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Plenty of women have been rich. Most of them inherited their wealth. Plenty of women have earned money, even in antiquity, but without leaving us detailed records about how much. Madam CJ Walker is different. She made a lot of money, we know exactly how much, and she didn’t inherit any of it.

Starting in Poverty

She was born on a Louisiana cotton plantation on December 23, 1867. Her name was Sarah Breedlove, and her biggest asset was freedom. She had older siblings, but they were all born enslaved. By 1867, slavery was illegal, so Sarah was the first in her family to be born free.

Her parents got married two years later, even though they’d been together for twenty years. Legal marriage wasn’t for the enslaved, so it took them a while to get up a wedding (see episode 9.7, the African American bride).

Freedom is great, but it doesn’t come with a clear plan for what happens next. Sarah’s childhood didn’t look that much different than that of her older siblings: hard work, few resources, little education, and no prospects. By age seven, Sarah was orphaned. By age fourteen, she was married. She chose marriage to get away from her abusive brother-in-law.

By age 20, Sarah was a mother and a widow. Her biggest skill in life was laundry, widely considered to be the worst part of keeping a house, so women hired it out if they possibly could (see episode 7.1). It was possible to provide for yourself and a baby as a laundress, but only barely.

Sarah moved upriver to St. Louis, Missouri, where several of her older brothers were working in barbershops. She did laundry and her daughter Lelia went to school.

Sarah would later say:

“I was at my washtubs one morning with a heavy wash before me. As I bent over the washboard, and looked at my arms buried in soapsuds, I said to myself: ‘What are you going to do when you grow old and your back gets stiff? Who is going to take care of your little girl?’ This set me to thinking, but with all my thinking I couldn’t see how I, a poor washer woman, was going to better my condition”

-(New York Times Magazine, November 4, 1917).

For many women throughout history, the only real answer to bettering yourself was to get married. In 1894, Sarah married John Davis, but that did not solve the problem. John Davis was an unskilled Black man. The entire concept of a stay-at-home housewife is predicated on men being paid enough to provide for a family. For skilled, educated White men that was possible, though not guaranteed. For an unskilled Black man like John Davis, it simply was not possible. No job he could get would provide steady work at a decent salary. The fact that he was also an abusive drunk didn’t help.

Sarah was still chained to her washtubs. Nothing was getting better. The circumstance that sparked her rise did not initially look like a positive thing: Sarah started losing her hair.

Hair Problems

She was only in her twenties, but this wasn’t an uncommon problem. There were any number of causes, including scalp disease, various illnesses, low-protein diet, harsh hair treatments, stress, and lack of regular washing. Sarah may have had any or all of these causes working in combination.

The lack of washing deserves particular notice because it’s a touchy subject and had multiple causes all on its own. We often assign a moral quality to being clean and well-groomed, but for women like Sarah, it was a lot more complicated than that. For starters, it was not easy to keep clean in a world without modern plumbing. Unless you had a stream or river at your doorstep, water had to be hauled and then drained. Water is very, very heavy. It was an issue for every person living in poverty, regardless of race.

But race played a role too: Sarah also came from a family background of enslavement. Enslaved women were generally not allowed the time or the resources to care for themselves, not even for simple hairstyles, and especially not for the elaborate and time-consuming styles, such as the braids that are so beautiful on so many Black women. Women like Sarah did not necessarily have the knowledge to create those styles. The hair care routines that a girl born in Africa might have learned from her mother, grandmother, aunts, and sisters got lost when these family members were torn apart by slavery.

Then add the fact that for African American women, looking good was dangerous. White women felt threatened. White men were a threat. That part didn’t change much with the Emancipation Proclamation.

Then add the fact that Sarah was living in a larger culture in which beauty definitely meant White beauty. Sarah had undoubtedly seen many women and pictures of women with hair that people said was gorgeous, but none of them started with hair that behaved like hers.

Given all these discouraging factors, many African American women simply covered their hair with a head wrap.

But there was a growing countertrend too. African American women wanted to beautiful as much as anyone else does. Some women tried to look more white, with skin bleaches and hair straighteners. Some African Americans said that goal was degrading. African American women should look beautiful and they should look African American. So there were competing hair products on the market. As you might expect, most of them did no good. Or worse.

But one of them did help Sarah. So much so that she signed up as an agent to sell it. Doing hair was a significant step up from being a laundress.

Business in the Making

The hair treatment Sarah sold was owned by Annie Minerva Turnbo, a successful Black businesswoman. St Louis had a large Black population and there were plenty of clients, but expansion was on everyone’s mind. In July 1905, Sarah packed up and moved to Denver, Colorado, to begin selling to new markets.

By this point, John Davis was out of the picture. At least in Sarah’s mind. (Legally being out of the picture was another matter.) She had already started seeing another man named CJ Walker. He came with her to Colorado. Denver’s Black community was small, but compact, and it was virgin ground for sales of Turnbo’s hair treatment. Things were looking up.

In January 1906, Sarah married Walker, and by July, Sarah Breedlove had reinvented herself completely. Her sleek, professional ads offered the services and products of Madam CJ Walker. The word “Madam” was a nod to the women who ran Parisian hair salons for the very rich and sophisticated. It indicated that her products were of the very highest quality. Annie Turnbo’s name was not mentioned anywhere.

The product itself was called Madam Walker’s Wonderful Hair Grower. Madam would later tell many reporters that she had prayed to the Lord for guidance, and then she had had a dream where a big Black man came to tell her what to put in the secret recipe, including some special ingredients from Africa (Bundles, chapter 5).

This was genius marketing, but perhaps not as honest as it could have been. The product was not that different from Annie Minerva Turnbo’s product. None of the ingredients were exclusive to Africa. Some of them could be sourced from there. They just didn’t have to be. The Wonderful Hair Grower was a mix of coconut oil, petrolatum, beeswax, copper sulfate, precipitated sulfur, violet extract perfume, and carbolic acid. These were all standard ingredients in hair products, and they weren’t exclusive to either Madam Walker or Annie Turnbo (Bundles, chapter 5).

Carbolic acid was a disinfectant. Copper sulfate and precipitated sulfur could sanitize and heal. The Hair Grower really had some good properties, but it is also true that the spectacular results came largely from training women to wash their hair regularly, scalp massage, and nutritious food. All of this was easier when you were making the wages of a successful hairdresser instead of a desperate laundress. The ad pictures showed Madam with shoulder length hair, when it had previously been less than a finger-length long (Bundles, chapter 5).

Meanwhile CJ was running a real estate and entertainment business. These two spouses fed each other clients, and business was humming (Bundles, chapter 7). Annie Turnbo was very, very angry, and she sent a new agent to Denver, but it was too late. Madam CJ Walker was a raging success. She had already trained agents up and down the state.

Business Expansion

Madam also had big plans. Colorado had done well for her, but its ultimate possibilities were limited because the African American population there was limited. To really make it big, she had to head back east where millions of African American women were waiting for help with their hair.

Madam’s strategy was to travel from city to city. In each new place, she’d contact the Black churches and the Black fraternal organizations. She’d arrange for a demonstration, hold classes to train agents, take orders, and move on to the next city.

And it worked. As a laundress, she was lucky to take in $300 per year. A White male factory worker could earn in the neighborhood of $600 per year. In 1907, Madam CJ Walker earned $3,652 (Bundles, chapter 8). This was very big money.

You will also notice that the number is very specific (down to the dollar). A big part of the reason that Madam can take credit as the first self-made millionairess is that she and her attorney kept very meticulous records. It’s all documented, even though there was no income tax, and no obligation to report such a thing. Many successful businesswomen before her (including Annie Minerva Turnbo), might have been millionaires, but we’ll never know because we don’t have their dollar amounts. Other women are on the record for making millions, like Hetty Green (see episode 3.8), but Hetty started with inherited wealth, which is a completely different situation.

It was onwards and upwards from 1907. With client testimonials and endorsements from major Black leaders, Madam nearly doubled her earnings in 1908. This was partly because her methods really did help hair grow, and partly because she herself was such a magnet. She was living proof that African American women could be glamorous, could do more than laundry, could dream of bigger and better things.

Madam’s business was now big enough to realize she could not keep everything on the road with her. She established her headquarters in Pittsburgh and then Indianapolis. In Indianapolis, she purchased a $10,000 home. That price sounds like a dream now, but it was a substantial piece of real estate at the time (Bundles, chapter 9). She also began making very public donations to good causes like the YMCA.

Unfortunately, Madam’s success did not come with domestic harmony. CJ’s business affairs had been totally eclipsed by hers, and he didn’t like it. Between his adultery and his misuse of money, Madam got fed up and began divorce proceedings. This time she had to do it right and legally because there were genuine assets he could make off with otherwise. It got complicated because she hadn’t done it right and legally with John Davis, so the records were not as clear as they should have been, but eventually she was free and in possession of her own very successful business.

Madam bought property in Harlem, just when the Black Renaissance there was beginning to grow. She installed her daughter Lelia as the manager of the business on the east coast and the hostess of some very prominent social events in New York. Many women graduated from the Lelia College of Hair Culture, which the ads promised were a passport to prosperity. Madam herself traveled around to business colleges and gave speeches. In 1913, she address the National Negro Business League and said,

“The girls and women of our race must not be afraid to take hold of business endeavor and, by patient Industry, close economy, determined effort, and close application to business, ring success out of a number of business opportunities that lie at their very doors.”

She then detailed her own rise from starting her business with a grand total of $1.50 in capital to paying taxes on $43,000 worth of property, while employing 1,000 Black women who could each earn up to $15 per day. When she was through, Booker T Washington took the stand and told the assembled crowd that “You talk about what the men are doing in a business way; why if we don’t watch out the women will excel us” (National Negro Business League, volume, 210).

The agents of the Madam CJ Walker company did not make as much money as she did, of course, and $15 per day was substantially more than most of them were earning, but even $15 per week was a significant improvement over working in a factory or as a domestic servant or as a laundress.

Becoming an Activist

Meanwhile, Madam was also stepping up her social involvement and encouraging her agents to do the same. In 1917, she was part of a group of Harlem leaders that traveled to Washington, DC, to meet with President Woodrow Wilson and express their outrage about events in East St Louis. East St Louis was well known to Madam from the time that she lived in St Louis. Then, as now, East St. Louis was an African American enclave just across the Mississippi river from the main city of St Louis. On July 3, 1917, the New York Times headline read “Race Rioters Fire East St. Louis and Shoot or Hang Many Negroes; Dead Estimated at from 20 to 75; Many Bodies in the Ruins; Mobs Rage Unchecked for 24 Hours Till Military Rule Is Established” (New York Times, July 3, 1917).

Thousands of people lost their homes in this incident. The local law enforcement did little and may even have been part of the riot. Certainly, there was no accountability.

Madam and the other leaders wanted President Wilson to make a public statement decrying violence against African Americans. They were assured that the President would at least meet with them, but when they arrived, they were informed that he was too busy.

In response, the group angrily published a petition, which said:

“In the last thirty-one years 2,867 colored men and women have been lynched by mobs without trial. Less than a half dozen persons out of the tens of thousands involved have received any punishment whatsoever for these crimes, and not a single one has been punished for murder…

“WE believe that this spirit of lawlessness is doing untold injury to our country and we submit that the record proves that the States are either unwilling or unable to put down lynching and mob violence.

“WE ask, therefore, that lynching and mob violence be made a national crime punishable by the laws of the United States and that this be done by federal enactment, or if necessary, by constitutional amendment. We believe that there can be found in recent legislation abundant precedent for action of this sort, and whether this be true or not, no nation that seeks to fight the battles of civilization can afford to march in blood-smeared garments” (Negro Silent Protest Parade Committee).

Madam CJ Walker was one of the signatories.

Nor did she stop there. At the National Convention of the Madam CJ Walker Agents, the assembled group sent a telegram to President Wilson urging him to make a public statement (Bundles, chapter 17).

By 1917, Madam was vice-president at large of the National Equal Rights League, and they demanded that Wilson abolish segregation in federal offices and interstate travel, forbid disenfranchisement of Black votes, eliminate peonage farming, and make lynching a federal crime (Bundles, chapter 17). None of that happened.

But meanwhile, the New York Times Magazine reported that Madam’s assets had reached a cool million, or nearly that. They were a little premature, but there’s no denying that her business activities were going well.

World War I

But also by 1917, other things were on everyone’s mind, including President Wilson. World War I was already in full swing in Europe, and the US was about to enter. The African American leaders were in disagreement about how they would respond. There were some that said this was an opportunity to show how patriotic they were, and how essential their contributions were, and that this would prove they deserved equal rights. But others said, they should protest, and to ask—in the words of an awesome documentary from the 90s—why they should “do more than their share of dying for a country in which they did less than their share of living” (James, chapter 6).

Madam CJ Walker was both too old and too female to be asked to die on a battlefield, but she had opinions. She was a strong promoter of the Circle for Negro War Relief, which raised money and supplies to help African American soldiers and their families. At Fort Des Moines, where 3,600 enlisted African American men were gathered and trained for war, Madam was asked to speak and among other things, she said:

“Now and then, but seldom, you hear one say, ‘This is not my country. I have no right to fight for a flag that does not protect me. But let me say to you that this [is] our home… All we have is here, and the time will come, and it is not far distant, until we must and will receive every protection guaranteed to every American citizen under the American Constitution” (Bundles, chapter 18).

The soldiers didn’t know her, and they might not have realized what the people close to her knew already: Madam CJ Walker was ill. She had kidney disease and she was failing. Nevertheless, she refused to slow down.

The war caused supply problems for many businesses, including hers, but she soldiered on. She also bought the former home of the great Frederick Douglass, with plans to make it a Black Mount Vernon. She hired a Black architect to build herself a mansion in Westchester County, north of New York City, where dwelt the graceful and enormous homes of people like the Rockefellers, the Tiffanys, the Astors, the Vanderbilts, and the Morgans. And soon also by the Walkers. The New York Times Magazine gushed about the thirty-four rooms, including a marble stairway, sparkling cut glass candelabra, tapestries, an organ, and quarters for her social secretary, her nurse, and her chauffeur (New York Times Magazine, November 4, 1917).

Despite her illness, Madam was still going and moving and doing things when the war ended. She and other Black leaders felt strongly that the peace negotiations should have Black voices invovled. Black soldiers acquitted themselves well in the war, and they deserved that much. And also, the defeated Germany had African colonies. What was going to happen to them?

From my perspective, the real representation those colonies needed was from people who lived in those colonies, but that wasn’t going to happen. African Americans were quite different, but they were certainly more concerned on Africa’s behalf than—say—President Woodrow Wilson.

Madam attended a National Race Congress for World Democracy, and many people voted for her to be one of the representatives sent to the Paris peace negotiations. This was not done with government approval; they were going to go on their own.

Another woman who received many votes was Ida Wells-Barnett, the famous journalist. Unfortunately, the votes were not the real thing that mattered as far as this congress was concerned. The nominating committee had override power, and they decided that only men should go. Madam and Ida could just be alternates, and also, they could pay their own way. Ida later wrote that she:

“thanked the congress for the honor it had done me, but I regretted that the years I had spent in fighting the race’s battles had made me financially unable to accept the honor which they had offered me. I therefore declined with thanks. Immediately a clamor arose; the committee’s report was halted and an amendment was made by which both of the women named were included on the list of regular delegates” (Wells, 325).

Madam had plenty of money to pay her own way, but in the end, it didn’t matter who was paying: None of the delegates went to Paris. According to Ida Wells, President Wilson forbade it. According to the biography of Madam CJ Walker, it was a little more complicated. A country at war often grows paranoid, and that was certainly true of the United States. Any form of protest had become suspect and subversive, even if it had nothing to do with the war. Madam had done many things to support the war effort, but she had also protested the condition of African Americans at home, so she was on a list entitled “Negro Subversives”. The state department denied her request for a passport, along with all the other delegates (Bundles, chapter 20).

The Treaty of Versailles said nothing about people of color, other than to transfer Togo and Cameroon to France, to split German East Africa among Britain, Belgium, and Portugal, and to assign German South West Africa to the dominion of South Africa, within the British empire.

The Later Years

By the time the war was over, Madam was too ill to travel much anyway. She died on May 25, 1919, in her home in Westchester County.

At the time of her death, her personal assets were worth $600,000, and her company was valued at 1.2 to 1.5 million dollars (Bundles, chapter 21).

Ida Wells wrote in her memoirs, I “met Madam Walker when she first started out… I was one of the skeptics that paid little heed to her predictions as to what she was going to do. She had little or no education, and was never ashamed of having been a washerwoman earning a dollar and a half of day. To see her phenomenal rise made me take pride anew in Negro womanhood” (Wells, 324).

Next week would ordinarily be a bye-week for the podcast, and it still will be as far as this First Woman series is concerned. However, I’m starting a newsletter called On This Day in Women’s History! The first one comes out on Monday, and on Thursday instead of radio silence, I’ll be giving you an audio sample of what the written newsletter will contain in the hopes that you’ll hand over your email address to get it. If you’re a Patreon supporter, you’ll be getting the newsletter already because I already have your email address. If you’re not a Patreon supporter, you can still get the newsletter, just visit herhalfofhistory.com for details. Thanks!

Selected Sources

Bundles, A’lelia. On Her Own Ground : The Life and Times of Madam C. J. Walker. Scribner, 2002.

DUDLEY, TARA. “Seeking the Ideal African-American Interior: The Walker Residences and Salon in New York.” Studies in the Decorative Arts 14, no. 1 (2006): 80–112. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40663289.

Guinness World Records. “First Self-Made Millionairess.” Guinness World Records, n.d. https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/first-self-made-millionairess.

James, Clive. Fame in the 20th Century. Random House (NY), 1993. https://archive.clivejames.com/books/fame6.htm.

Louis, Henry. “Who Was the 1st Black Millionairess? – the Root.” Theroot.com, June 24, 2013. https://www.theroot.com/who-was-the-1st-black-millionairess.

Louis, Henry, and J A Rogers. 100 Amazing Facts about the Negro. New York: Pantheon Books, 2017.

Michals, Debra.  “Madam C. J. Walker.” National Women’s History Museum.  2015.  www.womenshistory.org/education-resources/biographies/madam-cj-walker.

National Negro Business League. “Proceedings of the Annual Meeting.” HathiTrust, 1913. https://hdl.handle.net/2027/coo.31924086536889.

National Register of Historic Places and National Historic Landmarks Program. “New York NHL Villa Lewaro.” Archives.gov, 2026. https://catalog.archives.gov/id/75316112.

Negro Silent Protest Parade Committee, “Petition re Lynching,” 1917. James Weldon Johnson and Grace Nail Johnson Papers, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. https://www.gilderlehrman.org/ap-african-american-studies/unit-3/reconstruction-jim-crow-nadir/negro-silent-protest-petition-lynching. Accessed April 17, 2026.

New York Times. “Race Rioters Fire East St. Louis and Shoot or Hang Many Negroes Dead.” July 3, 1917. https://www.nytimes.com/1917/07/03/archives/race-rioters-fire-east-st-louis-and-shoot-or-hang-many-negroes-dead.html.

New York Times Magazine. “Wealthiest Negro Woman’s Suburban Mansion.” November 4, 1917. Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/per_new-york-times-magazine_the-new-york-times_1917-11-04_67_21834/page/n75/mode/2up.

Wells, Ida B. Crusade for Justice: The Autobiography of Ida B. Wells. 1970. Reprint, University of Chicago Press, 2020. https://web.english.upenn.edu/~cavitch/pdf-library/Wells_Crusade.pdf.