Walker settled in 1910 in Indianapolis, a manufacturing-friendly city and a major transportation hub, where she headquartered her business and built a factory, in addition to expanding her salons and training schools into other cities. They're going from one woman's house to another or doing hair together in groups and it's an opportunity to become community-oriented entrepreneurs.”īut Walker’s dream of owning an empire was bigger than her husband’s, and they divorced. “She really does offer working-class and middle-class African American women a form of independent employment. Walker and the Making of an American Icon. “She has entered the business world, not for herself alone, but for the good of Black people, and specifically, the good of Black women,” says Erica Ball, a professor at Occidental College and author of Madam C.J. Walker (born Sarah Breedlove, 1867 - 1919), circa 1913.Īs Walker’s fortune increased, she became a philanthropist, supporting schools, the arts and civil rights organizations, as well as providing wealth-building opportunities for her agents. With her husband’s marketing skills, Walker also advertised in several Black newspapers, announcing when she’d be in town selling, and published testimonies about her product.Īccording to Bundles, some of the ads said: “You have made it possible for a Black woman to make more money in a day selling your products than she could get a month working in somebody's kitchen,” or “Before I started using Madam Walker's Wonderful Hair Grower, my hair was in eighth of an inch long and now it's down my back.” Walker's Philanthropy Walker’s Wonderful Hair Grower,” a scalp conditioning and healing formula, selling door-to-door to Black women and giving demos at churches.Īs business boomed, Walker created opportunities for other Black women, hiring them as sales agents and devising strategies for them to increase their profits. With a vision of having a haircare empire, Walker traveled throughout the South and Southeast with her product, “Madam C.J. Walker’s hair product: Wonderful Hair Grower. She'd also married her third husband Charles Joseph Walker, a newspaper man, and founded her business the Madam C.J. With his pharmaceutical suggestions, coupled with the knowledge she gained from her brothers and working as a Poro agent, Walker developed her own product. church, selling Poro products to Black women, while also working as a cook for the owner of a large pharmacy. In Denver, Walker became active in another A.M.E. Louis for Denver in 1905 to live with a sister-in-law and work as a sales agent for Poro, Malone’s company. Walker, then remarried to a man who abused her, fled St. With her brothers’ haircare knowledge, Walker started experimenting with homemade ointments and store-bought products from Annie Turnbo Malone, a Black entrepreneur with a successful haircare line. “And those women began to give her a vision of herself, and that was a part of what propelled her.”ĭuring the 1890s, Walker developed a scalp ailment that led to severe hair loss, a common occurrence, mainly due to a lack of indoor plumbing, which made hair-washing infrequent, says Bundles. “She was able to see an example of what life would be like as something other than a washer woman,” says Bundles. Walker, who joined the choir, was embraced and mentored by the church women who were active in missionary society and members of the National Association of Colored Women. Church, there were women who were educated schoolteachers and others who were leaders in the community who looked for women, like Sarah Breedlove, to encourage them in whatever way they could,” says A’Lelia Bundles, Walker’s great-great granddaughter and author of On Her Own Ground: The Life and Times of Madam C.J. Paul African Methodist Episcopal Church in St. Walker, who had little formal education and worked as a washer woman, found a community of Black women at St. Louis where Walker’s older brothers had migrated, establishing themselves as barbers. But returning to live with her sister and brother-in-law was not an option, so Walker and A’Lelia moved to St. To escape her abusive brother-in-law, Walker married at age 14, and gave birth to her only daughter, A’Lelia, in 1885, before she was widowed just two years later. Walker, who was born Sarah Breedlove in 1867 on a plantation in Delta, Louisiana, where her parents had been enslaved, was orphaned at age 7, and worked in cotton fields near Vicksburg, Mississippi, living with her older sister.
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