Entrepreneur, Philanthropist and a Civil Rights Activist
According to www.biography.com, Madame C.J. Walker was born December 23, 1867 as Sarah Breedlove on a cotton plantation near Delta Louisiana. Sarah was the 5th child of Owen and Minerva Breedlove and the first in the family to be born free. Both parents dying a year apart of one another of unknown causes, leaving Sarah on orphan at the age of 7. Sarah was sent to live with an older sister and her husband. www.notablebiographies.com stated that the three later moved to Vicksburg Mississippi in 1877, where she worked as a housemaid and picked cotton mentioned by www.biography.com. Being wrongly treated by her brother in-law and her overwhelming …show more content…
Madame Walker Manufacturing Company and had became very successful, with her profits totaling what would be today's equivalent of several million dollars. Walkers' manufacturing company that provided thousand of jobs for African American men and women not only manufactured cosmetics, also trained sales beauticains. www.bigraphy.com also mentioned that the trained beauticians became known as the Walker Agents throughout the black communities in the United States. Promoting Madame C. J. Walker philosophy of "cleanliness and loveliness as a means of advancing the status of African-Americans. With Walker being an innovator, she organized clubs and conventions for her representatives, which not only reconized her success but also philanthropic and educational efforts among African -Americans. www.biography.com informed us that after the divorce of Walker and Charles in 1913, she traveled for three years throughout Latin America and the Caribbean promoting her business and recuiting others to teach her hair care method. In 1916 Madame Walker deeply involved herself in Harlem's social and political culture. Foundering philanthropies that included educational scholarships and donations to homes for the elderly, the NAACP(National Association for the Colored People, and the National Conference on Lynching, among other organizations that focused on the improvments in the lives of African Americans. She also donated the largest amount of money by an African American toward the construction of an Indianapolis YMCA in 1913