Madam C.J. Walker: The Iconic Black Entrepreneur • • • Madam C.J. Walker became wealthy after inventing a line of Black hair care products. She established Madame C.J. Walker Laboratories and was also known for her philanthropy, using her position to advocate for the advancement of Black people and for an end to lynching. • Born Sarah Breedlove on December 23rd, 1867, on a plantation in Delta, Louisiana, Walker was one of six children of Owen and Minerva Breedlove, former slaves-turned sharecroppers after the Civil War. Orphaned at age seven, Walker lived with her older sister Louvenia, and the two worked in the cotton fields. At age 14, Walker married Moses McWilliams. He died in 1887 and Walker became a single parent of two-year old daughter Lelia. • She later moved to St. Louis, Missouri to work at her brother's barbershop. Years later, she struggled financially, faced hair loss, and began feeling the strain of years of physical labor. In 1904, she began using Black businesswoman Annie Turbo Malone’s "The Great Wonderful Hair Grower". She later joined Malone’s team of Black women sales agents. A year later, Walker moved to Denver, Colorado, where she married ad-man Charles Joseph Walker, renamed herself “Madam C.J. Walker,” and with $1.25, launched her own line of hair products and straighteners for Black women, “Madam Walker’s Wonderful Hair Grower.” • She relocated to Indianapolis and built a factory for her Walker Manufacturing Company. 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. Ultimately, Walker employed 40,000 Black women and men in the US, Central America, and the Caribbean. She also founded the National Negro Cosmetics Manufacturers Association in 1917. • Walker’s business grew, with sales exceeding $500,000 in the final year of her life, 1919. Her total worth topped $1 million dollars, and included a mansion in New York dubbed “Villa Lewaro”, and properties in Harlem, Chicago, Pittsburgh, and St. Louis. • Read the full article here: https://www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/madam-cj-walker https://www.instagram.com/p/CCj4dixjwv8/?igshid=g22s0xlj2tgz
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