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Role of women entrepreneurship in society
Madame cj walker biography essay
Role of women entrepreneurship in society
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Madam CJ Walker was and is still known today as, “the world’s most successful female entrepreneur of her time”. Ms Walker didn’t grow up successful and had to work hard to accomplish what she did, as well as spoke up for what she believed in until her final days. Born Sarah Breedlove on December 23 1867, close to Delta, Louisiana, Walker was one of six children. Her parents and older siblings worked as slaves on a plantation, but Sarah was the first of the six to be freed after the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation. At age 7, Breedlove became an orphan after the death of both parents, and later moved to Mississippi to live with her older sister and her brother-in-law-age 10. However, Sarah moved out and got married to her first of three …show more content…
She worked as a laundress and made less than a dollar a day. Walker was one of millions of African American women who experienced severe dandruff, as well as other scalp ailments because of the usage of hair products and clothing soap, which contained harsh chemicals such as lye. Madam Walker learned quite a bit about hair from her brothers who were barbers. She created the “Walker System”(1905), which consisted of prepping the scalp, apply a variety of lotions, and styling with iron combs, after trying to seek help for her hair loss, and sold her home-made products strictly to black women. She went door-to-door of black communities and taught the women how to use the ‘Walker System” and how to style their hair w/o the harsh chemicals. As the production of her products grew, she opened up a headquarters and continued selling her 20 hair and skin products. Madam CJ Walker was also known as an activist because she constantly promoted female talent, especially African American women talent. She taught the women she mentored how to get their own businesses started, how to “ball on a budget”, as they say, and how to be financially
Herschel walker was born in March 3 1962 in Wrightsville Georgia. Herschel was one of the seven children his mother and father. Herschel mother Christine Walker called him the runt of the family because he was least athletic of his brother and sisters. As a child he was overweight and had a speech impediment Walker's mother taught him not to use these problems as excuses in life.
Madam CJ Walker traveled a year and a half to promote her product through the heavily populated black South and Southeast going door to door. Unlike most door sales representatives today, Walker actually gave demonstrations of her scalp treatment everywhere. In 1908, she temporarily moved her base to Pittsburgh where she opened Lelia College to train Walker "hair culturist" which is a group of women.
She first started writing, when she came back home after the death of her father. She wrote about the Jackson social scene for the Memphis, Tennessee newspaper. She also was a publicity agent for the Works Progress Administration in rural Mississ...
In Julie Roy Jeffrey’s, The Great Silent Army of Abolitionism, the main argument is that although many historians have only focused on the male influence towards eliminating slavery, it was actually women who were the driving force and backbone of abolitionism. Jeffrey explores the involvement of women, both white and black, in the cause and uses research from letters, societal records, and personal diary entries to delve into what the movement meant in their lives. The first chapter of Jeffrey’s book is entitled “Recruiting Women into the Cause;” it goes into detail about how women first got involved in the abolitionist movement. This involvement mainly started in 1831 when women began submitting publications, such as poems, about anti-slavery in a newspaper, published by William Lloyd Garrison, entitled the Liberator. In 1832, Garrison started a women’s section/department in his newspaper in the hopes that it would encourage women to get involved.
During the late 1800’s and early 1900’s the fight for equal and just treatment for both women and children was one of the most historically prominent movements in America. Courageous women everywhere fought, protested and petitioned with the hope that they would achieve equal rights and better treatment for all, especially children. One of these women is known as Florence Kelley. On July 22, 1905, Kelley made her mark on the nation when she delivered a speech before the National American Woman Suffrage Association, raising awareness of the cruel truth of the severity behind child labor through the use of repetition, imagery and oxymorons.
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.
Patience Wright, formerly known as Patience Lovell, was born in 1725, in Long Island New Jersey to a “well-to-do-Quaker family” (MacLean, 1). At that time in America, women were not allowed to own property or make any kind of salary; it was custom for women to carry out their duties to marry and raising a family. Fortunately for Wright, the Quakers “believed women should have rights and education equal to men’s”, and being raised in a Quaker family gave her the independent and outgoing personality she is becomes known for later in her life. At the age of four, Wright’s family moved to Bordentown, New Jersey (Magliaro, 1). As a child Patience always had a special interest in art. Her sister and she would use wet dough to sculpt figurines and use grains or plant extracts to make paint (MacLean, 1).
Moody’s position as an African American woman provides a unique insight into these themes through her story. As a little girl, Moody would sit on the porch of her house watch her parents go to work. Everyday she would see them walk down the hill at the break of dawn to go to work, and walk back up when the sun was going down to come back home. At this time in her life, Moody did not understand segregation, and that her parents were slaves and working for a white man. But, as growing up poor and black in the rural south with a single mother trying to provide for her family, Moody quickly realized the importance of working. Working as a woman in the forties and fifties was completely different from males. They were still fighting for gender equality, which restricted women to working low wage jobs like maids for white families. Moody has a unique insight to the world of working because she was a young lady that was working herself to help keep herself and her bother and sister in school. Through work, Moody started to realize what segregation was and how it impacted her and her life. While working for Mrs. Johnson and spending the nights with Miss Ola, she started to realize basic di...
The life of Anna Julia Cooper (1858-1964) affords rich opportunities for studying the developments in African-American and Ameri can life during the century following emancipation. Like W.E.B. DuBois, Cooper's life is framed by especially momentous years in U.S. history: the final years of slavery and the climactic years of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960's. Cooper's eclect ic and influential career mirrored the times. Although her life was privileged in relation to those of the majority of African-Americans, Cooper shared in the experiences of wrenching change, elevating promise, and heart-breaking disappointment. She was accordingly able to be an organic and committed intellectual whose eloquent speech was ensnarled in her concern for the future of African-Americans.
Shirley Chisholm was a crucial figure in Black politics, and the first African-American woman elected to the U.S. Congress. She defeated civil rights leader James Farmer on November 5, 1968, and served 7 terms in the House of Representatives till 1982. Also, she was the first woman and person of color to run for President. Chisholm is a model of independence and honesty and has championed several issues including civil rights, aid for the poor, and women 's rights.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton was born on November 12, 1815 in Johnstown, New York. She was the daughter of Margaret Livingston and Daniel Cady, who was a lawyer and congressman himself. She was a daughter of ten, but experienced hardships during her childhood by losing her siblings. Four out of her five brothers died during early stages of their lives, and the fifth brother died after graduating college at Union. The passing her brother, Eleazar, profoundly affected her father’s attitude due to the fact her family was centered on the men. As she tried to console her father he said how he wished she was a boy. This small statement from her father led to her dedication to changing society’s unreasonable treatment of women. She graduated from Emma Willard’s Troy Female Seminar in 1832. While with her cousin, she met fugitive slaves that were staying in his house. Visiting her cousin Gerrit Smith, a former reformer, led her to take place in women’s rights, abolitionist, and temperance movements. This really sparked her resilient anti-slavery views.
Wells was a fearless anti-lynching crusader, women’s rights advocate, journalist, and speaker. After her parents passed away she became a teacher and received a job to teach at a nearby school. With this job she was able to support the needs of her siblings. In 1844 in Memphis, Tennessee, she was asked by the conductor of the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad Company to give up her seat on the train to a white man. Wells refused, but was forcefully removed from the train and all the white passengers applauded. Wells was angered by this and sued the company and won her case in the local courts; the local court appealed to the Supreme Court of Tennessee. The Supreme Court reversed the court’s ruling. In Chicago, she helped to develop numerous African American women and reform organizations. Wells still remained hard-working in her anti-lynching crusade by ...
Berkin, Carol. "Angelina and Sarah Grimke: Abolitionist Sisters." The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. N.p., n.d. Web. 02 Mar. 2014
Fannie Lou Hamer, born in 1917, came from a family of sharecroppers, which was similar to the slavery that had been abolished some fifty-years earlier. Her father was practiced as a Baptist preacher, but held a sideshow as a bootlegger for his community. Her early background was enough cause for her to join into any Civil Rights Movement that would arise years later. Sharecropping was a way for whites in the South to keep their foot firmly on the necks of African-Americans, so they could not be a major part of actual society. With her family surviving on as little as “$300 a year,” Fannie Lou Hamer described her life as “worse than hard.” Hamer started working at a young age, and she later realized that she was tricked into working for a conniving plantation owner. She soon learned the hard way that hard work for a white plantat...
Alice Malsenior Walker: An Annotated Bibliography, 1968-1986. Eds. Louis H. Pratt and Donnell D. Pratt. Connecticut: Meckler Corporation, 1988.