Madam C. J. Walker

Madam C.J. Walker was an American entrepreneur, philanthropist, and activist. According to the Guinness Book of World Records, she is often recognized as the first female self-made millionaire in America. Though multiple sources acknowledge that other women might have reached this mark first, their wealth is not as well-documented. In her time, Madam Walker’s products, work, and influence loomed large. As one of the first truly recognizable female African American entrepreneurs, Walker would have a direct and profound impact on the opportunities afforded to Black women in America.

Who is Madam C.J. Walker?

C.J. Walker (née Sarah Breedlove), was born Dec. 23, 1867, near Delta, Louisiana, and was the youngest of six siblings. Sarah’s older sister and four brothers worked as slaves on the Madison Parish plantation in Louisiana, but Sarah, born after the Emancipation Proclamation, was the first of her siblings born into freedom. The death of her mother in 1872, and of her father one year later, left Sarah an orphan at just 7. At the age of 10, she traveled to Vicksburg, Mississippi, where she lived with her sister Louvenia and began work as a domestic servant. She had just three months of formal literacy education.

In 1882, at age 14, Sarah married Moses McWilliams to escape abuse at the hands of her sister’s husband. They had a daughter, A’Lelia, in 1885. Moses died two years later. Sarah married John Davis in 1894 and subsequently separated from him in 1903.

What did C.J. Walker invent?

In spite of Walker’s tumultuous personal life, she was industrious and determined. Her brothers were barbers in St. Louis, and they provided her with a cursory education in hair care. She parlayed this knowledge into work as a selling agent for Annie Turnbo Malone, who like Walker would build her own empire of hair care products, sales agents, and philanthropic ventures.

During her stint with Malone, Sarah began working on her own hair-care line. By 1905, at the age of 37, Sarah had relocated from St. Louis to Denver with her daughter. S She married a newspaper advertising salesman Charles Joseph Walker in 1906. (Though the two would divorce in 1912, Sarah would take on the mantle of Madam C.J. Walker by way of this union.)

Going into business for herself, Walker proved adept at branding and advertising. She sold her products door to door, marketing both her cosmetic creams and instructional methods on hair care geared specifically toward the needs of Black women. As the business grew, Walker placed her daughter in charge of the Denver operation and moved with her husband to Pittsburgh, where they established Lelia College as a training institution for “hair culturists.”

Her “Walker System” of training created a legion of licensed sales agents—predominantly women, most of whom earned generous commissions. In the coming years, Walker expanded into Indianapolis and Harlem, where her operations became flourishing centers for Black employment and where her salons became cultural touchstones within their communities. At its peak, it is believed that Walker’s company employed up to 20,000 women as sales agents.

Her company also famously employed a number of prominent African American pioneers, particularly in the Indianapolis metro area, including entrepreneur and activist Marjorie Joyner; civil rights attorney and Indiana’s first Black state senator, Robert Brokenburr; and his legal partner, Freeman Ransom, for whom the surrounding Indianapolis district is now named.

As Walker’s reputation and fortune grew, she increasingly channeled her efforts into activism and philanthropy. She was highly involved in the political and legal efforts to advance Black life in America, and she kept company with intellectual leaders and early civil rights leaders, including Mary McLeod Bethune, Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Dubois. Walker also served on the executive committee for the New York chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), contributed generously to the organization’s anti-lynching fund, and made the single largest individual contribution to the National Association of Colored Women’s Clubs (NACWC) for the preservation of a property once owned by Civil Rights pioneer Fredrick Douglass.

Did C.J. Walker steal the formula?

Walker’s contributions were not without controversy. Former employer Annie Malone would become Walker’s top rival in the industry, and would accuse her of stealing a key formula at the heart of their respective product lines. While it seems likely that Walker adapted her formula while under the employ of Malone, the formula which was composed largely of petroleum jelly and sulfur had also been in use for more than a century by that time. She and Monroe founded competing “hair culturist” colleges and patented competing hair-care methods.

How did C.J. Walker die?

At age 51, C.J. Walker died of kidney failure with complications from hypertension. At the time of her death on May 25, 1919, her fortune was estimated to be at, or close to, $1 million dollars. This made her the wealthiest African American woman in America. Her daughter A’Lelia Walker would assume control of the Madam C.J. Walker Manufacturing Company.

What is C.J. Walker’s legacy?

Madam Walker remains a towering figure in Black history, and in the history of American entrepreneurship. The Madam C. J. Walker Beauty Culturists Union of America which she founded would beome an important forerunner for women’s labor organization. And C.J. Walker-inspired products can still be purchased today through the Sephora cosmetics company.

Walker was also a dedicated patron of the arts. Working closely with Walker’s former legal counsel, Freeman Ransom, A’Lelia Walker oversaw conversion of the company’s former headquarters in Indianapolis into the Madam Walker Theatre Center in 1927. Listed today on the National Register of Historic Places, the theatre still contains company offices, a beauty school, a salon, and a barbershop, as well as a theatre and ballroom.

In 2020, Madam Walker was the subject of a limited streaming Netflix series entitled Self Made: Inspired by the Life of Madam C.J. Walker, and starring Academy Award winner Octavia Spencer in the title role.

Madam Walker is the inspiration and namesake for various scholarships and awards, including the Madam C.J. Walker Business and Community Recognition Awards sponsored by the National Coalition of 100 Black Women and the Madam C.J. Walker Heritage Award, an entrepreneurial honor given as part of the Spirit Awards.

Walker is also enshrined in the National Women’s Hall of Fame in Seneca Falls, New York, where she was inducted in 1993.