Black History Moment - Madam CJ Walker
Madam C. J. Walker: December 23, 1867 - May 25, 1919. Madam C. J. Walker, born as Sarah Breedlove, was an American entrepreneur, philanthropist, and political and social activist. Walker is recorded as the first female self-made millionaire in America in the Guinness Book of World Records.
Her parents were Owen and Minerva Breedlove. Out of five children, she was the first child in her family born into freedom after President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation. Sarah was seven years old when her mother and father died. At the age of 10, she started working as a child domestic servant while living with her sister and brother-in-law in Vicksburg, Mississippi. She had only three months of formal education, which she took during Sunday school literacy lessons at the church she attended during her earlier years.
In 1882, at the age of 14, she married Moses McWilliams, and they had one daughter, named Lelia, who was born on June 6, 1885. Sarah was twenty when her husband died in 1887. She remarried in 1894 but later left him around 1903.
Breedlove suffered severe dandruff and other scalp ailments, including baldness, due to skin disorders from harsh products she used to wash her hair and clothes in, poor diet, and other illnesses. Breedlove learned about hair care from her brothers, who were barbers in St. Louis around the time of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition (World's Fair at St. Louis in 1904). She became a commission agent selling products for Annie Turnbo Malone, an African American haircare entrepreneur and owner of the Poro Company. Sales at the exposition did not go well. In July 1905, when Breedlove moved to Denver, Colorado, she initially continued to sell products for Malone while developing her own haircare business. However, the two businesswomen had a falling-out when Malone accused Breedlove of stealing her formula, a mixture of petroleum jelly and sulfur that had been in use for a hundred years.
In January 1906, she married Charles Joseph Walker, a newspaper advertising salesman she had known in St. Louis, Missouri. Sarah began marketing herself as “Madam C. J. Walker” an independent hairdresser and cosmetic cream retailer. (“Madam”) was adopted from women pioneers of the French beauty industry. Charles, also her business partner, provided advice on advertising and promotion. Walker sold her products door to door, teaching other black women how to groom and style their hair. Walker made her fortune by developing and marketing a line of cosmetics and hair care products for black women through the business she founded, Madam C. J. Walker Manufacturing Company. At the time of her death in 1919, Walker was considered the wealthiest African American businesswoman and wealthiest self-made black woman in America.