four years later, she gave birth to her only daughter, A’Lelia. Upon her husband’s death in 1887, around two years after the birth of their child, Breedlove decided to move to St. Louis, where her four brothers were barbers. She found work there as a laundry woman, which she did for some years, barely earning enough money to send her daughter to school. The odd conditions of her workplace (abundant steam, exposure to harsh laundry chemicals, etc.) along with other possible factors caused Breedlove’s hair to diminish in health and volume. By the mid 1890’s, she had lost the majority of what used to be a thick head of hair. Her brothers, although barbers, had little knowledge in women's haircare, so Breedlove began looking for solutions elsewhere. After trying out her own natural concoctions at home, she eventually found Annie Turnbo Malone’s Poro, a Black woman owned hair care line in the early 1900s. Breedlove eventually joined Turnbo’s sales team, after Turnbo’s products nearly brought her hair back to life. After a lackluster turnout for Poro at the 1904 World’s Fair (white customers would not buy or sell to them,) Breedlove moved to Denver, Colorado to sell Poro products door to door.
Selling Poro was just the beginning for Breedlove in Denver. After realizing the financial opportunity that selling hair care presented, she underwent a substantial life transformation. First, she got married to a man named Charles Joseph Walker in 1906, giving her the name Sarah Walker. Second, she began manufacturing and selling her own hair care products instead of selling Poro products. This split marked the beginning of Breedlove’s entrepreneurial career, in which her husband convinced her to adopt the name “Madam CJ Walker” as an appeal tactic. Madam Walker had multiple products, including her vegetable shampoo, healthy hair grower, hot comb (which she did not invent, but popularized) and more. Her products were sold under the self named “Walker System,” used to promote hair health and hygiene in the Black female community.
Controversy came about when Annie Turnbo Malone accused Walker of stealing her product’s recipe. While both concoctions have sulfur bases, Walker’s great-great granddaughter pointed out that using sulfur to help cure scalp diseases & dirtiness had been widely documented for hundreds of years before the rise of both entrepreneurs.
Despite the accusations, Madam C.J. Walker’s business began to boom immediately. Even after the divorce between the Walkers in 1910, the company stood strong due to Madam Walker’s ability to network and build bonds with female leaders across the country, many of which were made through her church, the St. Paul’s African Methodist Episcopal. Walker moved from Denver to Pittsburgh to Indianapolis, strategically building (and greatly expanding) her brand along the way.
As Madam Walker’s socioeconomic status began to elevate, so did her philanthropy and political activism. In 1917, she held the first National Madam C.J. Walker convention, in which she gave lectures on entrepreneurship, political activism and civic responsibility all in one. Women who had put a lot of work in for her company also received cash rewards, which were given out at these conventions. Breedlove became so active in the global anti-lynching/pro-Black soldier conversation that the Wilson administration deemed Walker, amongst W.E.B. DuBois and other powerful Black Americans “politically subversive” and spied heavily on them as a consequence. They were even denied them passports to go speak at global conferences on the matter (specifically in Germany, where anti-lynching propaganda was making a surge.) This did not stop her one bit, though. With plans of opening beauty schools and expanding her business, she eventually hired a Black architect by the name of to build her a mansion on one of the busiest roads in one of the most affluent neighborhoods in New York. Walker was purposefully headed even further into the limelight, scaling her public visibility with her national success.
Unfortunately, Madam C.J. Walker would die an unexpected death in May of 1919, just one year to the month after purchasing her famous New York mansion, Villa Lewaro. Though she was only 51, Madam C.J. Walker left an empire -- ⅔ of which was to be donated to charitable causes, as stated in her will (the other ⅓ went to her daughter.) She is said to have had over 20,000 national sales agents, most of whom were women of color. She is on record for paying numerous Black children’s tuition, donated thousands of dollars to Black YMCA branches, and provided opportunities for thousands of women across the country, during a time where domestic work represented the majority of work available. Laid to rest as America’s first Black, and first female millionaire ever, her money was actually one of the least valuable things she left behind, for her legacy of being a dynamic human being who served her community impacted the world just as much as her liquid resources. Thank you, Ms. Sarah Breedlove.
You can read my resources on Ms. Breedlove here, here, here, here, here, aaaand here.
