Madame C J Walker was born Sarah Breedlove on December 23, 1867 in Delta Louisiana, the first child in her family born after the end of slavery. In 1882, she married Moses McWilliams and they bore a daughter, A'Lelia. In 1888, her husband was murdered by a white lynch mob. Shortly after, she and her daughter moved to St. Louis, where she worked as a cook and a house cleaner. Stress had caused her hair to begin falling out. After trying several other products designed for her condition to no avail, she concocted her own formula and it really worked. After trying her product out on friends with much success, she began selling her product. In 1906, Mme Walker married her third husband, Charles Joseph Walker, a newspaper sales agent and together, they set off to travel the country selling her new line of hair products. She started out selling her products from door to door then in 1908 opened a factory and beauty school, Lelia College, in Pittsburgh. In 1910, she established a headquarters in Indianapolis while her daughter ran the Pittsburgh office. Between 1913 and 1916 Mme Walker traveled the U.S., Caribbean, and Central America to train Walker sales agents. In 1916, she moved to New York and bought a house on W 136th Street and opened a beauty salon next door. She was an avid human rights activist. In 1917 she devoted herself to having lynching made a federal crime and was part of a delegation that visited the White House to petition President Wilson for her cause. In this year, she also hosted her first annual Walker Beauty Culturists Convention in Philadelphia. In 1918, she moved into Villa Lewaro, the mansion she built in New York. She loved to entertain. The following year, Madame C J Walker died on May 25, 1919 at the age of 51 of kidney failure at Villa Lewaro. Mme Walker is known to be the first American female self-made millionaire. The site of her manufacturing company in Indianapolis and Villa Lewaro have been made national historic landmarks and turned into museums. In 1998, she became the 21st African American to be featured in the United States Postal Service Black Heritage series. She has had many accomplishments in her lifetime and and has done many things for the betterment of the African American community. She was a big part of the Harlem Renaissance.
Sources:
Madam C.J. Walker The Official Web Site
http://www.madamecjwalker.com/index.html
Women In History: Living vignettes of notable women from U.S. history
http://www.lkwdpl.org/wihohio/walk-mad.htm
Schomburg Exhibition, Harlem 1900-1940: Schomburg Exhibit C.J. Walker
http://www.si.umich.edu/CHICO/Harlem/text/cjwalker.html
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3 comments:
As Madam Walker's biographer and great-great-granddaughter, I was pleased to see that Madam Walker is part of your curriculum this semester. If I may, I would like to suggest a few corrections in the biographical information that appears on the blog:
Regarding the death of Madam Walker's first husband, Moses McWilliams: there is no documentation that he was "murdered by a white lynch mob." This is a myth that was created by a newspaper reporter in the 1940s. Unfortunately other writers have repeated it. In my book, On Her Own Ground: The Life and Times of Madam C. J. Walker (Scribner, 2001), I discuss how the myth arose. In St. Louis, while Madam Walker (then Sarah Breedlove McWilliams) may have occasionally "worked as a cook and house cleaner," she described her occupation as "washerwoman." She started selling her products door to door in Denver in 1906, rather than in 1908, which was the year she opened her first beauty school in Pittsburgh.
I do hope you will have a chance to read On Her Own Ground to learn more about Madam Walker's contributions as an entrepreneur, philanthropist and political activist.
Thank you so much. and I'm sorry for the misinformation. Its an honor to be corrected by you.
We're very appreciative that you've included Madam Walker in your course and on your blog. Thanks so much.
A'Lelia Bundles
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