Levon Campbell III
Staff Writer
Madam C.J. Walker was a woman of many talents. She rose from poverty to become an entrepreneur and activist. She was known as the first Black woman millionaire in America for her forays into homemade hair care products for black women.
According to www.womenshistory.org, Walker used her position as an influential African-American to advance in society and bring attention to putting an end to lynching.
Walker was born on Dec. 23, 1867, on a plantation in Delta, La., as Sarah Breedlove, one of six children of her parents Owen and Minerva Anderson Breedlove. According to www.History.com, she was born free after the emancipation proclamation and after being orphaned at the age of 7, she lived and worked with her older sister Louvenia in the cotton fields.
To escape her abusive brother-in-law, she married Moses McWilliams at the age of 14. In 1887, her husband died and she became a single mother at the age of 20 to her two-year-old daughter, Leila.
According to history. com, Walker and her daughter moved to St. Louis, where she balanced working as a laundress with night school. She sang in a choir at an African church and became active in the National Association of Colored Women. In St. Louis, she met her second husband, Charles J. Walker, the man who would inspire the name of her eventual empire.
Walker started to create hair care products for African-American women after a scalp disorder caused her to lose too much of her own hair. She then came up with a treatment that would change the game in the black haircare industry.
According to History.com, Walker’s method would be known as the Walker System, which would involve scalp preparation, lotions, and iron combs. Her custom pomade was a great success. While most products for black hair would come from white businesses and be on the market, she differentiated her products by emphasizing attention to the health of the women who would use them.
She would sell her homemade products directly to black women, using a personal approach that won over her customers. She would later employ beauty culturalists, a fleet of saleswomen to sell her products.
According to www.History.com, in 1908 Walker opened a beauty school and factory in Pittsburg, Pa., that she named after her daughter. In 1910, Walker moved her business to Indianapolis, a city that had access to railroads for distribution and a lot of African-American customers.
At the height of her production, Walker Company employed over three thousand beauty culturalists (mostly black women). Walker also let her daughter, A’Lelia, manage her own branch in Pittsburgh.
Walker was embraced by the black press and became known as one of the best-known African-Americans. According to history.com, she established clubs for her employees and encouraged them to give back to the community with awards whenever they did.
She promoted female talent at a time when black women finding of jobs was limited. Walker also donated generously to educational causes and black charities, funding scholarships for women at Tuskegee Institute and donating to the NAACP, the Black YMCA, and dozens of other organizations that helped make Black History Month.
Zaydalyn Griffin, a freshman biology-pre-med major from Jackson, Miss., expressed how women can look up to Madam C.J. Walker.
“She is the role model to entrepreneurs and was the career booster to a lot of women,” Griffin stated.
Makaila Cooper, a senior childcare education major from St. Louis, Mo., talks about how Walker inspired African-American women.
“I like how she inspired black people to embrace their hair and made women come into their own beauty.”
Walker died at the age of fifty-one on May 25, 1919 of hypertension. According to history.com, her plans to have a headquarter built in Indianapolis, the Walker Building, was carried out and completed in 1927.
To this day, Madam C.J. Walker is remembered as a pioneering African-American woman who inspired many with her financial independence, business acumen, and philanthropy.
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