Madam C. J. Walker
Madam C. J. Walker | |
---|---|
Born | Sarah Breedlove December 23, 1867 |
Died | May 25, 1919 Irvington, New York, U.S. | (aged 51)
Resting place | Woodlawn Cemetery (Bronx, New York) |
Occupations |
|
Known for | Founder of Madam C. J. Walker Manufacturing Company |
Spouses |
|
Children | A'Lelia Walker |
Relatives | A'Lelia Bundles (great–great granddaughter) |
Website | madamcjwalker |
Madam C. J. Walker (born Sarah Breedlove; December 23, 1867 – May 25, 1919) was an American entrepreneur, philanthropist, and political and social activist. She is recorded as the first female self-made millionaire in America in the
Walker made her fortune by developing and marketing a line of
Early life
Sarah Breedlove was born on December 23, 1867, close to
She was orphaned at the age of seven. Sarah moved to
"I had little or no opportunity when I started out in life, having been left an orphan and being without mother or father since I was seven years of age," she often recounted. She also recounted that she had only three months of formal education, which she learned during Sunday school literacy lessons at the church she attended during her earlier years.[9]Personal life
Marriage and family
In 1882, at the age of 14, Sarah married Moses McWilliams, whose age was unknown, to escape abuse from her brother-in-law, Jesse Powell.[5] Sarah and Moses had one daughter, Lelia, who was born on June 6, 1885. When Moses died in 1887, Sarah was twenty and Lelia was two.[8][10] Sarah remarried in 1894, but left her second husband, John Davis, around 1903.[11]
In January 1906, Sarah married Charles Joseph Walker, a newspaper advertising salesman she had known in
Religion
Walker was a Christian. Her Christian faith had a large influence on her philanthropy. [14] She was a member of the African Methodist Episcopal Church.
Career
In 1888, she and her daughter moved to
Sarah suffered severe dandruff and other scalp ailments, including baldness, due to skin disorders and the application of harsh products to cleanse hair and wash clothes. Other contributing factors to her hair loss included poor diet, illnesses, and infrequent bathing and hair washing during a time when most Americans lacked indoor plumbing, central heating, and electricity.[13][9][17]
Initially, Sarah learned about hair care from her brothers, who were barbers in St. Louis.[9] Around the time of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition (World's Fair at St. Louis in 1904), she became a commission agent selling products for Annie Turnbo Malone, an African-American hair-care entrepreneur, millionaire, and owner of the Poro Company.[5] Sales at the exposition were a disappointment since the African-American community was largely ignored.
While working for Malone, who would later become Walker's largest rival in the hair-care industry,[16] Sarah began to take her new knowledge and develop her own product line.[12] In July 1905, when she was 37 years old, Sarah and her daughter moved to Denver, Colorado, where she continued to sell products for Malone and develop her own hair-care business. A controversy developed between Annie Malone and Sarah because Malone accused Sarah of stealing her formula, a mixture of petroleum jelly and sulfur that had been in use for a hundred years.[19]
Following her marriage to Charles Walker in 1906, Sarah became known as Madam C. J. Walker. She marketed herself as an independent hairdresser and retailer of cosmetic creams. ("Madam" was adopted from women pioneers of the French beauty industry.[20]) Her husband, who was also her business partner, provided advice on advertising and promotion; Sarah sold her products door to door, teaching other black women how to groom and style their hair.[8][12]
In 1906, Walker put her daughter in charge of the mail-order operation in Denver while she and her husband traveled throughout the southern and eastern United States to expand the business.
After Walker closed the business in Denver in 1907, A'Lelia joined her in Pittsburgh. In 1910, when Walker established a new base in Indianapolis, A'Lelia ran the day-to-day operations in Pittsburgh.[23] A'Lelia also persuaded her mother to establish an office and beauty salon in New York City's growing Harlem neighborhood in 1913; it became a center of African-American culture.[20]
In 1910, Walker relocated her businesses to Indianapolis, where she established the headquarters for the Madam C. J. Walker Manufacturing Company. She initially purchased a house and factory at 640 North West Street.[24] Walker later built a factory, hair salon, and beauty school to train her sales agents, and added a laboratory to help with research.[17] She also assembled a staff that included Freeman Ransom, Robert Lee Brokenburr, Alice Kelly, and Marjorie Joyner, among others, to assist in managing the growing company.[12] Many of her company's employees, including those in key management and staff positions, were women.[20]
Walker's method of grooming was designed to promote hair growth and to condition the scalp through the use of her products.[12] The system included a shampoo, a pomade stated to help hair grow, strenuous brushing, and applying iron combs to hair; the method claimed to make lackluster and brittle hair become soft and luxuriant.[15][9] Walker's product line had several competitors. Similar products were produced in Europe and manufactured by other companies in the United States, which included her major rivals, Annie Turnbo Malone's Poro System from which she derived her original formula and later, Sarah Spencer Washington's Apex System.[26]
Between 1911 and 1919, during the height of her career, Walker and her company employed several thousand women as sales agents for its products.[8] By 1917, the company claimed to have trained nearly 20,000 women.[24] While some sources have written that the women dressed in a characteristic uniform of white shirts and black skirts and carried black satchels, there is nothing in the Walker Beauty School manual that verifies that. Others have written the agents focused on door-to-door sales as they visited houses around the United States and in the Caribbean offering Walker's hair pomade and other products packaged in tin containers carrying her image, but the more common scenario is that the Walker beauty culturists demonstrated their products in their homes and beauty salons because they needed a source of water to be able to show how the products worked. Walker understood the power of advertising and brand awareness. Heavy advertising, primarily in African-American newspapers and magazines, in addition to Walker's frequent travels to promote her products, helped make Walker and her products well known in the United States.
In addition to training in sales and grooming, Walker showed other black women how to budget, build their own businesses, and encouraged them to become financially independent. In 1917, inspired by the model of the
Its first annual conference convened in Philadelphia during the summer of 1917 with 200 attendees. The conference is believed to have been among the first national gatherings of women entrepreneurs to discuss business and commerce.[13][15] During the convention Walker gave prizes to women who had sold the most products and brought in the most new sales agents. She also rewarded those who made the largest contributions to charities in their communities.[15]
Walker's name became even more widely known by the 1920s, after her death, as her company's business market expanded beyond the United States to Cuba, Jamaica, Haiti, Panama, and Costa Rica.[15][9][20][26]
Activism and philanthropy
As Walker's wealth and notoriety increased, she became more vocal about her views. In 1912, Walker addressed an annual gathering of the National Negro Business League (NNBL) from the convention floor, where she declared: "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."[24] The following year she addressed convention-goers from the podium as a keynote speaker.[15][9]
She helped raise funds to establish a branch of
About 1913, Walker's daughter, A'Lelia, moved to a new townhouse in
Walker became more involved in political matters after her move to New York. She delivered lectures on political, economic, and social issues at conventions sponsored by powerful black institutions. Her friends and associates included
Profits from her business significantly impacted Walker's contributions to her political and philanthropic interests. In 1918, the National Association of Colored Women's Clubs (NACWC) honored Walker for making the largest individual contribution to help preserve Frederick Douglass's Anacostia house.[30] Before her death in 1919, Walker pledged $5,000 (the equivalent of about $88,000 in 2023) to the NAACP's anti-lynching fund. At the time, it was the largest gift from an individual that the NAACP had ever received.[15] Walker bequeathed nearly $100,000 to orphanages, institutions, and individuals; her will directed two-thirds of future net profits of her estate to charity.[16][15][20]
Death and legacy
Walker died on May 25, 1919, from kidney failure and complications of hypertension at the age of 51.[8][24][28] Walker's remains are interred in Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx, New York City.[31]
At the time of her death, Walker was considered to be worth between a half million and a million dollars.[32] She was the wealthiest African-American woman in America. According to Walker's obituary in The New York Times, "she said herself two years ago [in 1917] that she was not yet a millionaire, but hoped to be some time, not that she wanted the money for herself, but for the good she could do with it."[28] The obituary also noted that same year, her $250,000 mansion was completed at the banks of the Hudson at Irvington.[33] Her daughter, A'Lelia Walker, later became the president of the Madam C. J. Walker Manufacturing Company.[9]
Walker's personal papers are preserved at the
Indianapolis's Walker Manufacturing Company headquarters building, renamed the Madame Walker Theatre Center, opened in December 1927. It included the company's offices and factory as well as a theater, beauty school, hair salon and barbershop, restaurant, drugstore, and a ballroom for the community. The building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1980.[20][36]
A museum in Atlanta is devoted to Walker, as well as historic radio station WERD. Established in 2004, the museum is located at the site of a former Madam C. J. Walker Beauty Shoppe.[37][38]
In 2006, playwright and director Regina Taylor wrote The Dreams of Sarah Breedlove, recounting the history of Walker's struggles and success.[39] The play premiered at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago.[40] Actress L. Scott Caldwell played the role of Walker.[39]
On January 31, 2022, Sundial Brands, a division of Unilever, launched a collection of eleven new products under the brand name MADAM by Madam C. J. Walker and sold exclusively at Walmart.[41] These products replace the line that was launched on March 4, 2016, by Sundial Brands, a skincare and haircare company, in collaboration with Sephora in honor of Walker's legacy. The line, titled "Madam C. J. Walker Beauty Culture", comprised four collections and focused on the use of natural ingredients to care for different types of hair.[42]
TV series
In 2020, actress
Documentary
Madam Walker is featured in
Tributes
Various scholarships and awards have been named in Walker's honor:
- The Madam C. J. Walker Business and Community Recognition Awards are sponsored by the National Coalition of 100 Black Women, Oakland / Bay Area chapter. An annual luncheon honors Walker and awards outstanding women in the community with scholarships.[48]
- Spirit Awards have sponsored the Madame Walker Theatre Center in Indianapolis. Established as a tribute to Walker, the annual award has honored national leaders in entrepreneurship, philanthropy, civic engagement, and the arts since 2006. Awards presented to individuals include the Madame C. J. Walker Heritage Award as well as young entrepreneur and legacy prizes.[49]
Walker was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame in Seneca Falls, New York, in 1993.[50] In 1998, the U.S. Postal Service issued a Madam Walker commemorative stamp as part of its Black Heritage Series.[24][51] In 2022, Mattel issued a Madam C.J. Walker Barbie doll as part of their Inspiring Women doll collection.[52]
References
- ^ a b "First self-made millionairess". Guinness World Records. May 25, 1919. Retrieved March 22, 2020.
- ^ Bundles, A’Lelia (2020). "Madam C.J. Walker: A Brief Biographical Essay". www.madamcjwalker.com. Official Website of Madam C.J. Walker. Retrieved March 22, 2020.
- ^ Gates, Henry Louis; Root, Jr | Originally posted on The (November 15, 2013). "Madam Walker, the First Black American Woman to Be a Self-Made Millionaire | The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross | PBS". The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross. Retrieved March 22, 2020.
- ISBN 978-1-59420-277-3
- ^ a b c d Bundles, "Madam C J (Sarah Breedlove) Walker, 1867–1919" in Black Women in America, v. II, p. 1209.
- ^ a b Bundles, A'Lelia. "Madam C.J. Walker". Madame C. J. Walker. Archived from the original on February 25, 2015. Retrieved February 25, 2015.
- ^ Biography.com. A&E Networks. November 12, 2021.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i "Madam C. J. Walker". Indiana Historical Society.
- ^ ISBN 978-0-7434-3172-9.
- ^ Bundles, A'Lelia (2014). "Biography of Madam C. J. Walker". National Coalition of 100 Black Women, Inc., Oakland/Bay Area Chapter. Archived from the original on March 28, 2018. Retrieved February 5, 2016.
- ISBN 978-0-87195-387-2.
Further reading
Adult nonfiction
- Bundles, A'Lelia Perry (2001). On Her Own Ground: The Life and Times of Madam C. J. Walker. Scribner. ISBN 978-0-7434-3172-9.
- Freeman, Tyrone McKinley (2020). Madam C. J. Walker's Gospel of Giving: Black Women's Philanthropy During Jim Crow. University of Illinois Press. ISBN 978-0-252-08535-2.
- ISBN 978-1-4671-1087-7.
- Sullivan, Otha Richard; ISBN 9780471387077.
Juvenile nonfiction
- Bundles, A'Lelia (2018). All About Madam C.J. Walker. Indianapolis, Indiana: Blue River Press. ISBN 9781681570938
- Bundles, A'Lelia Perry (2008). Madam C. J. Walker: Entrepreneur. Black Americans of Achievement (Legacy ed.). New York: Chelsea House. ISBN 978-1-60413-072-0.
- ISBN 9781562943387.
Adult fiction
- ISBN 978-0-345-44156-0.
External links
- Official website
- Madam C J Walker – Successful Business Woman on YouTube
- Stanley Nelson Interviews Madam C. J. Walker's Great Grand Daughter on YouTube(Walker's political activism and philanthropy)
- On Her Own Ground: Madame C. J. Walker. C-SPAN. January 27, 2001. (Book discussion)
- Madam Walker Research in the National Archives on YouTube
- The Legacy of Madam Walker on YouTube(Part 1)
- Madam C J Walker on YouTube(Indiana Bicentennial Minute, 2016)
- Madam C J Walker Estate on YouTube(Part 1 of 5) Villa Lewaro, Irvington-on-Hudson, New York
- Michals, Debra. "Madam C. J. Walker". National Women's History Museum. 2015.