It’s true. Madam C.J. Walker became fabulously rich. But she wasn’t interested only in wealth.
In 1917, she held the Madam C.J. Walker Culturists Union of America convention in Philadelphia. She used the meeting to encourage her sales agents to become politically active. Accordingly, she said, “This is the greatest country under the sun. But we must not let our love of country, our patriotic loyalty cause us to abate one whit in our protest against wrong and injustice. We should protest until the American sense of justice is so aroused that such affairs as the East St. Louis riot be forever impossible.” (The East St. Louis riot was an outbreak of race-related violence resulting in the death of dozens of African Americans.)
