Daughter of slaves turned successful businesswoman, Madam C.J. american-es.
A short childhood
Sarah Breedlove, who will be known as Madam C.J. Walker, was born on December 23, 1867 in the village of Delta, Louisiana in the United States. Fifth child of Minerva and Owen Anderson, she is the first of the family to be born free. Former slaves, his parents were indeed exploited in the cotton fields of a rich planter until the real abolition of slavery two years earlier. Free, but very poor, Minerva and Owen work as sharecroppers in cotton fields.
Life grants only a brief childhood to Sarah, who must very early learn to fend for herself. She receives little education; at five, she joined her family in the cotton fields. His mother Minerva died in 1872, probably of cholera; her father remarried but also died shortly afterwards, and Sarah became an orphan at the age of seven. She then left to live with her older sister Louvenia and her husband Jesse Powell in Vicksburg, Mississippi, where she took a job as a domestic.
“I had little or no opportunity when I started out in life, having been left an orphan and being without mother or father since I was seven years of age,” (I had little or no opportunity when I started out in life, since I was orphaned, without a mother or father, at age seven).
Young widow
Sarah's brother-in-law, Jesse, is a brutal man and, to escape him, Sarah marries at fourteen with Moses McWilliams, a workman. The two will have a daughter two years later:Lelia, who will be known as A'Lelia Walker. Moses dies four years later. Sarah was then only twenty years old, and she was a young widow with a young girl to support. In this new ordeal, which is not the first she is going through, Sarah shows a determination that will characterize her entire existence. With Lelia, she moved to Saint-Louis, Missouri, where she joined her brothers Alexander, James and Solomon. There she took a job as a laundress, working very hard and earning little money.
In Saint-Louis, Sarah attended St Paul's Methodist Church, where she rubbed shoulders with the local black community, including members of the bourgeoisie. Determined to offer a real education to her daughter, she who has not had access to it, she begins to take evening classes to make up for this lack. Subsequently, Sarah remarried John Davis in 1894, but she left him in 1903.
Hair care
Like many women of her time, Sarah suffered from hair and dermatological problems due to multiple factors:poor diet, difficulty in accessing regular hygiene due to the absence of running water, illnesses or the use of aggressive hygiene products cause various ailments, including dandruff and hair loss.
Wanting to remedy this problem, Sarah first learned about hair care from her brothers, who had become barbers. Thereafter, she worked for Annie Malone, an African-American entrepreneur, selling her hair care products for black women. At the same time, Sarah is working on her own product and developing a treatment to stop her hair loss and promote hair regrowth.
With her daughter A'Lelia, now 20, Sarah moved to Denver, Colorado where she developed her own hair care line and business. A conflict will then set him against Annie Malone, who has become his rival, who accuses him of having stolen his formula.
Madam
In 1906, Sarah married Charles Walker, a journalist from whom she divorced six years later but whose name she and her daughter kept. She then became known as "Madam C.J. Walker", Madam referring to the French beauty industry. His company takes the name of Madam C.J. Walker Manufacturing Company .
Madam C.J. Walker first sells her products door to door, with the help of her husband who advises her on the promotion aspect of her business. Little by little, as her business became more professional and met with growing success, she handed over to her daughter for the sale of the products while she traveled within the United States to develop her business. In 1908, she and her husband moved to Pittsburgh, where they opened a beauty salon and a hairdressing school.
To sell her products, Sarah recruits and trains black women as licensed sales agents. By developing her business, she also supports the economic emancipation of women and opens up other work opportunities for them. As her business prospered, thousands of women donned the white and black uniform of the Madam C.J. Walker Company to sell its products. In 1917, the company thus claims to have trained nearly 20,000 women.
A committed businesswoman
In 1910, Madam C.J. Walker moved her company headquarters to Indianapolis, where she established a factory, hair salon, school, and laboratory. She gathered around her a team to manage the constantly growing company, and placed many women in strategic positions. Increasing her wealth and her notoriety, Sarah expresses more and more her political opinions, and supports the causes that are close to her heart, defense of the rights of women and African-Americans, in particular through donations.
Sarah, who did not have the opportunity to benefit from an education but made sure to offer one to her daughter, thus supports through donations from schools, universities and institutes for African Americans. In 1917, she joined the executive committee of the New York branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), to which it makes donations. It thus contributes financially to the preservation of the house of the famous anti-slavery activist Frederick Douglass. In 1919, Sarah donated $5,000 (equivalent to about $78,000 in 2019) in support of a campaign against the NAACP lynching; she had already taken a stand against the lynchings two years earlier, going to the White House with leaders of the civil rights movement to demand from President Woodrow Wilson legislation against these crimes. She also makes donations to orphanages. Close to activists such as Mary McLeod Bethune and W. E. B. Du Bois, she also gives conferences.
Madam C.J. Walker died in May 1919, at the age of 51. Her wealth is then estimated between half a million and a million dollars, making her the richest African-American woman in the United States. Of this fortune, she had indicated:“she said herself two years ago [in 1917] that she was not yet a millionaire, but hoped to be some time, not that she wanted the money for herself, but for the good she could do with it. » (she had said two years earlier that she was not yet a millionaire but that she hoped to be one day, not that she wanted the money for herself but for the good she could do with it) . After her mother's death, A'Lelia Walker succeeded her as head of the Madam C. J. Walker Manufacturing Company .