Walker, Madame C.J. (1867–1919)

African-American entrepreneur who, as a laundress and daughter of former slaves, invented hair-care products for black women which she turned into a multimillion-dollar business . Name variations: Sarah Walker; Sarah Breedlove McWilliams Walker; Sarah Breedlove McWilliams. Born Sarah Breedlove on December 23, 1867, on a cotton plantation in Delta, Louisiana; died at the mansion she built in Irvington, New York, on May 25, 1919; third child of Owen Breedlove and Minerva Breedlove (field hands and former slaves); married Moses (Jeff) McWilliams (a laborer), in 1881 (died 1887); married John Davis, around 1890 (divorced around 1903); married Charles J. Walker (a journalist), on January 4, 1906 (divorced 1912); children: (first marriage) Lelia McWilliams, later A'Lelia Walker (b. June 6, 1885).

Orphaned at seven during a yellow fever epidemic; moved to Vicksburg with her sister when she was ten (1877); at 14, married Moses McWilliams (1881), who died in an accident (1887); with infant daughter, moved to St. Louis where she supported herself as a laundress and attended night school; developed a formula to straighten hair, targeted to black female customers (1905); traveled the country to promote her product and established offices in various cities, a correspondence school, Lelia College, in Pittsburgh to train her representatives, and a factory in Indianapolis; amassed a personal fortune, contributing to various black causes, from education to social protest.

Sarah Breedlove took care to wear immaculate, freshly starched clothing to advertise her skills as a laundrywoman. Thus attired, she sat in the audience of the National Association of Colored Women at the St. Louis World's Fair of 1904 listening to Margaret Murray Washington , the wife of the black educator Booker T. Washington. Washington's elegance and calm authority amazed Sarah, who had been orphaned at seven, widowed at twenty. Years of labor over a washtub enabled her to send her daughter to college. Still she was as much at the mercy of the elements as a farmer—submerging her hands and arms into hot soapy water whether the day was scorching or the temperatures freezing, left powerless on days when rain or snow made it impossible to hang clothes outside.

The difficulties of her life and the rigors of her work took a toll on her body. Her hair was split and her scalp was balding in patches and the sight of Margaret Washington dressed in silk and lace with her hair pulled serenely from her brows inspired Sarah to try to make more of her looks. In the weeks that followed, she tried beauty products that supposedly promoted hair growth. Soon, in her spare time, she was selling them door-to-door. Then, confident she could improve upon the products she represented, she was experimenting with her own formulas. At 37, Sarah Breedlove, the daughter of slaves, set her feet on the path that would make her Madame C.J. Walker, one of the greatest capitalists in America.

In later years, she would synopsize her story by making it a myth: "As I bent over the washboard and looked at my arms buried in the soapsuds, I said to myself, 'What are you going to do when you grow old and your back gets stiff?'" God, she said, answered her prayers. "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." In time, through enterprise and inventiveness, money was coming in too.

Sarah Breedlove was born in 1867 on the Louisiana plantation where her parents, former slaves, worked in fields owned by the family that once owned them. After her parents died in a yellow fever epidemic when Sarah was seven,

she and her brother and sister were unable to work the land, and so they eventually moved across the river to Vicksburg, Mississippi. When Sarah's sister Lovenia married in 1879, Sarah lived briefly with the couple, but at 14 she married laborer Moses McWilliams to escape her domineering brother-in-law. McWilliams died in an accident when Sarah was 20, leaving her with her two-year-old daughter Lelia, later A'Lelia Walker , to support. Walker traveled to St. Louis where she heard a laundress like herself could make higher wages.

With a black population of 35,000, St. Louis had one of the largest African-American communities in the nation and was a mecca for migrants from the South. It supported more than 100 black-owned businesses and three newspapers. With its advantageous position on the Mississippi, it boasted the nation's largest brewery, its key drug manufacturer, and largest tobacco factory. Doing the hard labor of laundering clothes at home, which then meant boiling vats of hot water and immersing hands and arms in strong detergents, starching and pressing shirts and dresses with heavy irons heated on coal stoves, enabled Sarah to stay home with her growing child. Walker's great-granddaughter A'Lelia Perry Bundles offered a picture of the future millionaire at this time, writing in her book: "When she delivered her laundry, she walked with dignity, a basket of neatly folded clothes balanced atop her head."

Sarah joined the St. Paul African Methodist Episcopal Church, founded by blacks, which before the Civil War had defied anti-literacy laws and taught blacks to read and write. The women of the church helped her, and she responded by assisting impoverished members of the community in the Mite Missionary Society, where for the first time she came in contact with cultured, successful black women. By the time Walker attended the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair, the coverage of Margaret Washington's speech there was the first time a black woman was treated positively in the city's press.

While the image of her sisters rose in her eye, Sarah's sense of her own appearance suffered. She dressed cleanly and crisply to promote her services as a laundress, but she was conscious of her broken hair and balding temples. Poor nutrition, a hard life, and harsh treatments advertised in black publications undoubtedly undermined her appearance. The late 19th century was a time of conformity and the idealization of the wasp-waisted Gibson Girl with long upswept hair, which few women of any race could achieve. While black women wanted their own identity, hairstyles inspired by Africa were unheard of. Gripped by the idea of the financial and psychological profits to be made from helping black women improve their appearance, Walker supplemented her income by working as a sales agent for Annie M. Turnbo Malone 's Poro Company, which sold patented hair mixtures door-to-door. Disappointed in the products she sold, Walker experimented to improve them. Sometime between 1900 and 1905, she developed her own hair grower whose secret ingredient was probably sulphur. She found that her ointment, applied with heated steel combs which had just been developed, straightened hair safely and effectively. Her system encompassed a shampoo, a pomade "hair grower," vigorous brushing, and heated combs that softened curls and promoted a luscious sheen.

Using contacts and skills she honed working for the Poro Company, Walker began to sell door-to-door in St. Louis. Though confident of success, she wanted to avoid direct competition with Annie Malone. With her daughter A'Lelia enrolled at Knoxville College, a black institution in Tennessee, and $1.50 in savings, Walker moved to Denver where her late brother had died, leaving four daughters. Having lived on the steamy Mississippi River all her life, she was astonished by the majesty of Colorado's mountains and its dry bracing air. She found a job as a cook, probably at the home of E.L. Scholtz, a druggist. Conceivably, he provided technical advice on ingredients as she continued to develop her formulae and test them on her nieces. When results satisfied her, she named her three improved products Wonderful Hair Grower (which contained medication for the scalp), Glossine, and Vegetable Shampoo. She left her full-time job and took in laundry two days a week, and the rest of the time sold door-to-door by offering free demonstrations. She used her profits to buy raw materials and advertising, much of it mail order. Her own before and after photographs were convincing sales tools. Unlike other manufacturers who used light-skinned women as models, she put a picture of herself, a "typical" black woman, but one with long flowing hair, on her labels.

C.J. Walker, a newspaperman from St. Louis, had been corresponding with her and offering advice. When he came to visit her in Denver, the two married on January 4, 1906. Soon he helped her expand her mail-order business and added "C.J. Walker's Blood and Rheumatic Remedy." To evoke the glamour of France and to avoid homier sobriquets like "Aunt Sarah," Sarah began calling herself Madame Walker. Against the advice of her husband and other counselors, she embarked on an 18-month sales trip to nine states, including New York, speaking in churches, Masonic and public halls and demonstrating her products. According to A'Lelia Bundles, this trip increased her sales to $35 a week, more than double the earnings of the average white American male. On the road, she trained sales agents who earned a share of the company's profits and quickly increased company sales tenfold. In 1908, she established the headquarters of the Madame C.J. Walker Manufacturing Company in Pittsburgh, to operate the mail-order business more efficiently. She and her daughter A'Lelia opened a training center for Walker agents there and called it Lelia College. "Hair culturists," as her graduates were known, were able to earn in one week what they would have earned in a month as housekeepers, laundresses, or teachers. These agents making in-home sales accounted for the bulk of the business. Their mission was not just to sell but to educate customers in "cleanliness and loveliness."

Walker stressed that hygiene and personal appearance were cornerstones of self-respect. In 1919, The Crisis, the magazine of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, said that in her lifetime Madame Walker "revolutionized the personal habits and appearance of millions of human beings." She formed the Mme. C.J. Walker Culturists Union of America, with dues of 25 cents a month, which entitled their beneficiaries to a $50 payment at their death. The unions engaged in charitable and educational work as well as business matters. She gave cash prizes to the "Walker Clubs" that did the most philanthropic work in their communities.

In 1910, the Walkers moved to Indianapolis where Sarah established a manufacturing plant. The city served eight railway systems, and had a large black community to provide employees. At that time, it was the center of the country's automobile industry and used the Indianapolis Speedway to test cars. Within the year, the company had 950 agents across the country and a monthly corporate income of $1,000.

One of her few and favorite relaxations was the movies. A fan of Charlie Chaplin and the epics of Cecil B. De Mille, Walker went to the local Isis Theater one afternoon, slid her dime across the counter to buy a ticket, and was told that since she was "colored," she would have to pay 25 cents. Enraged, she told her attorney to sue. The matter was settled out of court, but when she built The Walker Building to house her factory and offices, she included an elegant theater specifically for black people. Over time, she and her husband had mounting disagreements over control of the company. In 1912, they divorced. She retained his name and he remained a Walker agent. A'Lelia, now known as A'Lelia Walker Robinson, had also divorced, but she adopted a poor 13-year-old girl named Mae Bryant , whose intelligence and beauty made her a natural Walker model.

In 1913, Sarah and A'Lelia expanded their operations to New York City. Between 1913 and 1915, they purchased two houses at 108–119 West 136th Street, which they remodeled to include a façade of Indiana limestone. The lower floors housed a beauty parlor and school while the two women lived on the upper floors, where they established a social center, a meeting place for accomplished individuals of both races. In the 1920s, A'Lelia became a leading hostess of the Harlem Renaissance, inviting to her home such intellectuals and entertainers as W.E.B. Du Bois, Countee Cullen, Langston Hughes, Alberta Hunter, Rebecca West , Osbert Sitwell, Carl Van Vechten, and European royalty. Walker left management of the overall business to Freeman B. Ransom, a lawyer, although she wrote him letters almost daily, instructing him on operations, and also sending mounting bills to pay.

It is given to few persons to transform a people in a generation. Yet this was done by the late Madame C.J. Walker.

—W.E.B. Du Bois

Walker became a speaker not only for her products, but for her race and gender. In July 1912, at the National Association of Colored Women, she met Mary McLeod Bethune , a 37-year-old educator who was attempting to expand education for blacks in Florida. Walker led a fund-raising effort on her behalf. She also worked to end lynching and during World War I joined a delegation that met with President Woodrow Wilson to protest segregation policies in the War Department. In late 1918, she considered going to the Versailles Peace Conference to promote the rights of blacks. The government disapproved of this action and blocked her request for a passport. Her products were known in Europe, however. When the uninhibited dancing and vivid personality of Josephine Baker seized the French imagination, her use of the Walker System was publicized. A French company quickly marketed similar products under the name "Baker-Fix."

Walker numbered among her friends Booker T. Washington, Mary McLeod Bethune, andMary Morris Talbert , but her relations with competitors became increasingly rancorous. Black businessmen were reluctant to acknowledge her achievement or that of her rivals Annie Malone, with her Poro System and Poro College, and Madame Sarah Spencer Washington , with her Apex products. At a 1912 convention of the National Negro Business League, Booker T. Washington did not include Walker on the podium, but she became the talk of the convention when she made an unscheduled speech from the floor. "Surely you are not going to shut the door in my face," she shouted to Washington, who had ignored her for three days. "I have been trying to tell you what I am doing. I am a woman who came from the cotton fields of the South. I was promoted from there to the wash-tub. Then I was promoted to the cook kitchen. And from there I promoted myself into the business of manufacturing hair goods and preparations. I know how to grow hair as well as I know how to grow cotton. I have built my own factory on my own ground." She then outlined the steps by which she turned a $1.50 investment into a $117,000 business in eight years. The next year, Washington made her a featured speaker.

The physical demands that Walker placed on herself undermined her health, and she suffered from hypertension. She went for rest cures at Hot Springs, Arkansas, in 1916 and at Battle Creek Sanitarium in Michigan in 1917. Otherwise, she did not relax her pace or put herself in the hands of physicians. In April 1919, she became gravely ill in St. Louis and returned to New York. Fearing she was at the end of her life, she summoned Freeman Ransom and gave him a list of black organizations and institutions she wished to help. Bedridden a few weeks later, she said, "I want to live to help my race," and then fell into a coma from which she never emerged. She died of chronic interstitial nephritis at Villa Lewaro, her country home, on May 25, 1919, at the age of 51.

In 1922, her estate was valued at $509,864. She owned a city block in Indianapolis and various other lots, property in Los Angeles, Chicago, Savannah, St. Louis, as well as in Idlewild, Michigan, and Gary, Indiana. Her personal holdings included various properties in New York City, besides her Harlem houses, and a manor in Irvington-on-Hudson, which was situated near the estates of John D. Rockefeller and Jay Gould. Enrico Caruso had persuaded her to name it Villa Lewaro, based on the initials of her daughter's name (LWR). It included a piano and Victrola covered in gold leaf and other luxuries that bolstered her image as a woman of wealth, but drained on her finances needlessly.

Washington, Sarah Spencer (1889–?)

African-American entrepreneur . Name variations: Sara Washington. Born in Berkley, Virginia, on June 6, 1889; death date unknown; daughter of Joshua and Ellen (Douglass) Phillips; educated at the Lincoln Preparatory School in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and the Norfolk Mission College, Norfolk, Virginia; studied beauty culture in York, Pennsylvania, and advanced chemistry at Columbia University.

Starting out as a dressmaker, Sarah Spencer Washington turned to the field of beauty culture in 1913, founding a small hairdressing shop in Atlantic City, New Jersey. Like Madame C.J. Walker and Annie Turnbo Malone before her, Washington began a house-to-house campaign to sell her wares. By 1919, she was the sole owner of Apex Hair and News Company, conducting classes and setting up supply stations throughout New York and New Jersey. By 1939, her regular staff had grown to 215, with 35,000 agents throughout the United States. Washington was also generous with her money, giving often to the black community.

Sales of her products reached a peak of $595,000 in 1920, then slowly declined. In 1933, in the depths of the Depression, they were $48,000. The company endured, however, and continued to provide work and service to black people until it was purchased by an Indianapolis businessman in 1985.

sources:

Bundles, A'Lelia Perry. Madame C.J. Walker. NY: Chelsea House, 1991.

——. On Her Own Ground: The Life and Times of Madam C.J. Walker. Scribner, 2001.

Gates, Henry Louis, Jr. "Madam's Crusade," in Time 100 special.

Sicherman, Barbara, and Carol Hurd Green, eds. Notable American Women: The Modern Period. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University, 1980.

suggested reading:

Lewis, David Levering. When Harlem was in Vogue. NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 1981.

McKay, Claude. Harlem: Negro Metropolis. NY: E.P. Dutton, 1940.

Sterling, Dorothy, ed. We Are Your Sisters: Black Women in the Nineteenth Century. NY: W.W. Norton, 1984.

collections:

Indiana Historical Society, Indianapolis, Indiana.

Kathleen Brady , author of Lucille: The Life of Lucille Ball (Hyperion) and Ida Tarbell: Portrait of A Muckraker (University of Pittsburgh Press)