A while ago Sam brought some books home from the library New Non-Fiction shelf, including Madam C. J. Walker: the Making of an American Icon. I never expected to be so caught up the story of one of America’s first black woman millionaires, or to take to heart her example of steady determination. After achieving her business goals against all odds, she went on to support other women with advice, money and spirit.
On the first page, author Erica L. Ball places Madam Walker among “countless … black women who migrated to towns and cities across the nation in search of freedom” in the late 1800’s. Despite “new forms of racism … in the decades after emancipation,” they created their own narratives and some succeeded.
Madam Walker was born Sarah Breedlove in 1867, her formerly enslaved parents’ first child born into freedom. Orphaned at age 7, she left Louisiana to work as a household servant in Mississippi. Ball’s great interest in this book is the broad social history of black families and individuals during Reconstruction.
In 1888 Sarah became a laundress to fund her daughter’s education. Like many other working women, her hair and skin suffered from exposure to lye and steam, poor diet and the difficulties of keeping clean.
But she turned this into an opportunity to help other women, first by learning hair care from her brothers who were barbers in St. Louis, and then by selling Annie Malone’s Poro Company beauty products.
But it wasn’t Sarah’s style to sell for someone else. She wasn’t shy. She created her own brand. Her daughter Lelia (later A’Lelia) became her business partner in setting up offices in Pittsburgh and Indianapolis, then in Harlem.
When Sarah married Charles Walker in 1906 she became Madam C. J. Walker, taking on a French aura. She soon had many Walker System licensed women selling her products.
By 1911, Walker moved into the sphere of philanthropy that belonged mainly to wealthy white men. But she also wanted recognition from black leaders.
Ball writes that “Booker T. Washington was the most powerful black man in the United States,” founder of the National Negro Business League (NNBL). He, too, had come from a slave family and was an entrepreneur in the fields of business and education.
However, Washington was opposed to women’s beauty aids on moral grounds. Several times he ignored Walker’s appeals to him for professional endorsement, even when she told him her plans
to form a stock company at a capital of five thousand dollars…[to] make this one of the largest factories of its kind in the United States, and [it] would give employment to many of our boys and girls.
But Madam Walker was undeterred.
In 1912 she attended the NNBL Convention in Chicago. As usual, Washington refused her permission to speak. And then, in front of the assembly, the Indiana delegate invited her to say a few words. But Washington overruled him.
At this point Madam Walker rose from her seat exclaiming to Washington, ‘Surely you are not going to shut the door in my face!’ She then gave an impromptu address to the delegates and spectators.
‘I am a woman that came from the cotton fields of the South. I was promoted from there to the washtub, then I was promoted to the cook kitchen. From there I promoted myself into the business of manufacturing hair goods and preparations.’
She said she did not work simply for herself but for the larger good of the race. And, she said, ‘I am not ashamed of where I come from.’
Resounding applause!
Washington then had no choice but to accept her.
This is a powerful image to me. Madam Walker goes uninvited to the Convention. She rises from her seat in front of everyone. She speaks out on her own behalf. Her whole life has laid the groundwork for this speech.
She holds the door open for us.