Madam C. J. Walker

Madame C.J. Walker

Madame C.J. Walker was born Sarah Breedlove on December 23, 1867 in Delta, Louisiana on the Burney family plantation. Sarah's parents Minerva and Owen Breedlove were ex-slaves who sharecropped on the Burney plantation. She was orphaned at age seven, married at age fourteen to Moses McWilliams, had a child in 1885 and widowed at twenty. She then moved to St. Louis, working as a washerwoman for the next 18 years to support herself and her daughter. She made a hair tonic not to straighten hair but to treat scalp disease. In 1905, Sarah moved to Denver and worked for Annie Malone seller her hair tonic. She married her third husband Charles Joseph Walker, a newspaperman and changed her name to "Madame C.J. Walker and founded her company, naming if after herself. She sold her hair system door-to-door calling it The Walker Method or The Walker System. The system consisted of shampoo, a pomade "hair-grower", vigorous brushing and the application of heated iron combs to the hair. By 1906 she traveled all over the world promoting her hair products, and in 1910 transferred her offices to Indianapolis. The company was named Walker College of Hair Culture and Walker Manufacturing Company. By 1917, it was the largest business in the United States owned and ran by an African American. She supported black charities and culture and donated to many charities and schools. She employed some 3000 people in her company. 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 had strict rules to follow regarding hygiene. In 1919 in Crisis it is said she had influenced in her lifetime a revolution of "personal habits and appearance of millions of human beings". Walker was the first female American self-made millionaire. She built a elegant villa in 1917, spending over 350,000 to build and furnish it. She had hypertension and died on May 25, 1919. Mrs. Walker was also known for her philanthropy, leaving two-thirds of her estate to educational institutions and charities including the NAACP, the Tuskegee Institute and Bethune-Cookman College.