what do you know about Madam C.J. Walker?

Answer 1

Madame C.J. Walker (Sarah Breedlove) (1867-1919)
beauty culturist, entrepreneur, philanthropist
Courtesy of the Walker Company

Madame C.J. Walker was born in Delta, Louisiana, to Owen and Minerva Breedlove, who were former slaves. At the age of six years, Sarah Breedlove was orphaned. She married at the age of 14 to C.J. Walker and bore a daughter, A'Lelia. A laundress until 1905, Sarah Breedlove Walker had a dream, which was to make a preparation that would, in her words, "improve" the texture of African women's hair. Finally, she set out with $1.25 and plenty of determination to become America's first self-made woman millionaire.
Madame Walker developed a line of cosmetics and hair-care products especially for African-American women. At first she sold her wares from door-to-door, then she established a company based in Indianapolis, Indiana, where she employed thousands manufacturing and selling her products all over the United States, Central America and the Caribbean.

In 1916, Madame C.J. Walker moved to New York City. She bought a house at 108 W. 136th St. and opened an elegant fully equipped beauty salon next door at 110 W. 136th St. In 1917, Madame Walker bought property on Broadway at Irvington-on-Hudson and built a mansion there called Villa Lewaro where she entertained the rich and famous. Mme. Walker was also an activist for human rights. In 1917, she was part of a delegation that visited the White House petitioning President Woodrow Wilson to make lynching a federal crime.

She also traveled around the country promoting her products and speaking out on the rights of women and African Americans. A philanthropist, Mme. Walker contributed generously to educational causes such as the Bethune-Cookman College, founded by Mary McLeod Bethune.

When Mme. Walker died in 1919, her fortune and business were left to her daughter, A'Lelia Walker. A'Lelia, like her mother, enjoyed entertaining and supporting causes. It was the height of Harlem's literary renaissance and in 1928-1929 she organized a literary salon in her townhouse at 108 W. 136th Street. The salon was called "The Dark Tower" and was named after Countee Cullen's column in Opportunity. Its purpose was to provide a place for young African-American artists and writers to discuss and exhibit their works. The walls of the rooms had poems by Langston Hughes and Countee Cullen lettered on them. Black and white patrons met there, and a few young African-American writers met white publishers there. The photograph of Mme. Walker accompanying the ad for Mme. Walker's products was taken by Addison Scurlock, a well-known African-American photographer. The one of her daughter is by R.E. Mercer. The present site of the Countee Cullen Regional Branch Library is located where the Walker Townhouse once stood.

Answer 2

Madam Walker was an entrepreneur who built her empire developing hair products for black women. Changing her name to Madame CJ Walker, she founded her own business and began selling Madam Walker's Wonderful Hair Grower, a scalp conditioning and healing formula. To promote her products, she embarked on an exhausting sales drive throughout the South and Southeast selling her products door to door, giving demonstrations, and working on sales and marketing strategies. In 1908, she opened a college in Pittsburgh to train her "hair culturists. Madame Walker’s aggressive marketing strategy combined with relentless ambition led her to be labeled as the first known African-American woman to become a self-made millionaire.

Answer 3

Madam Walker was an entrepreneur who built her empire developing hair products for black women. She claims to have built her company on an actual dream where a large black man appeared to her and gave her a formula for curing baldness. When confronted with the idea that she was trying to conform black women's hair to that of whites, she stressed that her products were simply an attempt to help black women take proper care of their hair and promote its growth. and was the first black to make a million dollars!!

Answer 4

She was the first black millionaire in the US. She created a cosmetic and hair care empire from scratch.

Answer 5

Madam C.J. Walker or Madame Charles Joseph Walker (December 23, 1867–May 25, 1919), was an African American philanthropist and tycoon.

Born Sarah Breedlove in Delta, Louisiana, the first member of her family born free, she was raised on farms there and in Mississippi and started out by picking cotton on a plantation. She was orphaned at age seven, married at age fourteen (to a man named Moses McWilliams) and widowed at twenty, at which point she moved to St. Louis, joining her brothers. Sarah worked as a laundress for as little as a dollar and a half a day, but she was able to save enough to educate her daughter.

While living in St. Louis, Walker joined the St. Paul's African Methodist Episcopal Church. This association had a positive impact on Walker, helping her develop her oration, interpersonal, and organization skills.

She became interested in a hair tonic while trying to treat a scalp ailment that left her temporarily bald. In 1905, Sarah moved to Denver, Colorado, working as a hair tonic sales agent for Annie Malone, another black woman entrepreneur. She married her third husband, Charles Joseph Walker, a St. Louis newspaperman, changed her name to "Madam" C.J. Walker, and founded the Madam C.J. Walker Manufacturing Company to sell hair care products and cosmetics. By 1917, it was the largest business in the United States owned by an African American. The Guinness Book of Records cites Walker as the first female American self-made millionaire.

Walker had a mansion called "Villa Lewaro" built in the tiny New York suburb of Irvington on Hudson, New York, and spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on furnishings.[1] The Italianate Villa was designed by archiect Vertner Tandy in 1915. She also owned town houses in Indianapolis and New York. Her New York town house was built in 1915 and demolished by the city in 1941.[2]

Walker saw her personal wealth as not an end in itself, but a means to help promote, and expand economic opportunities for others, especially African Americans. She took great pride in the profitable employment— and alternative to domestic labor— that her company afforded many thousands of black women who worked as commissioned agents for Walker's company. One of her employees, Marjorie Joyner, started under her influence and went on the lead the next generation of African American beauty entrepreneurs. Walker was also known for her philanthropy, leaving two-thirds of her estate to educational institutions and charities including the NAACP, the Tuskegee Institute and Bethune-Cookman College.

Walker's daughter A'Lelia Walker carried on this tradition, opening her mother's home and her own to writers and artists of the emergent Harlem Renaissance and promoting important members of that movement.[3]

Madam C. J. Walker said of herself:

“ I am a woman who came from the cotton fields of the South. From there I was promoted to the washtub. From there I was promoted to the cook kitchen. And from there I promoted myself into the business of manufacturing hair goods and preparations...I have built my own factory on my own ground.[4]

Answer 6

She invented hair care products particularly for african american hair like the relaxer...Dont you think if would be faster to search it though?

Answer 7

she was the first person to get a million dollars....and she made hair products...that's all i know i hope i helped.....

Answer 8

I think she helped many of us.