Future entrepreneur, philanthropist and self-made millionaire Madam C.J. Walker is born Sarah Breedlove on December 23, 1867 in Delta, Louisiana.
Walker's parents, sharecroppers who had been enslaved, died when she was seven. Walker eventually left Louisiana and spent her twenties in St. Louis, Missouri. While working as a laundress for about a dollar a day to support herself and her young daughter, she developed a hair loss problem. For working class families at the time, who often lived without indoor plumbing or adequate nutrition, healthy hair could be difficult to maintain. When Walker (who shed her old name after marrying St. Louis newspaperman Charles Joseph Walker) began using products produced by the Black hair-care entrepreneur Annie Turnbo Malone, she found success and was inspired to create her own line of hair care products.
The Madame C.J. Walker Manufacturing Company began selling Madam C.J. Walker's Wonderful Hair Grower in 1906, using a mixture of precipitated sulfur, copper sulfate, beeswax, petrolatum, coconut oil and a violet extract perfume. Her company, at its peak, would go on to employ over 25,000 women, nicknamed the “Walker agents,” who made house visits across the United States and Caribbean.
