Madame C. J. Walker (December 23, 1867–May 25, 1919), was an African American philanthropist and tycoon.

Born Sarah Breedlove in Delta, Louisiana, the first member of her family born free, she was raised on farms there and in Mississippi and started out by picking cotton on a plantation. She was orphaned at age seven, married at age fourteen (to Moses McWilliams), and widowed at twenty, at which point she moved to St. Louis, joining her brothers. She worked as a laundress for as little as a dollar and a half a day, but she was able to save enough to educate her daughter.

Walker had a mansion called "Villa Lewaro" built in the tony New York suburb of Irvington on Hudson, New York, and spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on furnishings."Madam C.J. Walker -- Beauty Culturist Dies," The Chicago Defender, May 31, 1919

Yet Walker saw her personal wealth as not an end in itself, but a means to help promote and expand economic opportunities for others, especially African Americans. She took great pride in the profitable employment—and alternative to domestic labor—that her company afforded many thousands of black women who worked as commissioned agents for Walker's company. One of her employees, Marjorie Joyner, started under her influence and went on the lead the next generation of African American beauty entrpreneurs. Walker was also known for her philanthropy, supporting educational and social institutions including the NAACP, the Tuskegee Institute and Bethune-Cookman College.

Walker's daughter A'Lelia Walker carried on this tradition, opening her mother's and her homes to writers and artists of the emergent Harlem Renaissance and promoting important members of that movement.

References

External links

• A Biography of Madame C. J. Walker
• Detroit Free Press: Hairline: Black hair in time ...
• Gale: Black History

1867 births | 1919 deaths | American entrepreneurs | American philanthropists | People from Louisiana | African American inventors | American inventors | Cosmetics people