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Home > Madam C. J. Walker and the Rise of the African American Entrepreneur
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Madam C. J. Walker and the Rise of the African American Entrepreneur
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by Miller Newman
Montgomery College
Montgomery County, Maryland
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Introduction
Madam C. J. Walker, born Sarah Breedlove, was in many ways the Oprah Winfrey of her time. While Madam Walker might not be as well known as Winfrey, her contributions to the social, political, and economic well-being of thousands of black men, women, and children can be seen as precursors to Winfrey's political advocacy, public acclaim, and economic success. Ultimately, Walker's fortune was more modest than the portfolio of Winfrey, the first African American woman billionaire, yet Walker's accomplishments anticipate, and lay a certain groundwork for, the impact of present and future African American women on this nation's social and political consciousness.
Madam Walker could not have come from more humble beginnings. Born just five years after President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation and on the plantation where Ulysses S. Grant directed the Vicksburg campaign, she was destined to make her own place in the history of the United States. Married at 15 and widowed five years later, she had no means of support. Like many men and women born in the South, she migrated north and joined hundreds of other working women in East St. Louis as a laundress. Beginning with virtually no formal education and even less promise of a future, Walker would, by the end of her life, be known as a successful entrepreneur, philanthropist, and political and social activist.
A true visionary, Walker founded the Madam C. J. Walker Manufacturing Company at a time when most blacks were relegated to menial service jobs. In On Her Own Ground: The Life and Times of Madam C . J. Walker, Walker's great-great-granddaughter A'Lelia Bundles points out that what began as an attempt to make a living for Walker and her daughter became the impetus for a lifelong pursuit: "The key to her success would not be just her 'secret' formula, but her deep understanding that women wanted to be attractive, as well as her fervent conviction that they needed to be financially independent. Her determination and decisiveness . . . created unimaginable opportunities for herself and for her agents." The former laundress would attribute her success to her initiative, hard work, and desire to make a difference.
Going Into Business
Part entrepreneur and part motivational speaker, Walker understood a basic premise of successful business: find a need and meet it. She did not have to go any further than her own mirror, which reflected the bald spots on her head; those bald spots would fuel her rise to fame and fortune. In fact, Walker claimed that she was so concerned about going bald that that she prayed for guidance, if not divine intervention. The formula for her hair ointment Glossine, she said, was given to her in a dream in answer to her fervent prayers.
Madam Walker's Wonderful Hair Grower ointment, a concoction of coconut oil, petroleum jelly, sulfur, carbolic acid, and violet extract, became the basis of a hair hygiene regimen that she began to promote throughout the United States and the Caribbean exclusively through her authorized agents. Her relentless pursuit of market share ultimately resulted in a multifaceted sales strategy that included mail order, commissioned agents, beauty culturists, and print advertising for the products that she manufactured in her Indiana factory.
While blacks continued to suffer under the oppression of racism in America, they were simultaneously thriving within their own segregated communities. Being excluded from many socioeconomic opportunities was, for some blacks, the impetus for establishing businesses that would take advantage of and cater to a population that was all but ignored by mainstream merchants and businesses. However, entrepreneurs whose products and services crossed cultural boundaries, if not social ones, often found that their customer base included a substantial number of whites. Madam Walker's cosmetic line is one of the more successful examples of these ventures. Women, black and white, all of whom were potential customers for mass-marketed cosmetics and hair-care aids, were becoming a viable economic force, an untapped market for goods and services that were more refined than the homemade creams, pharmaceutical compounds, and at-home beauty treatments that had once been their only recourse.
Philanthropic Efforts
Once Madam Walker's business enterprises became financially successful, she began to return to her community some of what it had given her. While much of her philanthropy resulted in added publicity for her business, the money she donated was instrumental in funding ventures that gave a voice to blacks who were continuously victimized by their own government's refusal to support their constitutional rights. Her first philanthropic donation was a $1,000 pledge to the building fund of a YMCA in Indianapolis for blacks -- a contribution touted in the press with her photograph and a byline, crediting Madam Walker as "the first colored woman in the United States to give $1,000 to a colored Y.M.C.A. building."
Madam Walker continued to support causes that would in her view contribute to a better life for African Americans. She was a supporter of Ida B. Wells in her fight for federal laws against lynching. In 1919, when black war veterans began returning home from the war in Europe where they had fought valiantly, it was to a country that just a year earlier had lynched more than 60 black people. Madam Walker made a sizable contribution to the NAACP's anti-lynching fund. She was a constant figure in denominational and political organizations that fought against the injustices perpetrated upon blacks. In addition, Walker provided monetary support to organizations that she believed served the common good despite their male-dominated leadership and gender-biased views.
Madam Walker's continued financial and moral support of a political agenda that focused on the "race question" in this country was not without personal costs. An exhausting travel schedule and her progressively debilitating kidney disease would take its toll. When she died in 1919 as the Harlem Renaissance was dawning, she was celebrated as "the wealthiest Negro woman in the U.S., if not the entire world," according to Bundles, and one who had made a substantial difference in the lives of black Americans through her hair-care business. But her real and lasting impact was in using her personal fortune, her legions of agents, and the political process to redress racial injustice.
Miller Newman, professor of English, is currently an administrative associate in the Office of the President of Montgomery College in Maryland.
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