Madam C. J. Walker - Black Inventor

Madam C.J. Walker (December 23, 1867 – May 25, 1919) was an African-American businesswoman, hair care entrepreneur and philanthropist. She made her fortune by developing and marketing a hugely successful line of beauty and hair products for black women under the company she founded, Madam C.J. Walker Manufacturing Company. The Guinness Book of Records cites Walker as the first female who became a millionaire by her own achievements.

She was born Sarah Breedlove in Delta, Louisiana. She was the first member of her family to be born free, to parents who had been slaves. By the time she was seven, both of her parents had died. (Some sources claim that they died of yellow fever, but that information is not correct.) Her mother died first, probably of cholera. Her father then remarried and died shortly afterward. The exact cause of death is unknown and no death certificate exists for either. At age 14, Sarah Breedlove married a man named Moses McWilliams and was widowed at age 20. The cause of Moses's death is unknown. Although some sources claim he was lynched or murdered, there is absolutely no documentation or evidence to support this. Sarah Breedlove McWilliams then moved to St. Louis, Missouri to join 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. While living in St. Louis, she joined St. Paul's African Methodist Episcopal Church, which helped develop her speaking, interpersonal and organizational skills.



Around the time of the St. Louis 1904 World's Fair, she worked as a sales agent for Annie Malone, another black woman entrepreneur who manufactured hair care products. Unsatisfied with Malone's products, Sarah began to experiment with her own formulas. Later some sources say she consulted with a Denver pharmacist, who, may have analyzed Malone's formula and helped Walker formulate her own products. In addition, she often told reporters that the ingredients for her "Wonderful Hair Grower" had come to her in a dream. In 1906 she married Charles Joseph Walker, a St. Louis newspaperman , and changed her name to "Madam C.J. Walker". She founded the Madam C.J. Walker Manufacturing Company to sell hair care products and cosmetics. She and Charles Joseph Walker left Denver in 1906 after her daughter, A'Lelia McWilliams (who later changed her surname to Walker), had arrived in Colorado to run the Denver office. Madam Walker and her husband traveled for a year and a half until they settled in Pittsburgh, where they opened the first Lelia College of Beauty Culture, named after her daughter. In 1910 Walker moved her growing manufacturing operation to Indianapolis, IN where she built a new factory. In 1912 she divorced her husband.

'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.'

Walker saw her personal wealth not as an end in itself, but as a means to promote economic opportunities for others, especially women and African Americans. She took great pride in the profitable employment — and alternative to domestic labor — that her company afforded many thousands of black women who worked as commissioned agents. Her agents could earn at least $5 to $15 per day in an era when unskilled white laborers were making about $11 per week. Marjorie Joyner, who started work as one of her employees, went on to lead the next generation of African-American beauty entrepreneurs.

Walker was known for her philanthropy, setting aside in a trust two-thirds of her estate to educational institutions and charities, including the NAACP, the Tuskegee Institute and Bethune-Cookman College. In 1919, her $5,000 pledge to the NAACP's anti-lynching campaign was the largest gift the organization had ever received. Walker had a mansion called "Villa Lewaro" built in the wealthy New York suburb of Irvington on Hudson, New York, near the estates of John D. Rockefeller and Jay Gould. Today that home is a private residence and a [National Historic Landmark]. She spent tens of thousands of dollars on furnishings. The Italianate villa was designed by architect Vertner Tandy, the first licensed black architect in the state of New York, in 1915. Walker also owned houses in Indianapolis and New York.

Madam Walker died on May 25, 1919, at age 51, at her estate Villa Lewaro from kidney failure and other complications related to a long battle with hypertension. She was buried at Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx. Her daughter A'Lelia Walker carried on the tradition of hospitality, opening her mother's home and her own to writers, actors, musicians and artists of the emergent Harlem Renaissance. She promoted important members of that movement. She converted a section of her Harlem townhouse at 108-110 West 136th Street into the Dark Tower, a salon and tearoom where Harlem and Greenwich Village artists, writers and musicians gathered. Poet Langston Hughes called her "The joy goddess of Harlem's 1920s" in his autobiography The Big Sea, because of the lavish parties she hosted in Harlem and Irvington.

Ms. Walker was inducted into the Junior Achievement U.S. Business Hall of Fame in 1992 and in 2002, Molefi Kete Asante listed Madam C. J. Walker on his list of 100 Greatest African Americans. She also has been inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame, the National Cosmetology Hall of Fame and the National Direct Sales Hall of Fame. On 28 January 1998 the USPS, as part of its Black Heritage Series, issued the Madam C.J. Walker Commemorative stamp. On 16 March 2010, Congressman Charles Rangel introduced HJ81, a Congressional House Joint Resolution, honoring Madam C. J. Walker. That legislation currently awaits a vote.