WEBVTT - Who Was the First Self-Made Woman Millionaire? 0:00:01.920 --> 0:00:04.320 Welcome to brain Stuff, a production of I Heart Radio. 0:00:06.320 --> 0:00:10.720 Hey brain Stuff, Lauren bog Obam Here. Entrepreneurs like Kim 0:00:10.800 --> 0:00:14.160 Kardashian and Rihanna, whose beauty brands have made hundreds of 0:00:14.200 --> 0:00:17.560 millions of dollars, are following a trail blazed by one 0:00:17.640 --> 0:00:22.000 Madam C. J. Walker a century ago. Some reports claim 0:00:22.040 --> 0:00:24.800 Walker was the first black woman to build a million 0:00:24.800 --> 0:00:28.280 dollar fortune, but Guinness World Records lists Walker as the 0:00:28.280 --> 0:00:32.559 first self made woman millionaire period. For the article this 0:00:32.600 --> 0:00:34.760 episode is based on How Stuff Works, spoke with a 0:00:34.880 --> 0:00:39.720 Lelia Bundle's, Walker's great great granddaughter and biographer. She said, 0:00:40.120 --> 0:00:42.680 for a woman in business and who launched her product 0:00:42.760 --> 0:00:45.800 before women had the right to vote, is pretty extraordinary. 0:00:47.440 --> 0:00:50.800 Walker was the daughter of sharecroppers, yet still built a 0:00:50.880 --> 0:00:55.120 national brand, empowered hundreds of women, and became a philanthropist 0:00:55.160 --> 0:00:58.920 and civil rights activist. The Netflix mini series Self Made, 0:00:58.920 --> 0:01:02.400 starring Octavia Spen Sir, is loosely based on her life story. 0:01:03.120 --> 0:01:06.840 So who was she? The woman we know as Madam C. J. 0:01:06.959 --> 0:01:11.319 Walker was born Sarah Breedlove on a Louisiana cotton plantation 0:01:11.480 --> 0:01:14.720 in eighteen sixty seven, the fifth child of Owen and 0:01:14.760 --> 0:01:18.560 Minerva Breedlove, who once had been enslaved. Sarah was the 0:01:18.600 --> 0:01:22.160 first of her siblings to be born free. Her early 0:01:22.240 --> 0:01:25.319 years in Louisiana were full of struggle, and Sarah was 0:01:25.360 --> 0:01:27.679 an orphan by the age of seven, so she went 0:01:27.720 --> 0:01:30.640 to live with her older sister and her husband. In 0:01:30.680 --> 0:01:34.000 eighteen seventy seven, the family moved to Vicksburg, Mississippi, where 0:01:34.040 --> 0:01:38.479 young Sarah picked cotton and did domestic work. At age fourteen, 0:01:38.520 --> 0:01:42.039 she married Moses McWilliams to escape the hard labor and 0:01:42.160 --> 0:01:46.920 her brother in law, who mistreated her. Her only child, Lelia, 0:01:47.160 --> 0:01:50.480 who later changed her name to Leliah Walker, was born 0:01:50.560 --> 0:01:54.040 in June of eighty five. When her husband died in 0:01:54.080 --> 0:01:56.840 eighteen eighty seven, she moved to St. Louis, where her 0:01:56.840 --> 0:02:00.680 brothers were working as barber's. She started doing audrey, earning 0:02:00.680 --> 0:02:03.080 a dollar fifty a day, which allowed Walker and her 0:02:03.160 --> 0:02:07.840 daughter to attend school. By the eighteen nineties, her hair 0:02:07.920 --> 0:02:11.240 started falling out due to a scalp condition. There were 0:02:11.360 --> 0:02:14.320 very few hair care products designed for women of African 0:02:14.360 --> 0:02:17.160 descent at the time, and hair loss was a big problem, 0:02:17.200 --> 0:02:21.040 Bundle says, so Walker searched for a way to cure 0:02:21.120 --> 0:02:25.040 her hair loss. She tried the Pearo hair caroline, made 0:02:25.040 --> 0:02:28.600 by another black woman entrepreneur, and it helped. She sold 0:02:28.680 --> 0:02:31.880 Pearo for eighteen months while experimenting with her own hair 0:02:31.919 --> 0:02:36.400 growing formula. In nineteen o six, she went Charles Joseph C. J. 0:02:36.639 --> 0:02:40.480 Walker as sales and advertising man in Denver. He helped 0:02:40.480 --> 0:02:44.120 her with marketing strategies and business ideas, and both these 0:02:44.240 --> 0:02:47.959 and his name were useful. That same year, she changed 0:02:47.960 --> 0:02:51.000 her name from Sarah Breedlove to Madam C. J. Walker 0:02:51.360 --> 0:02:55.440 and launched Madam C. J. Walker's Wonderful Hair Grower. Bundle 0:02:55.520 --> 0:02:57.520 said she was one of the women who was a 0:02:57.560 --> 0:03:01.400 pioneer and a multimillion dollar cosmetic and hair care industry. 0:03:01.680 --> 0:03:04.200 In nineteen o six, when she founded her company, there 0:03:04.280 --> 0:03:07.160 was no national distribution for hair care and cosmetics like 0:03:07.240 --> 0:03:11.519 when women like Elizabeth Arden created her brand. To promote 0:03:11.560 --> 0:03:13.960 their products, she and c. J. Traveled the South for 0:03:14.000 --> 0:03:17.480 eighteen months, selling door to door and doing demonstrations, mostly 0:03:17.480 --> 0:03:21.440 in churches. Convinced by Walkers before and after photos, women 0:03:21.560 --> 0:03:24.200 snapped up tins of her hair grower for fifty cents apiece. 0:03:25.000 --> 0:03:27.840 By nineteen o eight, Walker was earning the equivalent of 0:03:27.880 --> 0:03:31.000 a hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year in today's money, 0:03:31.160 --> 0:03:33.480 and she likes to say there would be no hair 0:03:33.520 --> 0:03:38.320 growing industry if I hadn't invented it. The exact recipe 0:03:38.440 --> 0:03:43.440 is lost to time, but the original formula included coconut oil, beeswax, petrolatum, 0:03:43.600 --> 0:03:47.440 which is similar to petroleum, jelly, copper sulfate, precipitated sulfur, 0:03:47.680 --> 0:03:51.280 and a violet scent. A coconut oil is a favorite 0:03:51.280 --> 0:03:54.560 in hair care today, but the key ingredient was likely sulfur, 0:03:54.800 --> 0:03:57.480 which had been used in scalp and hair preparations for years. 0:03:58.160 --> 0:04:00.560 A twenty nineteen study found that an oral form of 0:04:00.600 --> 0:04:03.360 sulfur known as ms M supported the growth of healthy 0:04:03.400 --> 0:04:06.360 hair and fingernails, likely because it boosts the development of 0:04:06.440 --> 0:04:11.840 keratin protein necessary for growing hair, skin, and nails. But 0:04:11.960 --> 0:04:16.120 back to Madam Walker. Her Walker system included a vegetable 0:04:16.120 --> 0:04:19.960 based shampoo and glossing, which helped smooth hair pressed with 0:04:20.000 --> 0:04:25.680 her newly designed hot comb. By nineteen eleven, Walker Incorporated 0:04:25.920 --> 0:04:29.080 then recruited and trained black women agents, who she called 0:04:29.160 --> 0:04:34.919 beauty culturists in major cities. However, as Walker's success grew 0:04:35.080 --> 0:04:38.919 her marriage deteriorated after she caught c J in an affair. 0:04:39.000 --> 0:04:42.359 She divorced him in nineteen twelve. By this time, she 0:04:42.440 --> 0:04:45.719 lived in Indianapolis, a Midwestern hub of transit and Black 0:04:45.760 --> 0:04:50.280 American life. She hobnobbed with newspaper publishers and eventually became 0:04:50.320 --> 0:04:54.440 allied with influential politicians and activists, including Ida B. Wells, 0:04:54.920 --> 0:04:58.640 w E. B. DWO Boys, Maria McLoud, Bethoon, and Booker T. Washington, 0:04:58.920 --> 0:05:00.960 who was one of the most fluential black men in 0:05:00.960 --> 0:05:05.080 the country at that time. In nineteen sixteen, she settled 0:05:05.120 --> 0:05:09.080 in New York's Harlem, then the epicenter of Black American culture. 0:05:10.080 --> 0:05:13.360 She and her daughter, then Aaliya Walker Robinson, opened a 0:05:13.440 --> 0:05:18.200 posh salon featuring sweeping columns, velvet seating, parquet floors, and 0:05:18.240 --> 0:05:22.360 a grand piano in the lobby. In nineteen seventeen, Walker 0:05:22.440 --> 0:05:26.960 hosted her first national convention for beauty culturists in Philadelphia. 0:05:27.240 --> 0:05:30.920 Besides inspiring her agents to sell more, she encouraged them 0:05:30.960 --> 0:05:33.760 to support charitable causes. Through the Madam C. J. Walker 0:05:33.839 --> 0:05:38.279 Benevolent Association. Walker donated money to black colleges and gave 0:05:38.320 --> 0:05:42.240 to the n double A CPS anti lynching fund. Bundle 0:05:42.320 --> 0:05:45.320 said she visited the White House in nineteen seventeen with 0:05:45.360 --> 0:05:47.880 a group to try to persuade President Woodrow Wilson to 0:05:47.920 --> 0:05:52.039 support legislation to make lynching a federal crime. In the 0:05:52.080 --> 0:05:54.919 early twentieth century, there were hundreds and hundreds of lynchings, 0:05:54.920 --> 0:05:59.080 and African American men were targeted. In nineteen eighteen, Walker 0:05:59.160 --> 0:06:01.880 moved into the Villa La Warro, a mansion she had 0:06:01.920 --> 0:06:04.920 built in Irvington on Hudson, about forty five minutes north 0:06:04.920 --> 0:06:08.559 of Manhattan, with some twenty thousand square feet that's about 0:06:08.680 --> 0:06:12.080 nineteen hundred square meters spread over thirty four rooms, and 0:06:12.160 --> 0:06:15.240 expansive views of the Hudson River. The home, designed by 0:06:15.279 --> 0:06:19.440 African American architect Wurtner Woodson Tandy, Sr. Was a marvel. 0:06:20.440 --> 0:06:23.960 Sadly she didn't get to enjoy it for long. Walker 0:06:24.000 --> 0:06:27.159 died in nineteen nineteen at just fifty two years old. 0:06:28.279 --> 0:06:31.479 In her obituary, W. E. B. Du Bois wrote, it 0:06:31.600 --> 0:06:34.520 is given to few persons to transform a people in 0:06:34.560 --> 0:06:38.720 a generation, Yet this was done by the late Madam C. J. Walker. 0:06:39.640 --> 0:06:42.440 Her daughter Alila went on to be the most prominent 0:06:42.480 --> 0:06:45.919 socialite in the Harlem Renaissance, facilitating art and culture in 0:06:45.960 --> 0:06:49.840 her Villa Lawiro and beyond. Though the mansion fell out 0:06:49.880 --> 0:06:52.840 of the family after Alila's death, he was designated a 0:06:52.920 --> 0:06:56.440 National Historic Landmark in nineteen seventy six and has largely 0:06:56.480 --> 0:06:59.679 been restored by Ambassador Harold E. Dooley Jr. And his wife, 0:07:00.000 --> 0:07:05.640 who lived there from Dolly, retired investment banker and the 0:07:05.720 --> 0:07:08.080 first African American to own his own seat in the 0:07:08.080 --> 0:07:11.280 New York Stock Exchange, had a toy model of Villa 0:07:11.360 --> 0:07:16.440 Lawarro as a boy. In lateen Rich Dennis, the Sundial 0:07:16.520 --> 0:07:20.320 Brands haircare magnate who invented the Shame moisture line, acquired 0:07:20.320 --> 0:07:23.880 the home. Dennis worked with Sephora to launch a Walker 0:07:23.920 --> 0:07:27.240 Beauty Culture hair care line in and he planned to 0:07:27.360 --> 0:07:30.160 use Villa Lawiro as a think tank and bass for 0:07:30.240 --> 0:07:33.600 his New Voices Foundation to support women of color entrepreneurs. 0:07:34.360 --> 0:07:36.800 More than a dozen books and movies have featured Walker 0:07:36.880 --> 0:07:40.480 and her rise to riches and fame. Bundles wrote her 0:07:40.480 --> 0:07:43.800 Columbia University master's thesis on her great great grandmother and 0:07:43.840 --> 0:07:46.120 has authored four books on her life based on her 0:07:46.160 --> 0:07:50.320 research and family archives, including fifty thou documents and photographs. 0:07:51.000 --> 0:07:53.760 In two thousand one, she published her biography on her 0:07:53.760 --> 0:07:56.800 own ground, The Life and Times of Madam C. J. Walker. 0:07:58.040 --> 0:08:01.200 During her time as an entrepreneur, Walker employed forty thousand 0:08:01.280 --> 0:08:03.960 black men and women in the United States, Central America, 0:08:04.040 --> 0:08:07.040 and the Caribbean, and she founded a national Association for 0:08:07.080 --> 0:08:10.920 Black cosmetics and manufacturers. In nineteen seventeen. Before her death, 0:08:11.040 --> 0:08:14.120 she updated her will, leaving two thirds of future net 0:08:14.120 --> 0:08:17.600 profits to charity, as well as thousands to several individuals 0:08:17.600 --> 0:08:21.720 and schools. After her death, her daughter worked to complete 0:08:21.760 --> 0:08:24.200 a bustling center for the black community that she had 0:08:24.240 --> 0:08:28.000 started in Indianapolis, where Madam Walker's business was still headquartered. 0:08:28.880 --> 0:08:32.599 Opened in ninety seven, during a time when Black Americans 0:08:32.640 --> 0:08:36.040 were often turned away or charged extra or relegated to 0:08:36.080 --> 0:08:39.840 second tier service at many businesses, the Walker Building featured 0:08:39.840 --> 0:08:43.280 professional offices, a drug store, a restaurant and coffee shop, 0:08:43.480 --> 0:08:46.840 a theater, a ballroom, and of course, a salon and 0:08:46.840 --> 0:08:51.520 beauty school. Now a National Historic Landmark, it stands today 0:08:51.559 --> 0:08:55.160 as an educational and cultural center and, to quote the 0:08:55.240 --> 0:08:59.520 Madam Walker Legacy Center website, a beacon of pride, hope, 0:09:00.080 --> 0:09:08.920 end the beauty that lies in diversity. Today's episode is 0:09:08.920 --> 0:09:11.640 based on the article Black Hair Care Made Madam C. J. 0:09:11.760 --> 0:09:15.720 Walker America's first self made female millionaire on how Stuffworks 0:09:15.720 --> 0:09:18.679 dot Com, written by Mariae C. Hunt. Brain Stuff is 0:09:18.679 --> 0:09:21.000 producted by Heart Radio and partnership with how stuff Works 0:09:21.000 --> 0:09:23.480 dot Com and is produced by Tyler Klang and Ramsey Young. 0:09:24.040 --> 0:09:26.600 Four more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the I heart 0:09:26.640 --> 0:09:29.360 Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your 0:09:29.360 --> 0:09:30.080 favorite shows.