African American Childhood

I was born a free African American on December 23, 1867. My parents Owen and Minerva and siblings Louvenia, Owen Jr., Alexander, and James had formerly been enslaved. I grew up as ordinary as possible considering I was an African American living in a white peoples world. When I was only six years old my parents contracted yellow fever and passed away in 1872. After the death of my parents, I moved in with my sister, Louvenia, in Vicksburg to work as a housemaid. I was considered extremely poor and was unable to receive and education. In order to escape the wrath of my eldest sisters husband, I married Moses McWilliams at fourteen. Four years later I gave birth to my beautiful daughter, Leila. In 1887 my husband, Moses died in an accident,
so I decided to move to St. Louis to make more money for housekeeping.

I worked hard as a housekeeper, hoping that many house owners would use my service.
I was doing well in life and even got married to John Davis, but the marriage did not last long because he was an alcoholic. Since I have moved to St. Louis and been divorced I have had a hard time earning money for my daughter and myself. I joined St. Paul African Methodist Episcopal Church and they helped me tremendously. The church helped me financially and spiritually. I started an society for missionary at the church which is known as the beginning of my philanthropic influences. During the late 1890’s I started to develop a scalp disorder, which caused me to lose my hair. I began to slowly lose confidence and quickly became embarrassed. I started to do home remedies and buy every hair care treatments as possible hoping to reverse the affects of this condition. For ten years I experimented with many products, but I still was unable to cure my hair loss. I had eventually felt like I had lost hope and that my hair was going to continue to fall out, but in 1905 I developed my own hair care treatment because nothing else was working for me. I went to sleep one night and dreamt about my hair remedy. My dream was “a big black man appeared to me and told me what to mix up for my hair.” So I ordered the remedy that was grown in Africa and began treating my scalp. After a few weeks my hair began to regrow! I decided to move west and start my new company to help other women around the globe. There I met a handsome man, Charles Joseph Walker, who was a sales agent for an African American newspaper. Shortly after we met I married him and changed my name to Madam C.J. Walker. My husband invested $1.50 in savings so I was able to start door-to-door hair care business. While still perfecting my hair care product, I worked as a cook in Colorado. After work I went door to door and demonstrated how to use my product. After Lelia graduated college she joined me to help with my rising business.
Eventually my hair care business expanded, so I decided to move the company to Pittsburg. My reasoning for moving to Pittsburg was because it has many manufacturing companies that will make my items that are essential to my business. After settling down I opened a beauty college to train young African American women. Eventually the transportation of products became very strenuous, so I moved my business to Indianapolis, Indiana because it is know as the “Crossroads of America.”
I loved working in Indianapolis because it is the center state of almost everything and very accessible. Women from all over the country came to see me and buy my hair care product.

In 1913 Charles and I got divorced, so I traveled around Latin America and the Caribbean to promote my hair care product for three years. When I returned in 1916 I moved to Harlem where I was able to continue to tend to business needs, but also become a social and political influence. During this time I help create* the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the National Conference on Lynching, and donated money to many educational scholarships and the elderly. The biggest donation I made was to the construction of the Indianapolis YMCA.

I was able to overcome the African American barrier and become a successful woman. I donated my time and money into becoming a successful and inspiration to African American woman. I showed other African Americans that with hard work and determination anything is possible.

On May 25, 1919 I passed away at my estate in New York. When I died I was valued for more then one million dollars and was known as one of the first American women to become a self made millionaire. I left a third of my estate to Leila and the rest went to charities. I was buried at Woodlawn Cemetery in New York where I still lay at rest.