Sarah Breedlove Walker (1867-1919) was one of the first American women to become a millionaire, and she ran the largest business owned by an African American at the time. She made a prosperous business out of selling her self-made hair care products for African American women.
The story of Madame C. J. Walker is a classic story of an American entrepreneur. Walker was born December 23, 1867. Her father was a poor sharecropper and former slave in Delta, Louisiana. She was orphaned at the age of six and was thereafter raised by an older sister. She received very little formal education, and at the age of 10 she began supporting herself. At 14 she married Moses McWilliams, and in 1885 they had a daughter. Two years later her husband died, and Walker was left a widow with a young child to support. She moved her family to St. Louis, Missouri, where she had relatives. There she worked as a hotel washerwoman for 18 years.
Around 1904, Walker began to suffer from a scalp ailment called alopecia, which causes hair loss. Embarrassed by her appearance, at first she tried existing hair products to relieve her problem, including some invented by another black female entrepreneur, Annie Malone. In 1905, C. J. Walker became a sales agent for Malone and moved to Denver where she married Charles Walker.
Soon after, she started creating scalp treatments, then developed hair straighteners. She founded her own business and began selling Madam Walker’s Wonderful Hair Grower. She began modifying existing hair techniques and tools until she developed the “Walker Method” of hair care. She expanded her line of products to include hair growing tonic, strengtheners, toiletries, fragrances, and facial treatments.
As a prototype entrepreneur, she embarked on an exhausting sales drive throughout the South and Southeast, selling her products door to door, giving demonstrations and working on sales and marketing strategies. In 1908, she opened a college in Pittsburgh to train her “hair culturists.” Later she hired and trained other women to be “Walker Agents,” and eventually she added a huge mail-order department to her business. The business grew rapidly, and in 1908 she opened a second office in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Then in 1910 she opened her first factory in Indianapolis, Indiana.
Eventually, her products formed the basis of a thriving national corporation employing over 3,000 people at one point. Her Walker
System—which included a broad offering of cosmetics, licensed Walker Agents, and Walker Schools—offered meaningful employment and personal
growth to thousands of Black women. Madame Walker’s aggressive marketing strategy combined with relentless ambition led her to be labeled as the first known African American woman to become a self-made millionaire.
Madame C. J. Walker was also a socially-responsible business leader. She was a leader among the African American middle class. She was known as a good employer who sponsored philanthropic and educational projects initiated by her employees. She established scholarships for women at the Tuskegee Institute, Bethune-Cookman College, and Palmer Memorial Institute. In addition, she supported black chapters of the Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA) and orphanages.
Her prescription for success was perseverance, hard work, faith in herself and in God, “honest business dealings” and, of course, quality products. “There is no royal flower-strewn path to success,” she once observed. “And if there is, I have not found it – for if I have accomplished anything in life it is because I have been willing to work hard.”