Madame C. J. Walker

Sarah Breedlove

Source: Contemporary Black Biography, Gale Research. 1994.

Dec. 23, 1867 - May 25, 1919
Delta, Louisiana, United States
Irvington-on-Hudson, New York, United States
Nationality: American
Occupation: entrepreneur
Occupation: philanthropist
Awards: Inducted into National Women's Hall of Fame, Seneca Falls, NY, 1993.

"I am a woman who came from the cotton fields of the South. I was promoted from there to the washtub. Then I was promoted to the cook kitchen, and from there I promoted myself into the business of manufacturing hair goods and preparations." With these words, Madame C. J. Walker introduced herself to the National Negro Business League's 1912 convention and summed up her life to that time. Five years later, through her hard work and business acumen, this daughter of former slaves owned and ran the largest black-owned company in the United States.

The Madame C. J. Walker Manufacturing Company produced and distributed a line of hair and beauty preparations for black women, including conditioners to ease styling, stimulate hair growth, and cure common scalp ailments, as well as an improved metal comb for straightening curly hair. So successful was she at marketing her products that Madame Walker became the first female African American millionaire. Her self-made fortune allowed for a lavish personal lifestyle and extensive public philanthropic commitments, particularly to black educational institutions.

Walker was born Sarah Breedlove in 1867. Her parents, Owen and Minerva Breedlove, were former slaves who had chosen to remain as sharecroppers on the Burney family plantation near Delta, Louisiana. The family was poor, and both parents died by the time Sarah was seven. She was taken in by her older sister, Louvenia, and a few years later they moved to Vicksburg, Mississippi.

Sarah's education was extremely limited, and she was subjected to the cruelty of Louvenia's husband. To get away, she married a man named McWilliams when she was 14. In 1885 her daughter, Lelia, was born; two years later, McWilliams was killed, and the young widow moved to St. Louis, Missouri, where she worked as a washerwoman and domestic. Through hard work, she managed to see Lelia graduate from the St. Louis public schools and attend Knoxville College, a black private college in Tennessee.

Shortly after her arrival in St. Louis, Sarah began losing her hair. Like many black women of her era, she would often divide her hair into sections, tightly wrap string around these sections, and twist them in order to make her hair straighter when it was combed out. Unfortunately, this hair-care ritual created such a strain that it caused many women to lose their hair.

To keep her hair, Sarah tried every product she could find, but none worked. Desperate, she prayed to God to save her hair. "He answered my prayer," she later told a reporter for the Kansas City Star in a story recounted in Ms. magazine. "One night I had a dream, and in that dream a big black man appeared to me and told me what to mix up for my hair. Some of the remedy was grown in Africa, but I sent for it, mixed it, put it on my scalp, and in a few weeks my hair was coming in faster than it had ever fallen out. I tried it on my friends; it helped them. I made up my mind to begin to sell it."

Walker experimented with patent medicines and hair products already on the market, developing different formulas and products in her wash tubs for testing on herself, her family members, and friends. Realizing the commercial possibilities in the under-served market for black beauty products, she began selling her concoctions door-to-door in the local black community.

After perfecting her "Wonderful Hair Grower" in 1905, she moved to Denver, Colorado, to join her recently widowed sister-in-law and nieces. Other products followed, including "Glossine" hair oil, "Temple Grower," and a "Tetter Salve" for psoriasis of the scalp. These products, used along with her re-designed steel hot comb with teeth spaced far apart for thick hair, allowed black women to straighten, press, and style their hair more easily.

Walker's beauty products complemented her belief that one of the ways black women could gain access to business careers and financial power was by looking more "acceptable" to members of the dominant mainstream white society. Using her preparations would not only help improve personal hygiene for many rural black women, but also enhance their personal self-esteem. "I have always held myself out as a hair culturist. I grow hair," she once told a reporter whose story was later quoted in Ms. magazine. "I want the great masses of my people to take a greater pride in their appearance and to give their hair proper attention."

Soon she had enough customers to quit working as a laundress and devote all her energy to her growing business. In 1906 she married Charles Joseph Walker, a Denver newspaperman. His journalistic background proved helpful in implementing advertising and promotional schemes for her products in various black publications, as well as through mail-order procedures. Though the marriage only lasted a few years, it provided a new professional name for herself and her company-- the Madame C. J. Walker Manufacturing Company.

Leaving Lelia in charge of her burgeoning mail-order operations in Denver, Walker traveled throughout the South and East, selling her products and teaching her hair-care method. In 1908 she established a branch office and a school called Lelia College in Pittsburgh to train black hair stylists and beauticians in the Walker System of hair care and beauty culture. While Lelia managed the school and office, Walker logged thousands of miles on the road, introducing her preparations to black women everywhere she went.

Stopping in Indianapolis in 1910, she was so impressed by the city's central location and transportation facilities that she decided to make it her headquarters. That year she consolidated her operations by moving the Denver and Pittsburgh offices there and building a new factory to manufacture her hair solutions, facial creams, and related cosmetics. She also established a training center for her sales force, research and production laboratories, and another beauty school to train her "hair culturists."

On one of her many trips Walker met a train porter, Freeman B. Ransom, who was a Columbia University law student working during his summer vacation. After he graduated, she hired him to run her Indianapolis operations, freeing Lelia to move to New York in 1913 to expand activities on the East Coast and open another Lelia College. Walker herself continued to travel and promote her beauty program.

Walker was fast building an empire in the true tradition of American enterprise--manufacturing the products in her own plant, employing a nationwide sales force to sell them, and owning the beauty shops that used and promoted them. At every town she visited in her indefatigable travels, she made sure to meet the leading black business, religious, and civic leaders, knowing that if these influential citizens began using her products the rest of the populace would follow suit.

By 1917 the Madame C. J. Walker Manufacturing Company was the largest black-owned business in the country with annual revenues of approximately $500,000. Much of its success was built around the sales force--thousands of black women known as Walker agents. Dressed in white blouses and long black skirts, they became familiar sights in black communities throughout the United States and the Caribbean. Walking door- to-door to demonstrate and sell Walker products, they easily outpaced their competitors in the newfound black beauty field.

Being a Walker agent or hair culturist was a rare career opportunity for black women in the rigidly segregated pre- World War I era. It enabled many to become financially independent, buy their own homes, and support their childrens' educations. Walker herself considered it one of her greatest accomplishments, telling delegates to the National Negro Business League, as recounted in American History Illustrated: "I have made it possible for many colored women to abandon the washtub for a more pleasant and profitable occupation.... The girls and women of our race must not be afraid to take hold of business enterprise."

Once her agents were making money, Walker encouraged them to donate to charitable causes in their own communities. She shrewdly organized them into clubs for business, social, and philanthropic purposes, stimulating their activities and fostering prestige by offering cash prizes to the most generous clubs. Delegates from local clubs attended national conventions at regular intervals to learn new techniques and share business experiences.

Walker set a good example to her saleswomen by becoming the leading black philanthropist of her day. She contributed substantial sums to promote black education (particularly for women), encourage black businesses, support homes for the aged, and aid anti-lynching legislation. Some of her favorite causes were the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the Colored YMCA of Indianapolis, and the National Conference on Lynching.

Walker befriended many famous black leaders of her era and generously supported their efforts, among them Booker T. Washington's Tuskegee Institute, Mary McLeod Bethune's Daytona Normal and Industrial Institute for Negro Girls, Lucy Laney's Haynes Institute, and Charlotte Hawkins Brown's Palmer Memorial Institute. She also built a school for girls in West Africa and continued providing for it. When the National Association of Colored Women appealed to their membership for donations to pay off the mortgage of the late abolitionist Frederick Douglass's home, Walker made the largest contribution. At the group's 1918 convention, she proudly held the candle that burnt the mortgage papers.

Even with her generosity, Walker was able to lead a lavish lifestyle. Shrewd real estate investments complemented her self-made business fortune. A striking woman nearly six-feet tall, big boned, with brown skin and a broad face, she made heads turn by her presence whenever she entered a room. And her extravagant tastes only enhanced her public image. She dressed in the latest fashions, wore expensive jewelry, rode around in an electric car, was seen in the finer restaurants, owned townhouses in New York and Indianapolis and, befitting the first black female millionaire in the country, built a $250,000, 20-room, elegant Georgian mansion, Villa Lewaro-- complete with gold piano and $60,000 pipe organ--in Irvington- on-Hudson.

By 1918 Walker's nonstop pace and lifetime of hard work had begun to take its toll. Despite orders from doctors to slow down to ease her high blood pressure, she continued to travel. During a business trip to St. Louis she collapsed and was transported back to her villa in a private railroad car. She died quietly of kidney failure resulting from hypertension in May of 1919 at the age of 52, leaving behind a prosperous company, extensive property, and a personal fortune in excess of $1 million. Summing up her life, the author of an editorial in Crisis said that Madame Walker "revolutionized the personal habits and appearance of millions of human beings."

In her will, Walker bequeathed two-thirds of her estate to charitable and educational institutions, many of which she had supported during her lifetime. The remaining third was left to her daughter, now called A'Lelia, who succeeded her as company president. True to her beliefs, a provision in the will directed that the Madame C. J. Walker Manufacturing Company always have a woman president. In 1927 the Walker Building, planned by Madame Walker, was completed in Indianapolis to serve as company headquarters.

Further Reading

Books

• Epic Lives, edited by Jessie Carney Smith, Visible Ink Press, 1993.
• Salley, Columbus, The Black 100: A Ranking of the Most Influential African Americans, Past and Present, Citadel Press, 1993.

Periodicals

• American History Illustrated, March 1989, pp. 24-25.
• Crisis, July 1919.
• Essence, June 1983, pp. 84-86, 154-156.
• Ms., July 1983, pp. 91-94.
• New York Times, May 26, 1919.

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