The First Reported Female Self-Made Millionaire
A look at an individual who excelled in her field without formal education.
Madam C.J. Walker has experienced a resurgence in the last few years thanks to a number of books that have been published and, in large part, from the release of a mini-series loosely based upon her life released by Netflix in March 2020. However, it is remarkable that a woman who had such a profound impact on American culture and empowerment of women could have ever been lost to history, even for a short while.
Life
Born Sarah Breedlove in 1867, roughly 4 years after the passage of the Emancipation Proclamation, Sarah was the first in her family to be born a free person. Her five older siblings and her parents were all enslaved prior to the end of the Civil War and moved to sharecropping as a means of making a living post-slavery. Sarah's only education, purportedly, was during a three-month period of literacy lessons at her local church. However, there is some conjecture that she may have attended some night courses in her young adult life. Regardless, to say that Sarah was handed a hard lot in life would be an understatement.
At the age of seven, her mother died of what is assumed to have been Cholera. Her father passed about a year later. At this point, Sarah moved in with her older sister and worked as a domestic servant. She chose to marry at 14 years of age to rid herself of her sister's husband, who was abusive.
By the age of 20, Sarah was a widow and single mother to daughter A'Lelia, who would grow to be a notable woman herself and contributor to the Harlem Renaissance. Sarah was, presumably, a long way from dreaming of such lofty achievements for her young child. Upon her first husband's death, she moved herself and young A'Lelia to St. Louis, Missouri where three of her brothers had established themselves as barbers. She found work in the new location as a laundress, making just above a dollar a day. Even with her meager earnings, she managed to provide formal education for her only child.
It wouldn't be long before the stress of a hard life, the common lack of hygiene practices of the day, and the harsh chemicals used in her work as a laundress began to take its tole on Sarah. Her hair started to thin and fall out. She turned to her brothers for advice about haircare, commenced using numerous commercial products, and even experimented with her own concoctions, finding success in treating her hair woes by nourishing and cleaning her hair and scalp.
The years Sarah spent in St. Louis couldn't have been easy, but she worked hard in her position as a laundress for more than ten years and attended St. Paul African Methodist Church (AME) during her time off. It was during those years that Sarah laid the foundation for her future success.
It is often said that it was Sarah's membership in her church that had great impact on this headstrong, talented, young woman. She sang in the choir and was mentored by teachers and members of the National Association of Colored Women in those hallowed halls.
After ten years of work as a laundress, Sarah took employment at the Poro Company, a haircare company geared towards African American clientele, working for founder Annie Malone, a fellow AME member. Sarah undoubtedly used the year or two at the Poro Company absorbing the lessons of marketing and sales.
In 1905, Sarah and her daughter moved to Denver, Colorado, where she continued to sell Poro Products, spent time developing the haircare product she developed in her early days as a laundress, and worked as a cook for a local pharmacist. Sarah, not being a woman to miss an opportunity, used her proximity to her pharmacist boss to help her fine-tune the chemistry of her personal haircare products.
"I got my start by giving myself a start." - Madam C.J. Walker
In 1906, Sarah married Charles Joseph Walker, a newspaper ad salesman. Upon marriage, she adopted the moniker "Madam C.J. Walker". Her business of personal haircare products, which she sold by visiting churches and the homes of potential clients, began to surge as did a system of treating hair, known as the Walker Method.
Drawing from her husband's knowledge in advertising, and her own experience in door-to-door sales, she created an army of 20,000 energetic saleswomen, referred to as Beauty Culturists or Walker Agents. Madam C.J. Walker built a haircare empire with 23 products under her label. She used her vast wealth to create a network of hair salons and beauty colleges that taught the Walker System of haircare. Madam Walker's contributions far exceeded those of a successful haircare line. She empowered women through work and financial independence, employing a largely female manufacturing workforce, and hired women in key management positions. She held classes for her large team on budgeting, how to start a business, and financial freedom. Walker was a woman who cared deeply about giving back, and that translated into great philanthropic efforts. Those efforts included social activism, donations to scholarship funds and the NAACP, and a wide variety of organizations promoting those qualities that Walker held dear.
Though born into a world with the odds stacked against her, Madam Walker found astonishing success for a woman, and for a black woman, in the early 1900s. While she lacked any real form of education to speak of, she was a patron of unconventional education, surrounding herself with bright people whom she learned quickly from. She knew and believed in the power of education, whether it was ensuring her child received formal lessons during Walker's time working as a laundress, to the numerous beauty colleges she founded, the budgeting courses for her workforce, or the number of scholarships she funded for promising young African Americans. Her life is a testament to the power of life-long learning and the impact of communities empowering one another.
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