CALL?HER a trailblazer and you wouldn’t be wrong. Madame C.J. Walker was one of the first African-American businesswomen around. Before there was Soft Sheen or a host of black hair care products, there was Madame C.J. Walker, who helped to redefine black haircare for women.
Although born Sarah Breedlove to former slaves, through education she transformed herself from a farm labourer and laundress into a thriving enterpreneur, and hair was the channel she used.
After suffering a scalp ailment that caused her to lose most of her hair, she experimented with many homemade remedies.
In 1905 she married her third husband, St Louis newspaperman Charles Joseph Walker, changed her name to “Madam” C.J. Walker, founded her own business and began selling Madam Walker’s Wonderful Hair Grower, a scalp-conditioning and healing formula that she claimed was revealed to her in a dream.
She developed her own shampoo and ointment that contained sulfur to make her scalp healthier for hair growth.
While her daughter Lelia McWilliams ran a mail-order business from Denver [Colorado], Madam Walker and her husband travelled throughout the southern and eastern states.
They settled in Pittsburgh in 1908 and opened Lelia College to train “hair culturists”.
In 1910 Walker moved to Indianapolis, Indiana, where she established her headquarters and built a factory.
She began teaching and training other black women in order to help them build their own businesses. She also gave other lectures on political, economic and social issues at conventions sponsored by powerful black institutions.
Madame C.J. Walker was big on philanthropy and donated money to the NAACP, the YMCA, black schools, organizations, individuals, orphanages, and retirement homes.
She died at Villa Lewaro, her Irvington-on-Hudson, New York estate on May 25, 1919 from complications of hypertension. She was 51. However, at her death she was considered to be the wealthiest African-American woman in America and known to be the first self-made female American millionaire.
