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Madame CJ Walker was born on a plantation in Delta, Louisiana, one of six children of Owen and Minerva Anderson Breedlove, former slaves-turned sharecroppers after the Civil War. Orphaned at age seven, Walker lived with her older sister Louvenia, and the two worked in the cotton fields. -
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Leila "A'leila" Walker became the one that inherited most of her mother's things. -
Seeking a way out of poverty, in 1889, Walker moved to St. Louis, Missouri, where her four brothers were barbers. There, she worked as a laundress and cook. She joined the African Methodist Episcopal Church, where she met leading black men and women, whose education and success likewise inspired her. -
Walker’s life took a dramatic turn in 1904. A year later, Walker moved to Denver, Colorado, where she married ad-man Charles Joseph Walker, renamed herself “Madam C.J. Walker,” and with $1.25, launched her own line of hair products and straighteners for African American women, “Madam Walker’s Wonderful Hair Grower.” -
she was hired as a commission agent by Annie Turnbo Malone — a successful, Black, hair-care product entrepreneur — and she moved to Denver, Colorado. -
Initially, Walker’s husband helped with advertising and establishing a mail order business. After the pair divorced in 1910, she relocated to Indianapolis and built a factory for her Walker Manufacturing Company. An advocate of black women’s economic independence, she opened training programs in the “Walker System” for her national network of licensed sales agents who earned healthy commissions. -
When they closed up operations in Denver, A’lelia moved to Pittsburgh to run the business, and in 1910, new operations were opened in Indianapolis. The company, now called the Madam C. J. Walker Manufacturing Company, developed the “Walker System” which included a shampoo, a pomade, strenuous brushing, and applying iron combs to hair. -
Her adoptive daughter Fairy Mae Bryant, was born in November 1898 and was adopted in 1912. She was known as "Mae Walker" and traveled with Madam C. J. Walker as a model and assistant. -
Madam Walker felt it was her duty to contribute all she could to the black community. She notably gave a large donation – $1,000 – to help build the Senate Avenue YMCA in Indianapolis in 1912. She encouraged her agents to give back to their communities as well. -
Walker's efforts provided African American women steady employment as well as a career they and their communities could find pride in. -
The intention behind purchasing her house, Villa Lewaro in Irvington-on-Hudson, New York, was to create a gathering place for African American leaders, such as W.E.B. Du Bois and Langston Hughes, and to inspire other community members. Even after her death in May 1919, her popular international hair care empire continued to expand and her legacy of dreaming big and donating to important charities lives on. -
Just prior to dying of kidney failure, Walker revised her will, bequeathing two-thirds of future net profits to charity, as well as thousands of dollars to various individuals and schools.