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Madam C.J. Walker’s business might have remained small, serving only the people in her immediate community.
But it didn’t. Instead, it grew larger and larger with each passing year. There are many reasons.
▲ At the turn of the century, Jim Crow laws made it nearly impossible for African Americans to get a bank loan to start a business. However, the start-up cost for a business of hair-care products was low. At the same time, white-owned businesses were slow to respond to the needs of the African American market. Few addressed the need for hair-care products different from those used by whites. The timing of Walker’s entrance into the business world could hardly have been better. She saw the opportunity and took it.
◀ Madam C.J. Walker had an instinct for marketing and a commitment to success that went along with it. She traveled to Black communities throughout the South and Southeast to meet her customers and demonstrate her hair-care products. She trained local sales agents to start their own businesses selling her products. She created mail order catalogs and advertising. Holding all these efforts together was Walker’s lifestyle concept of hygiene and beauty.
▲ In 1907, Walker moved to Pittsburgh, where she could be close to major shipping destinations. Three years later, she moved to Indianapolis. At the time, Indianapolis was the largest manufacturing base in the country and a major transportation center. It also had a thriving Black business community. Walker took out ads in Black-owned newspapers. Porters working on the trains traveling through Indianapolis would pick up the newspapers and sell them to passengers in cities like Boston, San Francisco, and Detroit. Sales of the products increased.
In 1910, Walker formed her own corporation, the Madam C.J. Walker Manufacturing Company. Then she invested $10,000 of her own money to build a factory and school. ($10,000 would be about $314,000 today.) At the same time, she traveled to several Caribbean islands, Costa Rica, California, and the Pacific Northwest to promote and expand her business. Nothing could stop her. ▶
▲ If Madam C.J. Walker were alive today, you would probably call her gutsy. In 1912, she attended a meeting of the National Negro Business League convention in Chicago. She wanted to address the people at the meeting. However, Booker T. Washington, the well-known founder and head of the organization, snubbed her for three days. Walker was outraged. Finally, she stood up and demanded to be heard. Some of the words she spoke are below. It’s noteworthy that in 1913, Walker was invited to be a speaker at the conference. That same year, she attended the opening of the Senate Avenue YMCA in Chicago (above). Booker T. Washington is to her left.
I am a woman who came from the cotton fields of the South. From there I was promoted to the washtub. From there I was promoted to the cook kitchen. And from there I promoted myself into the business of manufacturing hair goods and preparations. . . . I have built my own factory on my own ground.
▲ In 1916, Walker and her daughter Lelia moved to a townhouse in Harlem, New York City. (A townhouse is a tall, narrow building connected to buildings on the right and left.) There, they opened a salon and beauty school. At the time, Harlem was becoming a center of stylish Black society. Other Black-owned salons were opening there, too, such as Mrs. Robinson’s Beauty Parlor (above). According to Walker’s great-great-granddaughter, she was written about in the New York Times and considered the most visible African American female entrepreneur.
▲ By 1919, Walker had the largest African American owned business in the United States. She employed 25,000 women as sales agents. Each was empowered by buying Walker’s products and selling them at a profit to grow her own business. This was a tremendous improvement over other jobs open to Black women at the time. Here, Walker is seen behind the wheel of a Ford Model T.
▲ A 34-room mansion was being built in a wealthy community north of New York City. Neighbors thought Walker was the maid as she walked around the grounds. But they found out differently. Soon, she was hosting big parties there. As her great-great-granddaughter wrote, Walker “was clearly making a statement by building it so close to the main road in one of America’s most affluent [wealthy] communities.” Walker moved into “Villa Lewaro” in May 1918. She died one year later almost to the day.
