Madam C.J. Walker

[This post is for the Black History Month Carnival.]

"I am not ashamed of my past. I am not ashamed of my humble beginning. Don't think because you have to go down in the wash-tub that you are any less a lady!...I have built my own factory on my own ground, 38 by 208 feet...I own my own automobile and run-about...Now my object in life is not simply to make money for myself...But I love to use a part of what I make in trying to help others." ---Sarah Breedlove Walker, entrepreneur and philanthropist

Madam C.J. Walker (1867-1919) was the first self-made female millionaire in the United States. She developed and marketed a line of hair care and beauty products for African-American women that were well-known and highly regarded across the United States. She was also an important philanthropist who helped thousands of African-American women earn money as Walker agents. She was an important supporter of the NAACP and of their anti-lynching campaign (she donated the largest contribution to that fund in 1916). And she did it all with enormous intelligence, courage and hard work.

She was born Sarah Breedlove in Delta, Louisiana, the daughter of Owen and Minerva Breedlove. She was the first member of her family to be born free. She married Moses McWilliams when she was 14 years old, and her only daughter Lelia McWilliams (afterward Walker) was born in 1885. By age 20, Sarah McWilliams was a widow. She and her daughter moved north to St. Louis, Missouri, where she took in washing in the 1890s. She remarried there in 1894, to John Davis, whom she divorced in 1903.

It was during this time, in St. Louis, that Walker's hair began thinning and falling out. She began to consider what she could do to remedy this and, as she later said, promoted herself from the wash-tub. Walker said later that the idea for her Wonderful Hair Grower had come to her in a dream. After moving to Denver about 1905, Walker found a pharmacist who assisted her in developing the products that she had envisioned.

In Denver, Walker began to work for a woman named Annie Pope-Turnbo (later Malone) who had developed her own line of hair care products. In 1906 she married journalist Charles Joseph Walker and adopted the name Madam* C.J. Walker for her business. Walker then developed her own products and services. These included her Wonderful Hair Grower, Glossine and Vegetable Shampoo. The line was primarily designed to promote hair growth, and Walker used her own before and after pictures on early ads to show how efficacious it was.

In 1910 she divorced Walker and established an industrial complex at Indianapolis, where she settled for several years. By 1917 the Walker Company was the largest African-American owned business in the United States. There were more than 25,000 Walker agents all over the US, many of whom were trained at Lelia College in Pittsburgh, named for Walker's daughter. These agents were able to make better lives for themselves, making far more money than they would have been able to do otherwise.

When she died in 1919, Walker had amassed an estate worth over a million dollars. She left large endowments to the Tuskegee Institute and the NAACP. She was buried at Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx. Her Irvington-on-Hudson estate, Villa Lewaro (named in honor of her daughter Lelia Walker Robinson**) was designed by Vertner Tandy, the first registered African-American architect in the US. It became a National Historic Landmark in 1976.

Walker was honored with a United States postage stamp in 1998 and there are many books about her life, the definitive biography being On Her Own Ground, written by her great great granddaughter, A'Lelia Bundles. I recommend it highly - there is much more to Walker's story than this post can encompass. I am grateful to have had the chance to learn about this amazing woman.

*Madam Walker's name is usually spelled without the 'e', though in some sources it is rendered as 'Madame.' I am using the spelling used by her biographer A'Lelia Bundles.

**Afterwards known as A'Lelia Walker Robinson, she hosted a literary salon in Harlem in the 1920s known as the Dark Tower, in part of the Walker townhouses at 108-110 West 136th Street. She was called "the joy goddess of Harlem's 1920s" by her friend, poet Langston Hughes.

IMAGE SOURCES

The Walker ad is from Indiana University- Purdue University Indianapolis, and I hope that it was all right for me to use it (a lot of the IU Walker ads are under copyright so I have linked to them instead, see below). I am also grateful to this Google Answers answer for the link.

MORE ON MADAM WALKER:

Bundles, A'Lelia. On Her Own Ground: The Life and Times of Madam C.J. Walker. (New York: Scribner, 2001).

Madam C.J. Walker Website [Walker history]

Madam C.J. Walker at Wikipedia

Madam C.J. Walker bio at The Black Inventor Museum Online

The Madame C.J. Walker Official Website [modern company run by the Randolph family]

Madam C.J. Walker's papers are at Indiana University

Walker ads at Indiana University Digital Collection: for Glossine, for Walker Agents and an image of one of the beautiful badges worn by Walker agents at their conventions. There are lots of other amazing images here too, including views of the Walker colleges and facsimiles of Walker's letters: there are 87 images in the Indiana collection, starting here.

"New Stamp Honors Madam C.J. Walker," New York Times, Jun. 14, 1998 [link here]

"Streetscapes: The Walker Townhouse," New York Times, Apr. 24, 1994 [link here]

If you have $4500 to spare you can buy a copy of Madam C.J. Walker's Beauty Manual, see here.

Madam C.J. Walker honored as an inventor in CNN's coverage of Black History Month.

The Dreams of Sarah Breedlove - a play written and directed by Regina Taylor. Thanks to Thomas MacEntee at Destination: Austin Family for the link.