The first female millionaire in the United States came to be by 1900. She was not born into an influential family, she did not attend school, and she was black. The millionaires of the time made their fortune on the monopoly of goods such as coal, lumber, and transportation, while the first female millionaire made her empire on beauty products. This is Madam C. J. Walker
The first of her family to be born into freedom after the end of the Civil War, Sarah Breedlove grew up as an orphan with her older sister and brother-in-law in Mississippi. At the age of fourteen, after working as a servant, she got married to her first husband, Moses McWilliams. He died two years later, after Sarah had given birth to her only daughter Leila. She moved to St.Louis and began to work as a laundress, where it was the first time that she realized the collective ailments that plagued black women in regards to their hair. Dandruff, skin disorders,and lye additives to mainstream hair products all caused baldness, with little options for black women and men to style their hair.
Sarah began to work for Annie Turnbo Malone, one of the only hair entrepreneurs of the time and began to get an idea for her own brand of hair treatment products targeted for black women. This continued until she moved to Denver, Colorado in 1905. Here is where she met her third husband, Charles Joseph Walker. Once she married him, Madam C.J. Walker and A’Lelia Walker were born. Charles became an integral part
Madam C.J. Walker’s hair products were distributed and sold door to door throughout the United States, quickly gaining momentum to where the company had trained 20,000 women in their art. Walker handed down her business to A’ Leila and then began to get involved with activism and philanthropy, which included her work with the New York chapter of the NAACP, Tuskegee Institute, and the YMCA.
At the age of 51, Madam C.J. Walker died of kidney failure at her New York estate, at the time being worth $600,000 ($8 million in present-day dollars). Her legacy has given inspiration to women of all different generations, and has become an icon for the people that have struggled to achieve their dreams due to circumstances out of their hands. As Madam C.J. Walker put it best, “I had to make my own living and my own opportunity. But I made it! Don’t sit down and wait for the opportunities to come. Get up and make them.”