Madam C.J. Walker
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Madam C.J. Walker (December 23, 1867–May 25, 1919), was an African American philanthropist and tycoon.
Born Sarah Breedlove in Delta, Louisiana, the first member of her family born free, she was raised on farms there and in Mississippi and started out by picking cotton on a plantation. She was orphaned at age seven, married at age fourteen (to a man named Moses McWilliams) and widowed at twenty, at which point she moved to St. Louis, joining her brothers. Sarah worked as a laundress for as little as a dollar and a half a day, but she was able to save enough to educate her daughter.
She became interested in hair tonics while trying to treat a scalp ailment that left her temporarily bald. In 1905, Sarah moved to Denver, Colorado, working as a hair tonic sales agent for Annie Malone, another black woman entrepreneur. She married her third husband, Charles Joseph Walker, a St. Louis newspaperman, changed her name to "Madam" C.J. Walker, and founded the Madam C.J. Walker Manufacturing Company to sell hair care products and cosmetics. By 1917, it was the largest business in the United States owned by an African American. The Guinness Book of Records cites Walker as the first female American self-made millionaire. Walker did not invent the straightening comb, though some people incorrectly believe that she did.[1]
Walker had a mansion called "Villa Lewaro" built in the tiny New York suburb of Irvington on Hudson, New York, and spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on furnishings.[2] The Georgian-style building–in red brick with a bow front was designed by archiect Vertner Tandy in 1915, and demolished by the city in 1941.[3]
Walker saw her personal wealth as not an end in itself, but a means to help promote, and expand economic opportunities for others, especially African Americans. She took great pride in the profitable employment&mdash and alternative to domestic labor&mdash that her company afforded many thousands of black women who worked as commissioned agents for Walker's company. One of her employees, Marjorie Joyner, started under her influence and went on the lead the next generation of African American beauty entrepreneurs. Walker was also known for her philanthropy, supporting educational and social institutions including the NAACP, the Tuskegee Institute and Bethune-Cookman College.
Walker's daughter A'Lelia Walker carried on this tradition, opening her mother's home and her own to writers and artists of the emergent Harlem Renaissance and promoting important members of that movement.[4]
Madam C. J. Walker said of herself:
| I am a woman who came from the cotton fields of the South. From there I was promoted to the washtub. From there I was promoted to the cook kitchen. And from there I promoted myself into the business of manufacturing hair goods and preparations....I have built my own factory on my own ground.[5] |
[edit] References
- ^ Walker family website. Retrieved on 2006-12-04.
- ^ "Madam C.J. Walker–Beauty Culturist Dies", Chicago Defender, Robert Abbott, 1919-05-31.
- ^ Gray, Christopher (1994-04-24). Streetscapes/The Walker Town House; The Grand Mansion of an Early Black Entrepreneur. The New York Times. The New York Times Company. Retrieved on 2006-10-03.
- ^ Portraits of Philanthropy. Slate. Retrieved on 2006-12-04.
- ^ Twelve Famous Dreams. brilliantdreams.com. Retrieved on 2006-10-03.
[edit] Further reading
Bundles, A'Lelia P. (2001) On Her Own Ground: The Life and Times of Madam C.J. Walker. Scribner; ISBN 0-684-82582-1.
