Madam C.J. Walker was born Sarah Breedlove on December 23, 1867. Her parents, Owen and Minerva, were Louisiana sharecroppers who had been born into slavery. Sarah, their fifth child, was the first in her family to be born free after the Emancipation Proclamation. Her early life was marked by hardship; she was orphaned at seven, married at 14 (to Moses McWilliams, with whom she had a daughter, A’Lelia, in 1885) and became a widow at 20.
Madam C. J. Walker, known as the first female self-made millionaire in America, made her fortune thanks to her homemade line of hair care products for Black women. Born Sarah Breedlove to parents who had been enslaved, she was inspired to create her hair products after an experience with hair loss, which led to the creation of the “Walker system” of hair care.
Madam Walker died at her country home in Irvington-on-Hudson on May 25, 1919, at the age of fifty-one, of hypertension. Her plans for her Indianapolis headquarters, the Walker Building, were carried out after her death and completed in 1927. Today, she is remembered as a pioneering Black female entrepreneur who inspired many with her financial independence, business acumen and philanthropy.
