Who Was Madam C.J. Walker?

Madam C.J. Walker (1867 to 1919), was an early 20th-century entrepreneur who created a successful business manufacturing and selling hair-care products for Black women. In a mere 13 years, her eponymous company grew to have sales in the upper five figures (the equivalent of nearly $10 million today). Often dubbed the "first self-made millionairess in the U.S," she was one of the wealthiest African Americans of her time. As her fortune and fame grew, Madam Walker became a noted philanthropist and Black-rights advocate, as well.

Early Life and Education

Walker was born Sarah Breedlove in 1867, the fifth of six children to two ex-slaves-turned sharecroppers in Delta, La. Though she received only a rudimentary education from local Sunday schools, she did learn how to read and write even as she worked in the fields, and later, as a laundress. Orphaned at a young age, she lived with relatives and married at age 14.

After her husband died, leaving her with a daughter, Sarah moved to St. Louis in 1889, where several of her brothers worked as barbers (which may have sparked her interest in hair care). She continued working as a laundress and as a cook. Beset by hair loss, she met and began receiving treatments from a local Black entrepreneur, Anne Turnbo Pope, who ran a hairdressing business, around 1902 to 1903. They improved her scalp's condition and Sarah went to work for Turnbo Pope (who became Annie Turnbo Pope Malone, after she remarried in 1914), selling her remedies and treatments door to door.

In 1905, Sarah moved to Denver to represent Turnbo Pope's line as a sales agent there.

Notable Accomplishments

In 1906, Sarah decided to strike out with her own hair treatment. She claimed the idea and the ingredients for it came to her in a dream, relayed by "a big Black man" who recommended a "remedy …from Africa"; but it's more likely she simply analyzed and tweaked Pope-Turnbo's products—possibly with the help of a pharmacist friend who boarded in a house where she moonlighted as a cook.

In ads and notices she placed for Pope-Turnbo, Sarah had been styling herself as Mrs. C.J. Walker, having married Charles Joseph Walker shortly after moving to Denver. Now, with an investment of $1.25, she launched her first product, Madam C.J. Walker's Wonderful Hair Grower, a coconut oil-and sulfur-based conditioner. A major hit, it garnered her $1,000 in income that year.

It was soon joined by other treatments, creating an entire regimen that Walker demonstrated on a yearlong sales tour throughout the South. Revenues tripled. In 1908, she moved to Pittsburgh, opening a school to train "hair culturists" in her products and regimen. In 1910, she relocated to Indianapolis, making it the headquarters of the Madam C.J. Walker Manufacturing Company and building a factory there.

Branch offices, salons, and other training schools in various cities followed, and by 1913, Walker was traveling to expand her business to the Caribbean and Central America.

And business was booming. In 1910, the company grossed over $10,000 annually; by 1913, it was bringing in $3,000 a month (around $84,000 in today's dollars). The exponential growth continued as the company expanded nationally and internationally. As documented in Walker Company annual reports and tax records at the Indiana Historical Society, the Walker Manufacturing Company posted annual earnings of:

To put this in perspective, $595,393 is the equivalent of $16.9 million in 2021 dollars.

Walker's company's sales were generated primarily through mail order, at its network of Walker Parlors (beauty salons), or by its network of salespeople, who worked on commission. At its height, it had several thousand agents around the country to sell Walker's hair products. Along with the Wonderful Hair Grower, they included a Temple Grower, Vegetable Shampoo, Glossine (pressing oil), and Tetter Salve, a remedy for the scalp. She also began selling cosmetics in 1918.

Modern business methods

Madam Walker benefited from the rise of a Black middle class in the early 20th century, which had discretionary income to spend on beauty and self-improvement. But she was also notably prescient in her business approach, adopting techniques that seem quite contemporary. Among her strategies:

Incorporation/self-investment: When establishing the Madam C.J. Walker Manufacturing Company, Walker had the foresight to incorporate it in 1911; she put $10,000 of her own funds into it, making herself the sole holder of 1,000 $10 shares. This move ensured that the company and its products had full protection under the law, affording its founder a legal status few African Americans at the time could claim for their businesses.

Vertical integration: Along with its own manufacturing, Walker's company managed sales and distribution in several ways: It had a mail-order business, it operated hair salons and treatment centers, and it invested heavily in its sales force of independent but closely allied agents. It operated schools to train them (or got its methods taught at Black colleges).

The company also offered agents plenty of support and perks, organizing them into a national association (the Madam C.J. Walker Hair Culturists Union of America) with annual conventions and local clubs. Being a Walker agent was not just a job but a calling: "Be the Walker Type…The Way to Beauty and Success," as one of her advertisements urged prospective applicants.

Publicity and promotion: There was no lack of Black-oriented beauty and hair care products In Walker's day, but she used canny self-promotion to make her wares stand out. Her advertising and press constantly used her image and told her "from the washtub to the boardroom" story. Of course, this personal touch strengthened the legitimacy of her products, sending a "they'll work for you as they did for me" message.

Walker offered herself up as a role model—in an era when Black women didn't have many—not just for hair but for a better existence. She lived well and showed it, displaying her mansion, her four cars, and her well-appointed office. She cannily balanced these displays of the good life with generous gifts to and support of African American causes and institutions. One of the first 20th-century Black celebrities, she knew she made good copy and kept her image well burnished.

Honors and awards

Though she was acclaimed in her lifetime, Madam Walker received the bulk of her honors posthumously. She has been inducted into several halls of fame, including:

• The Global Business Hall of Fame (formerly National Business Hall of Fame at Chicago's Museum of Science and Industry) in 1992
• The National Women’s Hall of Fame in Seneca Falls, N.Y. in 1993
• The American Health and Beauty Aids Institute Hall of Fame in Chicago

Her likeness is represented in the National Great Blacks in Wax Museum in Baltimore, and her image appeared on a U.S. postage stamp in 1998.

She received a Distinguished Service Award from the Direct Selling Association and has an award named after her, given by the National Coalition of 100 Black Women's Oakland/Bay area chapter, at its annual Annual Madam C.J. Walker Luncheon and Empowerment Forum.

In 2007, her career became the subject of a Harvard Business School case study.

Wealth and philanthropy

Along with her income from the company, Walker invested in real estate, jewels, antiques, and art. At the time of her death, her personal assets were worth close to $600,000, or $17.07 million in 2021.

As Walker's wealth increased, so did her philanthropic outreach; she frequently expressed the desire to "help my race." Early in her career, in 1911, she contributed $1,000 toward the building of a Black branch of the YMCA in Indianapolis; toward the end, in 1918, she organized and led the effort to pay off the mortgage on Frederick Douglass's home and pledged $5,000 to the NAACP's anti-lynching campaign in 1919. Each of these gifts constituted the largest single donation made by an individual at the time—a frequent characteristic of her charitable sums. Along with many other similar contributions, she also paid for the tuition of six students at the Tuskegee Institute.

Walker's will stipulated that two-thirds of the Madam C.J. Walker Manufacturing Company's net proceeds should in the future go to "the benefit of worthy charities." She also earmarked $10,000 for an African mission school.

Personal Life

Walker's daughter Lelia (later A'Lelia) worked with her mother during the company's early days, heading up supply and mail-order operations at the company's various home offices, and was one of its three board members (her stepfather, whom Madam Walker eventually divorced, was the third). Lelia, who moved to New York in 1913, is credited with getting Madam Walker to establish a base there just as Harlem was beginning to grow as a center for Black commerce and arts.

In 1919, after Madam Walker died, Lelia inherited the company, becoming its president. But she was more of a hands-off manager. Instead, she became an influential hostess and patron of the arts—a key fixture on the Harlem Renaissance scene during the 1920s. Langston Hughes dubbed her the "Joy Goddess of Harlem."

The Bottom Line

Credited as the first self-made African American woman millionaire, Madam C. J. Walker embodies the classic American success story: rising from an impoverished background to create a business empire, armed with only a basic education and her own ingenuity and determination. At the time of her death, her company had an estimated worth between $1.2 and $1.5 million (around $34.3 to $42.7 million in current dollars).

Walker helped invent practices that have become staples of contemporary industry and society: national sales forces, corporate social responsibility, and yes, even basic hair care, as Harvard Business School Professor Nancy Koehn, co-author of a case study on Walker, puts it.

Decades before the civil rights movement, Walker used her position as a successful entrepreneur to foster Black pride and promote Black rights and equality. Her company employed thousands of African Americans and marketed its products around the world. She also encouraged women’s economic independence—not just by giving them jobs (as she did in her factory, offices, and salons) but by training them to be self-employed salespeople, and by serving as a powerful role model. She blended the aesthetic, the personal, and the political to create a remarkable career and an enduring legacy.