Hello to everyone who is interested in the history of the formation of rich people. The world has certainly changed in recent months. We began the new decade in the midst of turmoil, the effects of which we will feel for a long time to come. We are still trying to get back to normal, and things are happening in the United States that are very similar to the start of a civil war. The killing of a black man by a white police officer sparked protests in all 50 states.
Many celebrities took the side of the protesters, various hashtags appeared on social networks, and online platforms began to broadcast series and films inspired by various stories of successful African Americans.
One of them is about Madame CJ Walker, which is a great choice for anyone who wants to understand how a slave heiress becomes America’s first black millionaire.
It stars Octavia Spencer in the title role, and the series has only 8 episodes, which are so easy to watch that you won’t know when it’s all over. The series is based on the biography In My Own Land, written by Walker’s great granddaughter. Self-Made follows the life of an African-American woman who works in a laundry and rises from poverty to build a beauty empire and become the first millionaire.
Wonderful family history
Although she is now commonly known by her surname Walker, she was given the name Sarah Breedlove at birth. She was born in December 1867 on a cotton plantation in Louisiana. Sarah is the youngest of five children and was the first born after black slavery ended in America.
Her parents, Owen and Minerva Breedlove, were both former slaves and were freed shortly before Sarah’s birth. Unfortunately, they both died when she was only six years old.
When Sarah was 10 years old, she moved with her sister and son-in-law to Mississippi, and a few years later, when she was 14, she married Moses McWilliams. Based on her biography, her marriage was probably a necessity. Sarah had to escape labor exploitation and an abusive son-in-law.
In 1885, she gave birth to a daughter, Leila. Her husband died in 1887, when Sarah was only 20 years old and Leila was 2 years old. Breedlove remarried in 1894, but her husband died in 1903. Her third marriage took place in January 1906 when she married Charles Walker. During her time with him, Sarah became known as Madame CJ Walker. The couple divorced in 1912.
Increasing your wealth in the beauty industry
After the death of her husband Moses, CJ Walker moved to St. Louis to live near her brothers. She takes a job as a laundress who earns her $1.50 a day. Then this money is enough to support her daughter Leila, who goes to public school.
After developing a scalp disease that causes severe hair loss, Walker became interested in hair care and experimented with various combinations of homemade and store-bought ingredients to create a cure for the condition. That’s how she met Annie Malone, a black businesswoman who is also into beauty. Later they will become serious rivals.
But before that, Walker began working for Malone as a sales agent and one of her first employees. Annie would later claim that she was the one who cured Sarah. In 1905, CJ moved to Denver, Colorado, and continued to work there.
She then met Charles Walker, who worked as an advertising agent. It was his skills that came in handy when, in 1906, CJ decided to break up with Malone and develop her own hair care method. She gave it the name “Wonderful Walker Hair”. The story goes that Charles advised his wife to be called Madame CJ Walker.
She founded her company in 1910.
Walker and her husband traveled throughout the southern United States for many years promoting both their line of African American hair products and the CJ Method, which included a combination of scalp preparations, sulfur-based products, and heated iron combs. Although neither Walker nor Malone discovered these therapies, they were responsible for promoting them.
CJ opened a factory and beauty school in Pittsburgh in 1908, and eventually the Madam CJ Walker Company was founded in Indiana. She began selling hair products and cosmetics, but also trained a huge number of merchants and beauticians, known later as Walker’s agents. Their task is to promote the company’s products and philosophy based on “purity and love”.
At a time when unskilled white workers were earning about $11 a week, Walker’s agents were raising $5 to $15 a day by implementing a multi-level marketing system that CJ and her partners perfected, wrote Henry Gates for Time magazine. He added that Walker was able to unleash the huge potential of the African-American economy, which was suffocated due to Jim Crow segregation.
The name CJ Walker became even more popular in the 1920s as her business expanded beyond the United States to Jamaica, Cuba, Haiti, Panama and Costa Rica.
A legacy that is still alive today
CJ Walker died in 1919 at the age of 51. The cause of her death was kidney failure and complications from hypertension. At the time, she was considered the first African-American woman to achieve wealth on her own. However, this is not the only thing that Walker will remember.
She has been an active philanthropist throughout her life, donating millions of dollars to advance racial justice and equality, and supported the NAACP. She also helped build the YMCA in Indianapolis. In 1917, CJ hired Werthner Tandy, the first licensed black architect, to design her home in New York.
Villa Levaro, then valued at $250,000, was created as a meeting place for black leaders to inspire others in the community to pursue their dreams. In 1918, Walker donated $5,000 (equivalent to about $78,000) to the NAACP. Then this is the largest donation from one person that the organization receives.
In addition, CJ donates approximately $100,000 to orphanages, institutions, and individuals. In her will, she states that 2/3 of her fortune should go to charity.
This was the story of one of the richest women in the United States. Have you watched the series about the life of this woman?
