Walker was born Sarah Breedlove and orphaned in 1874 when both her parents died of yellow fever. She was then raised for several years by her older brother and sister, but married for the first time when she was 14.

By the age of 20 she was a widow (Moses McWilliams was a victim of a race riot) with a baby daughter, and soon moved to St. Louis, where she worked as a laundress and attended night school.

Some time between 1900 and 1905 she invented the hair-straightening treatment which was to make her the first self-made African-American millionairess. By 1911 she was grossing over $100,000 a year from a line of beauty products for African-American women, sold mainly by agents working door-to-door, but she also had beauty parlors and was investing in property and manufacturing the products.

Her friends included Booker T. Washington and Mary McLeod-Bethune. She was a generous benefactor of African-American charities, especially educational institutions, and campaigned against Jim Crow laws and other forms of racial discrimination.

Her daughter, A'Lelia, was an adoptive mother, to Mae Walker Perry, who was president of her grandmother's company from 1931 (when her mother died) to her own death in 1945.

References

McKissack, Patricia C., and McKissack, Fredrick. Madame C.J. Walker: Self-Made Millionaire. (Hillside: Enslow, 1992) (Great African Americans)
Bundles, A'Lelia Perry, and King, Coretta Scott. Madame C.J. Walker. (New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1991) (Black Americans of Achievement)
Dictionary of American Biography
Indiana Historical Society, Manuscripts & Archives. "Madame C.J. Walker (1867-1919) Collection (1910-1980)." Available at: http://www2.ihs1830.org/ihs1830/walker1.htm
"Great African-Americans in Science: Madame C.J. Walker." [Includes portraits]. Available at: http://tqd.advanced.org/11646/data/walker.htm
Brown, Mitchell C. "Madame C.J. Walker: Additional Bibliographies." Available at: http://indigo.lib.lsu.edu/lib/chem/display/walker_bibliography.html

Indexes

African
USA
19th Century
20th Century
Business and Industry
Civil Rights, Advocacy
Fashion, Hairdressing and Modeling; Beauty Queens
Philanthropists
Self-made Men and Women
Ethnic or Religious Identity Confused or Concealed, Racism
Poor Educational Opportunities, Self-taught
School-age Years, Adolescence
Orphaned (Both Parents)
Siblings
Very Poor (Financially) Adoptive or Foster Families
Parent(s) Died, Disappeared or Became Incapacitated
Fostered or Adopted by Birth Sibling(s)