Image Source: Madam Walker Family Archives/A'Lelia Bundle
Long before the internet's content creators and beauty influencers, there was Madam C.J. Walker, the inspiring hair-care pioneer whose influence is still very much present in the beauty industry today. Walker was the first self-made Black woman millionaire, which is documented in her biography, On Her Own Ground, written by her great-great-granddaughter A'Lelia Bundles. It follows her difficult path from growing up the daughter of former slaves to becoming a formidable beauty entrepreneur. Walker undertook a remarkable journey - here's how it all unfolded.
What Walker's Early Life Looked Like
The beauty pioneer was born in 1867 on a Louisiana plantation, christened Sarah Breedlove. Her parents were slaves not long before her birth - the Emancipation Proclamation had only eradicated slavery in 1863. Her father worked as a farm laborer, and her mother a laundress. At age 7, she lost both her parents and moved in with her sister and brother-in-law. Not long after, she married Moses McWilliams at age 14 to escape her brother-in-law's abuse. Fate took another turn when she became a widow six years later, left alone with her 2-year-old daughter, A'Lelia. This forced her to move yet again, this time to St. Louis with her brothers. For years, she worked as a washerwoman, earning a paltry sum of $1.50 a day. Wedding bells rang once more in 1894 when she married her second husband, John Davis, but she left him in 1903 shortly before her business took off.
How Walker Built Her Brand
Madam Walker Family Archives/A'Lelia Bundles Despite her hardships, Walker possessed an entrepreneurial spirit and, like many today, a hankering for a beauty routine that worked. She briefly acted as an agent for Annie Turnbo Malone, an established Black hair-care entrepreneur whom Walker had met at the 1904 World's Fair. Walker had long sought a solution for her bald spots. Malone recommended she regularly wash her hair and use a sulfur-based scalp treatment. Taking Malone's advice, Walker devised a hair grower similar to Malone's Wonderful Hair Grower. When she found the perfect mixture, she sold her hair treatment door to door in Colorado, approaching Black women as her main market.
In 1906, she married Charles Joseph Walker, an ad salesman whose name she adopted for her business alias. (They later divorced, but she kept the name.) While Walker had little formal education herself, she used her business savvy to take advantage of her resources, enlisting her college-educated daughter as one of her company executives and putting ads in Black newspapers with her husband's help. Soon, her business expanded beyond her miracle product. In Indianapolis, she established a factory, beauty school, and salon. When her business skyrocketed, she even branched out to Central America and the Caribbean. Her business employed many women, training them as hairstylists and sales representatives.
In 1917, Walker hosted the first National Beauty Culturists' League, and celebrated her thousands of sales agents. She not only rewarded the women who sold the most products, but, according to Bundles, she acknowledged those who donated and raised the most money for charity. "She said to them in her keynote speech, 'I want you to understand that your first duty is to humanity. I want others to look at us Walker agents and realize that we care not just about ourselves, but about others,'" says Bundles.
What Walker's Legacy Looks Like
Before she passed away in 1919, Walker emerged as a vocal proponent for Black rights, working with groups such as the NAACP. Her causes included ensuring rights for Black troops and demanding that lynching and mob violence be federal crimes. She also worked hard to have Black women's voices heard. In one famous anecdote, Walker demanded to speak at the National Negro Business League in 1912, despite being rejected by Booker T. Washington. She started talking without permission anyway - while Washington kept a poker face, he invited her back the following year to speak.
There's controversy over whether or not Walker is really the first self-made American woman millionaire. At her death, her estate was worth $600,000. (That's approximately $9 million in 2018 dollars.) But considering the value of her real estate, jewelry, and other assets, she was worth well over a million in 1919 dollars.
Technicalities aside, her beauty legacy remains strong today.
How Walker's Legacy Changed the Beauty Industry Today
Bundles notes that while the brand has "never really gone out of business, right now it's owned by Sundial Brands within Unilever, [and] there are not currently products on the market." You can still find a few remaining products on sale at Walmart. However, it's Walker's story that keeps pulling people back in to the brand
"It's not even the original formula that is important," Bundles says. "It is the prestige; it is the confidence that people had in her. I think the products became a means to an end. It represented success, it represented opportunity, it represented upward mobility for African-American women." So many other Black women founders and entrepreneurs have followed in Walker's footsteps and will continue to do so.
Bundles's new book "Joy Goddess: A'Lelia Walker and the Harlem Renaissance," will be released on June 10.
- Additional reporting by Brittany Leitner
Stacey Nguyen is a writer who has worked with PS, Buzzfeed, HappySprout, The Spruce, The Bold Italic, and more. After graduating from UC Berkeley in 2016, she started working as a lifestyle and entertainment writer, compiling everything from home décor shopping guides to comprehensive timelines of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Brittany Leitner (she/her) is a New York-based contributing beauty writer at PS. She has over 10 years of experience working in beauty, health, wellness, travel, and celebrity news. Brittany holds a degree in magazine journalism from Syracuse University and previously held editorial positions at Elite Daily and "The Dr. Oz Show" before working as a freelance journalist for the past three years. Read More Details
Finally We wish PressBee provided you with enough information of ( The Incredible Legacy of Madam C.J. Walker - and How it Transformed the Beauty Industry Today )
Also on site :