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.)

▲ Madam C.J. Walker worked to make it easier for Black women to get ahead. When needed, she reduced the fees charged for training a sales agent. She helped interested sales agents start salons – by funding the salons herself. She also loaned money for their construction and offered installment plans for payment. (An installment plan is making regular payments to pay back a debt.) One of Walker’s agents observed that Walker had “opened up a trade for hundreds of our colored women to make an honest and profitable living and where they make as much in one week as a month’s salary would bring from any other position a colored woman can secure.”

▲ Not only did Walker donate money to education, she herself also opened many schools. For example, she opened the Lelia College of Beauty Culture in Indianapolis. There, thousands of African American women were trained to be “hair culturists” able to earn a living on their own. She also opened schools in Pittsburgh, St. Louis, Dallas, Chicago, Kansas City, and New York. Opportunity is what Walker offered. This is how she expressed her ideas in a speech at the 1914 National Negro Business League convention.
I am not merely satisfied in making money for myself, for I am endeavoring to provide employment for hundreds of the women of my race. I had little or no opportunity when I started out in life, having been left an orphan. I had to make my own living and my own opportunity! But I made it! That is why I want to say to every Negro woman present, don’t sit down and wait for the opportunities to come. Get up and make them.

Madam C.J. Walker was a social activist. She participated in the Silent Protest Parade in New York City in August 1917 (right). It was organized by the newly formed National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) to condemn racist violence and discrimination. In addition, along with others, she went to Washington to meet with President Woodrow Wilson to speak out about the segregation and mistreatment of the Black soldiers serving in World War I. Walker also joined NAACP members in an effort to convince President Wilson to support a law that would make lynching a crime. On both occasions, the groups were told at the last minute that the president was too busy to meet with them. ▶
◀ Even though – or perhaps because – Walker had no formal education, she did what she could to help others get the education they wanted and needed. She donated money to many schools. One was the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama (left), an historically Black institution (now known as Tuskegee University), founded by Booker T. Washington. Walker also led a fundraising campaign for the Daytona Normal and Industrial Institute for Negro Girls in Florida. This institute was founded by educator Mary McLeod Bethune, an important Black educator at the time. With Walker’s help, the school was able to meet the needs of more children.


▲ Madam C.J. Walker is said to be one of the first African American female millionaires. Did she actually have $1 million? ($1 million in 1919 would be over $17 million today.) Certainly if all her properties are counted, she probably did. What happened to all that money, you might ask? Walker gave much of her money away. The majority of it went to educational institutions and to the YWCAs and YMCAs of Louisville and St. Louis (above). The NAACP, the Colored Orphans’ Home in St. Louis, the Home for the Aged and Infirm Colored People in Pittsburgh, and the Haines Institute in Georgia also benefitted.

▲ Movie theaters – at least one theater in Indianapolis – charged Black customers more than whites. You can imagine Madam C.J. Walker didn’t like that. What did she do? She planned her own theater. The Walker Theatre would be part of the Madam C.J. Walker Building. The building would also include a factory where her products would be made, a drugstore, a coffee shop, and office space. Now known as the Madam Walker Legacy Center, it was built after Walker’s death. The center is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

▲ In 1993, Walker was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame. Five years later, the U.S. Postal Service created a stamp in her honor. In 2020, Walker’s life was the inspiration for the television series Self Made. And in 2022, the Mattel toy company produced a Madam C.J. Walker doll as part of their Inspiring Women Series. Also in 2022, a new line of hair-care products was launched. The products are named MADAM by Madam C.J. Walker. The formulas used to make the products are different from those Walker used. Even so, they are based on her idea that a healthy scalp is necessary for healthy hair. Inspired by her philosophy, the products are sold at reasonable prices.