Occupation: inventor, saleswoman, business entrepreneur, business executive, philanthropist
Known for: first African American woman millionaire in America, inventor of the Walker System, supporter of entrepreneurs and economic success among African American women in setting up their own Walker hair care businesses
Also known as: Madame C. J. Walker, Sarah Breedlove, Sarah McWilliams, Sarah Breedlove Walker
Religion: African Methodist Episcopal Church
Organizations: National Association of Colored Women (NACW)
Background, Family:
- Father: Owen Breedlove
- Mother: Minerva Breedlove (name before marriage not known)
- Parents were both born into slavery and became sharecroppers after the Civil War
- Older sister Louvenia
Education:
None: Madam C. J. Walker was virtually illiterate.
Marriage, Children:
- husband: Moses (Jeff) McWilliams (married 1881; he was killed in 1887, perhaps in a race riot or lynching)
- daughter: Lelia (later A'Lelia) Walker
- husband: Charles J. Walker (married 1906, divorced 1912; newspaperman and publicist)
- no children of this marriage
About Madam C. J. Walker:
Sarah Breedlove, born to sharecroppers who had been slaves, worked herself in the cotton fields from early childhood. When she was orphaned at six years old, she went to live with her older sister Louvenia, who moved to Mississippi in 1878 after a yellow fever epidemic. Louvenia's husband was abusive to Sarah, who escaped the situation by marrying at fourteen.
By the age of twenty, Sarah had been widowed, her husband Moses (Jeff) McWilliams killed, according to some speculation, in a lynching or race riot. Their daughter, Lelia, was two when her father was killed. Sarah moved to St. Louis where she found work as a washerwoman.
Long and hard hours in that work helped Sarah put her daughter through school, including Knoxville College in Tennessee; she was determined that her dauther would be more literate than she was. But working over hot tubs with harsh chemicals, and with the hair products of the time, caused Sarah to begin to lose her hair, and she experimented for years to find a treatment.
Inventor
Inspired at last, she claimed, by a dream which told her of a product from Africa that she could use, Sarah Breedlove McWilliams invented a secret formula for hair growth and began using it herself between 1900 and 1905. By 1905, she had begun preparing and selling the "Wonderful Hair Grower." She also adapted the hot comb of the day to have more widely-spaced teeth, to accommodate the coarser and heavier hair of African Americans.
The growth ointment, a hair oil, a psoriasis scalp treatment, and the hot comb became known as the "Walker System" to straighten hair of black women -- though Sarah always stressed the growth aspect over that of straightening. At a time when African American women were interacting with the "white world" more, the straightening product helped those women fit more into the "white world" image of what a woman should look like; it wasn't until the 1960s that black women began to widely question the idea of straightening black hair to "fit in."
Sarah and Lelia moved in 1905 to Denver where Sarah worked, again, in a laundry, and sold her products as a sideline. The products began to be more and more successful. About this time, Sarah met Charles J. Walker, a publicist with newspaper experience, and he began advising her on how to better promote and advertise her hair care products. The two married, and she -- perhaps at his suggestion -- began using the name Madam C. J. Walker professionally.
