The story of the first female millionaire, who was born into a poor family and at the age of 51 entered the Book of Records

Sarah Breedlove, known as Madame CJ Walker, is the epitome of the American dream. Daughter of former slaves, thanks to hard work and perseverance she entered the Guinness World Records as the first female millionaire and conquered everything by herself with her own sweat. She built a successful business from scratch and provided several African-American women with well-paying jobs. Not even Netflix could resist filming a miniseries about her life story.

We, from awesome.club, we were also impressed by this woman’s trajectory and decided to dive headlong into the biography of Madam CJ Walker, who fought until the end, despite social injustice and the hard times of that time. Check out!

Sarah Breedlove was born in 1867 in the south of the United States, in Louisiana. His parents and older brothers were slaves on a cotton plantation. Sarah was born free. But at the age of 7 the girl became an orphan. After the death of her parents, she moved in with her sister Louvenia and her brother-in-law Jesse Powell. Sarah started working as a maid at an early age, and didn’t have time to study. She stated in her memoirs that she only formally studied for three months, when she attended Sunday school at the church she attended as a child. At age 14, she was hastily married to Moses McWilliams. And she didn’t because she was madly in love with Moses. The fact is that her sister Louvenia’s husband was a very cruel person, so in order to escape him, Sarah got married. Three years later, Moses and Sarah had a daughter, A’Lelia Walker. And two years after that, Sarah’s husband died. So, a 20-year-old girl was left a widow with a small child in her arms in a racist society with few opportunities.

In 1888, Sarah moved to St. Louis, where she lived with her brothers, who worked as hairdressers. She got a job as a laundress and cook to pay for her daughter’s future education at a public school. Sarah was paid $1.50 a day. Like all washerwomen of that era, she suffered greatly from exposure to harsh chemicals. This caused skin diseases and dandruff, in addition to being exposed to unhygienic conditions, since at that time not all houses had running water and central heating. For these reasons, she was almost bald. As her brothers were hairdressers, Sarah learned basic hair care. A little later, she got acquainted with the line of cosmetics for hair by Annie Malone, for whom she began to work as a sales agent and became seriously interested in the topic of hair care.

While continuing to work for Malone, Sarah, then 37, moved to Denver with her daughter and began thinking about creating her own line of products for African-American women. After numerous experiments with different formulations, she found a successful product. So, she started building her own business alongside her job selling Malone’s products. In 1906, after her marriage to Charles Walker, Sarah became known as Madam C. J. Walker. Her husband became his business partner as he worked in advertising, giving his wife valuable marketing advice. Sarah went door-to-door around town selling her wares, teaching African-American women how to care for and style their hair. That same year, she decided to expand her business, so she put her daughter, who was now an adult and out of school, in charge of handling all mail orders in Denver while she and her husband traveled throughout the southern and eastern United States. . After two years, Madam CJ Walker moved with her family to Pittsburgh. There they opened a beauty salon and founded Lelia College, focused on training professionals in hair care and selling cosmetics.

In 1910, Madam CJ Walker moved to Indianapolis, where he established headquarters for the Madam C. J. Walker Manufacturing Company. He built a factory with a laboratory, a beauty salon and a beauty school, where he trained his saleswomen. In 1917, it provided jobs and good wages for nearly 20,000 women. Her agents were paid from $5 to $15 a day. Sarah wanted African-American women to strive for financial independence, so she encouraged them to be entrepreneurs by teaching them how to do financial planning and run businesses. The richer Madam CJ Walker became, the more time she devoted to charity and political issues. Sarah has given speeches, fought social injustices and donated money to scholarship funds. Before her death, she left nearly $100,000 to orphanages and various other social institutions. Furthermore, according to her will, 2/3 of future profits from her company’s production would be donated to charities. Madam CJ Walker has died aged 51. She was considered the richest African-American woman at that time. Her legacy was estimated at between 500,000 and 1 million dollars. According to her obituary, which was published in a newspaper, she told herself two years before her death that she was not yet a millionaire, but hoped that she would be someday — not that she wanted the money for herself, but for the good of her life. what could you do with it.

Madam CJ Walker is an example of perseverance and strength, because in a time when society was not at all friendly to the black population, she built an empire and helped thousands of other African Americans to follow her path. Have you heard about her life? Tell us in the comments section.