First Black American Woman Self-Made Millionaire!
She was born Sarah Breedlove, the daughter of Louisiana sharecroppers and former slaves. Today we know her as Madam C. J. Walker, a woman who would ultimately offer employment opportunities to thousands of Black women hired to sell and manufacture her unique formula for a hair-care system. As a singularly successful female Black entrepreneur, her reputation and legacy have been recognized for over 100 years.
Sarah was the first of the Breedlove family to be born directly into freedom after Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation. She had only three months of formal education, given during Sunday school literacy lessons. Tragically, her parents died by the time she was seven. Married by 14, a mother at 17 and a widow at 20, she was determined to do better. Moving to St. Louis, she washed clothes for $1.50 a day and met her future husband, a newspaper adman named Charles J. Walker. After losing part of her hair to scalp disease, she created a hair-care system involving preparing the scalp with lotions and pomades. First Walker worked for Annie Malone, and ultimately launched her business with $1 in capital.
Walker moved to Denver, Pittsburgh and Indianapolis for a better opportunity. Eventually she had a presence in New York City. An advocate of Black women’s economic independence, she opened training programs in the “Walker System” for her national network of licensed sales agents who earned healthy commissions. In Indianapolis, she opened the Madam C. J. Walker Manufacturing Company to produce her line of cosmetics and hair care products for Black women. She organized her sales agents into state and local clubs and established the Madam C. J. Walker Beauty Culturists Union of America. She opened Poro College, which offered her employees exposure to a range of cultural exposures including theatre, art, music, and even athletics.
Within a dozen years, she had moved from washerwoman to millionaire. And although her husband helped early on with mail orders and advertising, they soon drifted apart and divorced in 1912. And while his name lives on, her legacy is her own.
“If I accomplished anything in life it is because I have been willing to work hard,” Walker once told the New York Times. “I have never yet started anything doubtingly, and I have always believed in keeping at things with a vim.”
Eventually, Madam Walker built her “country place,” one of the most striking homes on the Hudson River, which she wanted to be a symbol to her people of what could be possible with hard work and tenacity. The showplace, Villa Lewaro, was designed by noted Black architect Vertner Tandy. It stood not far from the estates of John D. Rockefeller and Jay Gould. Over the years it became a gathering place not just for her employees, but for noted Harlem intellectuals.
A generous patron, Walker gave to such organizations as the Tuskegee Institute and the anti-lynching campaign of the NAACP. She became more involved in political matters and often delivered lectures on political, economic and social issues sponsored by powerful Black institutions. When she died at the age of 51 –of kidney failure and complications of hypertension– she was considered the wealthiest African-American woman in America.
Awards and Accolades
1917: Joined executive committee of the New York branch of the NAACP
1917-1919: Member, Committee of Management of the Harlem YWCA
1918: Honored by the National Association of Colored Women’s Clubs for the largest individual contribution to help preserve Frederick Douglass’s Anacostia house
1927: Former manufacturing company headquarters building renamed the Madam Walker Theatre Center (National Register of Historic Places, 1980)
1993: Inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame in Seneca Falls, NY
1998: US Postal Service issues a Madam Walker commemorative stamp
2001: Best selling biography, On Her Own Ground by her great-great-great-granddaughter becomes a bestseller
2006: Play The Dreams of Sarah Breedlove premiered at Goodman Theatre in Chicago
2020: Netflix series, “Self Made,” based on her life’s story
2022: Sundial Brands launches a collection of eleven new products under the brand MADAM sold exclusively at Walmart
