The Rise of a Female African-American Millionaire: Madam C.J. Walker: Have you ever heard the story of someone’s rags-to-riches life experience? This report covers the life of Madam C.J. Walker, who faced numerous obstacles to owning the title she's made for herself today. The purpose of this report is to depict the history of Madam C.J. Walker as well as her journey to become the first female African-American millionaire. Madam. C. J. Walker. Born Sarah Breedlove December 23, 1867. Raised in Louisiana, she was orphaned at seven and lived with her older sister. At the age of fourteen, Walker married young. This is because of the early hardships leading her to own a home. In 1885, she had a daughter. In 1887 her husband passed, leaving her to raise their child alone. This caused Walker to move to St. Louis to live with her four brothers. She began working as a laundress. She would also attend night school. During this period, …show more content…
Walker later discovered that other African-American women were also dealing with hair loss. She identified the causes as poor diet, low hygiene, scalp diseases that led to dandruff, and dry, fragile hair. Determined to find a solution, she didn't give up. Walker created her first product, “Wonderful Hair Grower”. The secret formula is sulfur. She commenced going door-to-door to sell her product. Many women have had amazing results since using the Wonderful Hair Grower. This motivated her to create more products. Walker moved to Denver in 1905 and remarried Charles J. Walker. She went on to make Temple Grower, Shampoo, Pomade, Tetter Salve, and Glossine. Her pomade became her most popular product. She branded her hair care line as the “Walker System”. With all this new success, she needs a helping hand. Walker hired several agents to go around and sell her collection. Her husband Charles J. Walker helped with marketing, advertising, and mailing orders. They soon divorced and were
Annie Turnbo Malone was an entrepreneur and was also a chemist. She became a millionaire by making some hair products for some black women. She gave most of her money away to charity and to promote the African American. She was born on august 9, 1869, and was the tenth child out of eleven children that where born by Robert and Isabella turnbo. Annie’s parents died when she was young so her older sister took care of her until she was old enough to take care of herself.
Margaret Cochran Corbin (1751-c.1800) fought alongside her husband in the American Revolutionary War and was the first woman to receive pension from the United States government as a disabled soldier. She was born Nov. 12, 1751 near Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, U.S.A., orphaned at the age of five and was raised by relatives. When she was twenty-one she married John Corbin. John joined the Continental Army when the American Revolution started four years later and Margaret accompanied her husband. Wives of the soldiers often cooked for the men, washed their laundry and nursed wounded soldiers. They also watched the men do their drills and, no doubt, learned those drills, too.
had became the first black african american woman to basically built up an empire. When
Background Known today as Madam CJ Walker that was not the name she was given on December 23, 1867. Sarah was orphaned at the young age of seven and was able to survive by working in the cotton fields of Delta and Mississippi. In an attempt to escape abuse from her sisters, (Louvenia sisters name) husband she married at the age of 14 (married Moses McWilliams). She has one daughter names Lelia, currently known as A'Lelia Walker.
Taitz, Emily, and Cheryl Tallan. "Entrepreneurs." Jewish Women: A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia. 1 March 2009. Jewish Women's Archive. December 4, 2011 .
Walker speaks highly of her influencer that encourage her to make the change in working with the hair that she
One of the leading black female activists of the 20th century, during her life, Mary Church Terrell worked as a writer, lecturer and educator. She is remembered best for her contribution to the struggle for the rights of women of African descent. Mary Terrell was born in Memphis, Tennessee at the close of the Civil War. Her parents, former slaves who later became millionaires, tried to shelter her from the harsh reality of racism. However, as her awareness of the problem developed, she became an ardent supporter of civil rights. Her life was one of privilege but the wealth of her family did not prevent her from experiencing segregation and the humiliation of Jim Crow laws. While traveling on a train her family was sent to the Jim Crow car. This experience, along with others led her to realize that racial injustice was evil. She saw that racial injustice and all other forms of injustice must be fought.
Sarah Breedlove “Madam C.J Walker” was born in Louisiana to former slaves on December 23, 1867. She was the first member of her family to be born “free,” and used this opportunity to have a better life. She married Moses McWilliams and gave birth to her first daughter, Lelia, on June 6, 1885. Unfortunately, soon after her daughter’s second birthday her husband was killed in an accident. She found a job as a laundress in St. Louis, Missouri and thus provided her daughter with an education that she never had the chance to get.
Marjorie Stewart Joyner was born on October 24, 1896 in Monterey, Virginia, which was the Blue Ridge Mountain area of the state. She was the granddaughter of both a slave and a slave owner. She was a very strong businesswoman and humanitarian with strong ambition and desires. When she was a teenager, she and her family joined the Great Migration, moving to Chicago, Illinois where so many African-Americans were moving for jobs and a better life. Once she arrived to Chicago, she began to study and pursue a cosmetology career. Marjorie Joyner had a strong message that she carried throughout her lifetime which was: Be proud of who you are and treat yourself as if you care. From this belief, she became an avid supporter of young men and women throughout her life. She attended A.B. Molar Beauty School and became the first African American woman to graduate from the school in 1916. Marjorie made it her mission to become an educator in African American beauty culture. She did that while inspiring many younger African Americans. Marjorie also fought for racial and gender equality during the years of growth for the Black community in Chicago. At the very tender age of twenty she married a man by the name of Robert E. Joyner and opened a beauty salon soon after. Obviously Marjorie Joyner developed an early interest in becoming a cosmetologist so she started a salon in her home. Her mother-in-law was not impressed with the way she did hair and felt that she needed more practice so she suggested that Marjorie study at one of Madame C. J. Walker’s beauty schools. She was a very gracious and generous woman, and even offered to pay the cost for Marjorie to attend the beauty school. Soon after, she was introduced to the very well-known Afric...
Smith, J, & Phelps, S (1992). Notable Black American Women, (1st Ed). Detroit, MI: Gale
and the academic endeavour, to illuminate the experiences of African American women and to theorize from the materiality of their lives to broader issues of political economy, family, representation and transformation” (Mullings, page xi)
Throughout the eighteenth century there were a lot of African American slaves and a problem with women’s rights. During that time there were people writing about literature and the society around them that related to slaves. There were a lot of people influenced on what was written during that time. Frances E. W. Harper was a American poet that was a free slave. Hse wrote about her views on the world. Analysis of Harpers life and poems will show how influenced she was through her writing.
...rt herself. She began washing miner’s clothes in Central City. She established a solid ground for herself when she met Lorenzo Bowman. He was an entrepreneur and gave her the opportunity to gather and save up $10,000 in her name. She was known for her generosity in helping African Americans move to Central City, using the money that she had saved up (Abbott, Leonard, Noel, 2013, pp. 217). Her significance was important in Central City as she helped build Central City through population.
In 1942, Margaret Walker won the Yale Series of Younger Poets Award for her poem For My People. This accomplishment heralded the beginning of Margaret Walker’s literary career which spanned from the brink of the Harlem Renaissance of the 1930s to the cusp of the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s (Gates and McKay 1619). Through her fiction and poetry, Walker became a prominent voice in the African-American community. Her writing, especially her signature novel, Jubilee, exposes her readers to the plight of her race by accounting the struggles of African Americans from the pre-Civil War period to the present and ultimately keeps this awareness relevant to contemporary American society.
Alice Malsenior Walker: An Annotated Bibliography, 1968-1986. Eds. Louis H. Pratt and Donnell D. Pratt. Connecticut: Meckler Corporation, 1988.