Who Was the First Self-Made Woman Millionaire?

first self made woman millionaire period. For the article this episode is based on How Stuff Works, spoke with a Lelia Bundle's, Walker's great great granddaughter and biographer. She said, for a woman in business and who launched her product before women had the right to vote, is pretty extraordinary. Walker was the daughter of sharecroppers, yet still built a national brand, empowered hundreds of women, and became a philanthropist

and civil rights activist. The Netflix mini series Self Made, starring Octavia Spen Sir, is loosely based on her life story. So who was she? The woman we know as Madam C. J. Walker was born Sarah Breedlove on a Louisiana cotton plantation in eighteen sixty seven, the fifth child of Owen and Minerva Breedlove, who once had been enslaved. Sarah was the first of her siblings to be born free. Her early years in Louisiana were full of struggle, and Sarah was an orphan by the age of seven, so she went

to live with her older sister and her husband. In eighteen seventy seven, the family moved to Vicksburg, Mississippi, where young Sarah picked cotton and did domestic work. At age fourteen, she married Moses McWilliams to escape the hard labor and her brother in law, who mistreated her. Her only child, Lelia, who later changed her name to Leliah Walker, was born in June of eighty five. When her husband died in eighteen eighty seven, she moved to St. Louis, where her

brothers were working as barber's. She started doing audrey, earning a dollar fifty a day, which allowed Walker and her daughter to attend school. By the eighteen nineties, her hair started falling out due to a scalp condition. There were very few hair care products designed for women of African descent at the time, and hair loss was a big problem, Bundle says, so Walker searched for a way to cure her hair loss. She tried the Pearo hair caroline, made

by another black woman entrepreneur, and it helped. She sold Pearo for eighteen months while experimenting with her own hair growing formula. In nineteen o six, she went Charles Joseph C. J. Walker as sales and advertising man in Denver. He helped her with marketing strategies and business ideas, and both these and his name were useful. That same year, she changed her name from Sarah Breedlove to Madam C. J. Walker

and launched Madam C. J. Walker's Wonderful Hair Grower. Bundle said she was one of the women who was a pioneer and a multimillion dollar cosmetic and hair care industry. In nineteen o six, when she founded her company, there was no national distribution for hair care and cosmetics like when women like Elizabeth Arden created her brand. To promote their products, she and c. J. Traveled the South for eighteen months, selling door to door and doing demonstrations, mostly

in churches. Convinced by Walkers before and after photos, women snapped up tins of her hair grower for fifty cents apiece. By nineteen o eight, Walker was earning the equivalent of a hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year in today's money, and she likes to say there would be no hair

growing industry if I hadn't invented it. The exact recipe is lost to time, but the original formula included coconut oil, beeswax, petrolatum, which is similar to petroleum, jelly, copper sulfate, precipitated sulfur, and a violet scent. A coconut oil is a favorite in hair care today, but the key ingredient was likely sulfur, which had been used in scalp and hair preparations for years.

A twenty nineteen study found that an oral form of sulfur known as ms M supported the growth of healthy hair and fingernails, likely because it boosts the development of keratin protein necessary for growing hair, skin, and nails. But back to Madam Walker. Her Walker system included a vegetable based shampoo and glossing, which helped smooth hair pressed with her newly designed hot comb. By nineteen eleven, Walker Incorporated then recruited and trained black women agents, who she called

beauty culturists in major cities. However, as Walker's success grew her marriage deteriorated after she caught c J in an affair. She divorced him in nineteen twelve. By this time, she lived in Indianapolis, a Midwestern hub of transit and Black

American life. She hobnobbed with newspaper publishers and eventually became allied with influential politicians and activists, including Ida B. Wells, w E. B. DWO Boys, Maria McLoud, Bethoon, and Booker T. Washington, who was one of the most fluential black men in the country at that time. In nineteen sixteen, she settled in New York's Harlem, then the epicenter of Black American culture.

She and her daughter, then Aaliya Walker Robinson, opened a posh salon featuring sweeping columns, velvet seating, parquet floors, and a grand piano in the lobby. In nineteen seventeen, Walker hosted her first national convention for beauty culturists in Philadelphia. Besides inspiring her agents to sell more, she encouraged them to support charitable causes. Through the Madam C. J. Walker Benevolent Association. Walker donated money to black colleges and gave

to the n double A CPS anti lynching fund. Bundle said she visited the White House in nineteen seventeen with a group to try to persuade President Woodrow Wilson to support legislation to make lynching a federal crime. In the early twentieth century, there were hundreds and hundreds of lynchings,

and African American men were targeted. In nineteen eighteen, Walker moved into the Villa La Warro, a mansion she had built in Irvington on Hudson, about forty five minutes north of Manhattan, with some twenty thousand square feet that's about nineteen hundred square meters spread over thirty four rooms, and expansive views of the Hudson River. The home, designed by African American architect Wurtner Woodson Tandy, Sr. Was a marvel.

Sadly she didn't get to enjoy it for long. Walker died in nineteen nineteen at just fifty two years old. In her obituary, W. E. B. Du Bois wrote, it is given to few persons to transform a people in a generation, Yet this was done by the late Madam C. J. Walker. Her daughter Alila went on to be the most prominent socialite in the Harlem Renaissance, facilitating art and culture in

her Villa Lawiro and beyond. Though the mansion fell out of the family after Alila's death, he was designated a National Historic Landmark in nineteen seventy six and has largely been restored by Ambassador Harold E. Dooley Jr. And his wife, who lived there from Dolly, retired investment banker and the first African American to own his own seat in the New York Stock Exchange, had a toy model of Villa

Lawarro as a boy. In lateen Rich Dennis, the Sundial Brands haircare magnate who invented the Shame moisture line, acquired the home. Dennis worked with Sephora to launch a Walker Beauty Culture hair care line in and he planned to use Villa Lawiro as a think tank and bass for his New Voices Foundation to support women of color entrepreneurs. More than a dozen books and movies have featured Walker

and her rise to riches and fame. Bundles wrote her Columbia University master's thesis on her great great grandmother and has authored four books on her life based on her research and family archives, including fifty thou documents and photographs. In two thousand one, she published her biography on her own ground, The Life and Times of Madam C. J. Walker.

During her time as an entrepreneur, Walker employed forty thousand black men and women in the United States, Central America, and the Caribbean, and she founded a national Association for Black cosmetics and manufacturers. In nineteen seventeen. Before her death, she updated her will, leaving two thirds of future net profits to charity, as well as thousands to several individuals

and schools. After her death, her daughter worked to complete a bustling center for the black community that she had started in Indianapolis, where Madam Walker's business was still headquartered. Opened in ninety seven, during a time when Black Americans were often turned away or charged extra or relegated to second tier service at many businesses, the Walker Building featured professional offices, a drug store, a restaurant and coffee shop, a theater, a ballroom, and of course, a salon and

beauty school. Now a National Historic Landmark, it stands today as an educational and cultural center and, to quote the Madam Walker Legacy Center website, a beacon of pride, hope, end the beauty that lies in diversity. Today's episode is based on the article Black Hair Care Made Madam C. J. Walker America's first self made female millionaire on how Stuffworks

dot Com, written by Mariae C. Hunt. Brain Stuff is producted by Heart Radio and partnership with how stuff Works dot Com and is produced by Tyler Klang and Ramsey Young. Four more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.