Black History Spotlight
By Don Valentine
This is a new segment the Westside Gazette will feature thru the end of February. That is the conclusion of Black History Month. Hopefully it will educate or jog your memory on the legacy of our Black pioneers!
Born in 1867 she was the first self made Black female millionaire. Her spectacular success in that repressive time period in our country’s history is nothing short of shocking. Consider we had just out law-ed slavery and women did not have the right to vote at this point!
Madam C.J. Walker invented a line of African American hair products after suffering from a scalp ailment that resulted in her own hair loss. She promoted her products by traveling around the country giving lecture-demonstrations and eventually established Madame C.J. Walker Laboratories to manufacture cosmetics and train sales beauticians.
Madam C.J. Walker was born Sarah Breedlove in 1867, on a cotton plantation. Her parents, Owen and Minerva, were recently freed slaves, and Sarah, who was their fifth child, was the first in her family to be free-born.
During the 1890s, Sarah developed a scalp disorder that caused her to lose much of her hair, and she began to experiment with both home remedies and store-bought hair care treatments in an attempt to improve her condition.
Sarah’s husband, Charles, helped her create advertisements for a hair care treatment for African Americans that she was perfecting. Her husband also encouraged her to use the more recognizable name “Madam C.J. Walker,” by which she was thereafter known.
In 1907 Walker and her husband traveled around the South and Southeast promoting her products and giving lecture demonstrations of her “Walker Method” — involving her own formula for pomade, brushing and the use of heated combs.
The profits continued to grow, and in 1908 Walker opened a factory and a beauty school in Pittsburgh, and by 1910, when Madam Walker transferred her business operations to Indianapolis, the Madam C.J. Walker Manufacturing Com-pany had become wildly successful, with profits that were the modern-day equivalent of several million dollars.
In Indianapolis, the company not only manufactured cosmetics but also trained sales beauticians. These “Walker Agents” became well known throughout the Black communities of the United States. In turn, they promoted Walker’s philosophy of “cleanliness and loveliness” as a means of advancing the status of African Americans.
A relentless innovator, Madam Walker organized clubs and conventions for her representatives which recognized not only successful sales, but also philanthropic and educational efforts among Blacks.
