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Madam C. J. Walker
1867–1919 · 52 years Tier II
From an orphaned laundress to the wealthiest Black woman in America
Sarah Breedlove was born near Delta, Louisiana, on December 23, 1867, the first of her parents' children born free — Owen and Minerva Breedlove had themselves been enslaved. Cholera took her mother in 1872 and her father died the following year, orphaning her at seven; she moved in with her sister Louvenia in Vicksburg, Mississippi, at ten. At fourteen she married Moses McWilliams to get away from an abusive brother-in-law, had a daughter, Lelia, in 1885, and was widowed at twenty. She resettled in St. Louis and took in washing, earning about a dollar a day, while a scalp condition left her patchy and balding — the problem she eventually built a business solving.
She started as a commission agent for the Black hair-care entrepreneur Annie Turnbo Malone, then broke off on her own in Denver in 1905 with a shampoo-and-pomade regimen worked in with a heated comb — the Walker System. Marrying Charles Joseph Walker in 1906 gave her the name she sold it under. She trained saleswomen, the Walker Agents, first at Lelia College in Pittsburgh from 1908 and then from a purpose-built Indianapolis headquarters from 1910, and by the war had several thousand of them working door to door across the country; in 1917 she organized them into clubs under a national association and held the first convention, in Philadelphia, that summer. Guinness credits her as the first self-made female millionaire in America, though the record for women who built quiet, undocumented wealth before her is incomplete.
The company that made her rich sold products to straighten and grow hair inside an industry then dominated by the idea that lighter skin and straighter hair were the standard — a charge she disputed her whole career, insisting the Walker System was about scalp health and growth, not imitation, and hiring thousands of Black women as agents who set their own hours and kept the bulk of what they earned. Three marriages ended around her, one by death and two by divorce, while she kept working. A Chicago doctor diagnosed her with nephritis in November 1917 and told her to rest indefinitely at a Michigan sanitarium; she moved into her new Hudson River mansion instead, hosted its opening, and kept working through 1918. She died there on May 25, 1919, of kidney failure and hypertension, at 51.
Her daughter A'Lelia took over the company; Walker was buried in the Bronx's Woodlawn Cemetery, worth between half a million and a million dollars. Guinness later credited her as America's first self-made female millionaire, a claim other historians qualify because women like Mary Ellen Pleasant may have built fortunes earlier without leaving the paperwork to prove it. Villa Lewaro became a National Historic Landmark, and the Indianapolis theater and office building she funded, opened in 1927, is on the National Register. The Postal Service put her on a stamp in 1998 and the National Women's Hall of Fame inducted her in 1993; Netflix dramatized her in 2020's Self Made, starring Octavia Spencer, to reviews that flagged its inaccuracies.
Lifespan
Madam C. J. Walker's life against the full span of the corpus.
Notable works
-
Walker System
invention
Shampoo, pomade, and heated comb sold as a scalp-health regimen 1905 -
Lelia College
company
Pittsburgh school that trained the Walker Agents 1908 -
Madam C. J. Walker Manufacturing Company
company
Indianapolis factory, salon, and beauty school 1910 -
National Beauty Culturists and Benevolent Association
company
Organized her sales agents into clubs nationwide 1917 -
Villa Lewaro
building
250,000-dollar Irvington-on-Hudson estate designed by Vertner Tandy 1918
Life in brief
with age at each point- 1872 aged ~5 Her mother dies of cholera; her father dies the following year Orphaned at seven, she moved to Vicksburg, Mississippi, to live with her sister.
- 1882 aged ~15 Marries Moses McWilliams at fourteen to escape an abusive brother-in-law
- 1888 aged ~21 Moves to St. Louis and works as a laundress
- July 1905 aged 37 Relocates to Denver and develops the Walker System
- January 1906 aged 38 Marries Charles Joseph Walker and adopts the business name
- 1910 aged ~43 Establishes company headquarters in Indianapolis
- November 1917 aged 49 Is diagnosed with nephritis but keeps working
- May 1918 aged 50 Moves into Villa Lewaro, her Hudson River estate
- May 25, 1919 aged 51 Dies at Villa Lewaro of kidney failure and hypertension
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