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Great Lives from History: American Women

Madam C. J. Walker

by Doresa A. Jennings

Entrepreneur and hair stylist

Walker created hair care products that have been used by thousands of women both in the United States and abroad. More significantly, she developed business and marketing strategies that allowed women, particularly African-American women, to become financially independent.

Born: December 23, 1867

Died: May 25, 1919

Area of Achievement: Business and industry, philanthropy, civil rights

Early Life

Madam C. J. Walker was born Sarah Breedlove to Owen and Minerva Anderson Breedlove; she was the fifth of six children. She was the couple's first child born outside slavery. Sarah became an orphan at the age of seven. She and her sister survived by working in cotton fields in both Louisiana and Mississippi. Sarah had very little formal education, but she improved her reading and writing skills through tutoring by women at the African Methodist Episcopal church she attended in St. Louis. At the age of fourteen, she married Moses McWilliams, largely to escape abuse from her sister's husband. When McWilliams died two years later, she moved to St. Louis with her only child, Lelia (born June 6, 1885), to join her four brothers, who were establishing themselves as barbers. Making only $1.50 per day, she managed to educate her young daughter. She also took jobs as a washerwoman and a cook to help support herself and Lelia.

Life's Work

During the 1890s, Sarah began to suffer from a scalp ailment that caused her to lose most of her hair. She began to experiment with both homemade remedies and store-bought products. In 1905, she moved to Denver, Colorado, where she married Charles Joseph Walker, and she became known as Madam C. J. Walker. Eventually, she created Madam Walker's Wonderful Hair Grower from a recipe she claimed had been revealed to her by a man in a dream. Her husband felt that she should be satisfied with making ten dollars per day; she disagreed, and the two were divorced. Madam Walker began to build her company: She was solely responsible for the sales, marketing, development, and distribution of her hair and skin care products—a feat unheard of at the time for any woman, let alone an African-American woman.

While Walker's hair grower was a great invention, it was not the first of its kind. Walker worked for a short period for Annie Malone, an African-American entrepreneur who had a hair care product before Walker invented her own. Walker's product line eventually expanded beyond her hair grower: She invented other hair care products as well as skin creams. She ended up with a complete line of beauty products to fit the needs of black women throughout the world. Understanding that her beauty products need to be utilized appropriately, Walker made sure that her sales force trained women in the proper use of her products, creating the “Walker System.” She emphasized customer service, wanting her clients to feel pampered and important. Walker's products included not only locally available ingredients but also ingredients imported from all over the world, including African countries. Unique to Walker's enterprise were the business and marketing strategies she implemented in the sale of her products. She started by selling her line door-to-door, demonstrating the proper use of her beauty products to black women in the southern and southeastern United States. This market had previously been ignored or misunderstood, and these women appreciated not only products designed for their needs but also the attention of a beautifully coifed black woman capable of showing them how to use the products. Walker's success grew.

In 1908, Walker moved to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where she opened Lelia College. There she trained individuals she named “hair culturists,” who began to sell her products. In 1910, she moved to Indianapolis, Indiana, where she built a factory, hair and manicure salon, and another training school. By creating the sales force and venues through which her products would be sold, Walker increased brand loyalty.

Walker then organized her independent sales agents in local and state clubs, a practice still utilized today be companies such as Mary Kay, Tupperware, and Avon. The agents not only sold the products but also used the products themselves. As walking endorsements of the Walker line, these saleswomen built brand loyalty; as homemakers and single mothers—women who had much in common with the women to whom they sold Walker's line—they demonstrated the feasibility of earning one's own money and making a living. These sales agents were not simply employees of Walker's company; they were themselves entrepreneurs who could enjoy the fruits of business ownership. Hence, Walker's Marketing, directdirect-marketing method became a popular small-business strategy, used to this day. The women Walker recruited and trained became part of a national sales force, who then went on to recruit and train other women to establish beauty shops in their homes, keep business records, and practice exceptional customer service.

Independent Business Operation

Madam C. J. Walker is noted to have invented the concept of independent business operators, whom she called hair culturists. These women independently sold products in the community in which they lived. As a result, Walker's products reached a broad market while retaining the sense of being a local product. This early version of “thinking globally and acting locally” created a strong following for Walker's products: Those who purchased Walker's hair care line and beauty creams learned how to use them in their own homes.

Madam Walker trained her culturists well and emphasized their participation in the company by holding the Madam C. J. Walker Hair Culturist Union of America Convention, the first national meeting of businesswomen in the United States. The convention sought not only to motivate the saleswomen but also to encourage their political and social activism within their communities.

Another benefit of this type of product distribution is the development of brand loyalty. By owning the product formula, the factories that produced the products, the schools utilized to train sales associates in the use and sale of the products, and the salons in which individuals could have the products professionally applied could always be assured of receiving a genuine Madam C. J. Walker hair tonic or cream, not an impostor. They were welcome to tour the factory and watch “their” products being created. They knew that they were getting the “real thing,” and they had the sense that it was created just for them. This type of brand management and brand loyalty became the foundational principle of the marketing of all sorts of products, from automobiles to breakfast cereals.

A visionary when it came to protecting her brand, Walker owned the formulas for making her hair care products, the factories in which they were made, the training facilities to teach her hair culturists to use and sell the products, and the salons in which her products could be used. This created “two brands in one”: Walker's hair care products could be used both at home, by the layperson, and by professionals who set the example of how the products should be used to give women an elegant look.

In a move employed by many of the largest companies in the world today, in 1917 Walker held a convention of the Madam C. J. Walker Hair Culturist Union of America in Philadelphia, considered the first national meeting of businesswomen in the United States. At this convention, Walker went beyond simply motivating her hair culturists to sell more of the Walker line of products. She also encouraged them to get engaged in political and social activism in the communities in which they lived. Walker led by example in this area, visiting the White House after a white mob had lynched three African Americans in Illinois. She donated one thousand dollars to the building fund of a “colored” YMCA in Indianapolis, and she contributed five thousand dollars to the antilynching movement of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). In another brilliant marketing strategy, Walker popularized the use of famous spokespersons by having her product used and touted by Josephine Baker, one of the most popular African-American entertainers in the world at that time.

Walker's company was in operation from 1905 to 1985, when the right to manufacture products using the Walker name was sold to another company. She died from complications of hypertension on May 25, 1919, in New York State at the relatively young age of fifty-one. She left a sizable estate and a business that continued to function and provide good jobs for more than six decades after her death.

Significance

Walker is often quoted as saying, “I got my start by giving myself a start.” She took this concept further by not only giving herself a start but also giving a start to countless other African Americans through her innovative business practices and high-quality products that produced the results they promised. She brought beauty into the lives of women who where often working hard just to make ends meet. Some complained that she was trying to make African-American women's hair look like that of white women. Walker retorted that she was simply trying to promote the proper care of hair for women.

While Walker invented a number of products and developed many business and marketing strategies, she is often credited with inventions that were not hers. She did not, for example, invent the straightening comb, although she did popularize its use. She did not create the first African-American hair care product available for purchase; she in fact got her start working for an earlier inventor of hair care products for African Americans.

Walker is, however, noted as the first self-made female millionaire in the United States. At her death, her estate had an estimated value of between $600,000 and $700,000 (approximately $6 million to $7 million today). The value of her personal and business assets combined is believed to have exceeded $1 million. She also achieved such prominence that she counted such eminent social and political figures as W. E. B. Du Bois among her acquaintances.

The impact of Walker's work on the field of business is threefold. First, she changed the practice of direct marketing. Bypassing the “middleman,” Walker brought the supplier directly to the customer and vice versa. This allowed feedback on the product line that led to quick corrections of product flaws as well as new products tailored to changing customer demands. Walker's second area of influence included the creation of a large galley of “business owners” and the concept of franchising products, as opposed to having a large cadre of employees. The result was not only financial independence and wealth for a large number of people but also the Walker company's freedom to focus on business products and services as opposed to employer-employee issues. Walker's third major contribution was the concept of woman-as-owner, a contribution that went beyond business to improve society as a whole. In a time when few women, and fewer African Americans, owned a business, Walker not only owned a company but also helped others to do so.

Further Reading

1 

Bundles, A'Lelia. Madam C. J. Walker. New York: Chelsea House, 1991. A biography of the African-American businesswoman by her great-granddaughter. Well illustrated.

2 

_______. On Her Own Ground: The Life and Times of Madam C. J. Walker. New York: Scribner, 2001. The most comprehensive, historically accurate account of the life of Walker published to date.

3 

Lasky, Kathryn. Vision of Beauty: The Story of Sarah Breedlove Walker. Cambridge, Mass.: Candlewick Press, 2000. A chronicle of the life of Walker.

4 

Lathan, Charles C. “Madam C. J. Walker and Company.” Traces of Indiana and Midwestern History 1, no. 3 (Summer, 1989): 29-40. Lathan, while working at the Indiana Historical Society, processed eighty-seven boxes and forty-nine ledgers of material on Walker and used this information to write his article. The article contains much useful and reliable information, particularly about Walker's real estate purchases, donations to charities, the intricacies of her will, and her company's progress after her death.

5 

Lommel, Cookie. Madam C. J. Walker. Los Angeles, Calif.: Melrose Square, 1993. A biography of the African-American businesswoman.

6 

Lowry, Beverly. Her Dream of Dreams: The Rise and Triumph of Madam C. J. Walker. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2003. Lowry uses primary-source materials to chronicle Walker's life and career.

7 

McKissack, Patricia, and Fredrick McKissack. Madam C. J. Walker: Self-Made Millionaire. Hillside, N.J.: Enslow, 1992. Covers the business ventures of Walker.

Citation Types

Type
Format
MLA 9th
Jennings, Doresa A. "Madam C. J. Walker." Great Lives from History: American Women, edited by Mary K. Trigg, Salem Press, 2016. Salem Online, online.salempress.com/articleDetails.do?articleName=GLHW_0499.
APA 7th
Jennings, D. A. (2016). Madam C. J. Walker. In M. K. Trigg (Ed.), Great Lives from History: American Women. Salem Press. online.salempress.com.
CMOS 17th
Jennings, Doresa A. "Madam C. J. Walker." Edited by Mary K. Trigg. Great Lives from History: American Women. Hackensack: Salem Press, 2016. Accessed September 17, 2025. online.salempress.com.