Books on the Walkers

Ben Neihart. Rough Amusements: The True Story of A'Lelia Walker, Patroness of the Harlem Renaissance's Down-Low Culture. 2003

Tananarive Due. The Black Rose: The Dramatic Story of Madam C.J. Walker, America's First Black Female Millionaire. 2001

A'Lelia Bundles. On Her Own Ground: The Life and Times of Madam C.J. Walker. 2002

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Madame C. J. Walker

America's First Female Millionaire

Businesswoman

Sarah Breedlove Walker (1867-1919), known as Madam C. J. Walker, was America's first American women to become a millionaire, directing and managing the largest business owned by an African American in her day. She made a prosperous business out of selling her self-made hair care products for African American women.

 Born December 23, 1867,Walker was the daughter of former slaves and sharecroppers in Delta, Louisiana. 

Orphaned at the age of six, she was raised by an older sister and thus received very little formal education, but began supporting herself by the age of ten. At 14 she married Moses McWilliams and in 1885  had her daughter. A'Lelia. In 1887 her husband died; a widow with a daughter, she moved to St. Louis, Missouri, where she had relatives. There she worked as a hotel washerwoman for 18 years, earning a dollar and a half a day.

Around 1904 she developed the "Walker Method" of hair care. In 1906 Walker moved to Denver, Colorado, and married newspaperman Charles Joseph Walker. After developing scalp treatments and hair straighteners, Madam Walker's line of products eventually included hair growing tonic, strengtheners, toiletries, fragrances, and facial treatments. 

By 1917, the Walker Manufacturing Company was the largest African American-owned business in the United States employing about 3,000 workers. She died in New York City on May 25, 1919.

Ida B. Wells   (1862-1931) on Madame C. J Walker: "I was indeed proud to see what a few short years of success had done for a woman who had been without education and training. Her beautiful home on the Hudson was completed the next year, when Madam took possession, surrounded by prominent people from all over the country. It is a great pity to have to remember that she was permitted to enjoy its splendors less than a year after she moved in. Seven months from the day in which its doors were opened, they laid her away in her grave. The life had been too strenuous and the burden had become too heavy.

 Ida B. Wells   was born in Holly Springs, Mississippi a slave, six months before the Emancipation Proclamation was introduced. Educated in a freedmen's school, Ida became an avid reader and a skilled writer.