Black History Month: The Famous Entrepreneur You’ve Probably Never Heard About
Last week, I devoted my blog to Black entrepreneurs’ often-overlooked contributions to American history. This week, I’d like to tell you about a famous Black entrepreneur of whom you are probably unaware. She also happens to be a woman.
Sarah Breedlove was the first in her family to be born into freedom, following the Emancipation Proclamation and ratifying the Thirteenth Amendment to the US Constitution. Widowed once and divorced twice, Ms. Breedlove set out as a single mother in 1905 to Denver with $1.05 to her name. During her life, she transformed herself from Sarah Breedlove into Madam C.J. Walker and from a manual laborer into one of the twentieth century’s most successful, self-made women entrepreneurs.
In Denver, she would begin to build the hair care empire for which she is known. While other products for Black hair (largely manufactured by white businesses) were on the market, she differentiated hers by emphasizing its attention to the health of the women who would use it. In 1910, Madam Walker moved the business headquarters to Indianapolis, where she built a factory, hair salon, laboratory, and beauty school. By 1917, the Madam C. J. Walker Manufacturing Company reported that they had trained over 20,000 women as sales agents, who would go on to sell Walker’s products across the United States. A talented entrepreneur, her products met a demand in the market, and the business grew rapidly, expanding into international markets.
As the company thrived and Madam Walker’s wealth increased, so did her philanthropic and political outreach. In 1915, she filed a lawsuit to protest discrimination at a theater in Indianapolis. She encouraged her agents to advocate for civil and human rights and established a scholarship for women at the Tuskegee Institute. In 1917, she urged the group to decry lynchings in the South. During World War I, she was a member of a delegation to Washington to protest the War Department’s segregationist policies to President Woodrow Wilson. She was also an influential figure during the Harlem Renaissance, hosting salons with such intellectuals as Zora Neal Hurston, Langston Hughes, and W.E.B. Dubois.
Taught to read and write by women in her church, Madam Walker was deeply committed to the education of Black women. In addition to funding scholarships, her network of beauty schools provided education and a career path for Black women toward credentialization and gainful employment in the beauty profession. In this way, the opportunity to become educated was a gift that enabled thousands of graduates around the country to earn their own money.
Madam Walker said of her life’s trajectory: I am a woman who came from the cotton fields of the South. From there, I was promoted to the washtub. From there, I was promoted to the kitchen cook. And from there, I promoted myself into the business of manufacturing hair goods and preparations….I have built my own factory on my own ground.” She never married again, and at the time of her death in 1919, she had achieved millionaire status. In fact, she was the first woman to be a self-made millionaire in American history. There were other women millionaires, but their fortunes came to them through marriages or inheritance. Madam Walker’s story is one of grit, determination, and relentless pursuit of excellence. She became a paragon of American innovation and ingenuity, and her greatest accomplishment is her inspirational life story, which has made her a role model for generations.