Sarah Breedlove

On a sharecropper farm in rural Louisiana, a poor Black family welcomed its sixth child and the only one born free. The Emancipation Proclamation had passed. Sarah and her siblings were rendered orphans during an outbreak of yellow fever, but they tried to maintain the family farm. Desperation and poverty drove her to Vicksburg, where she found work as a washerwoman married at only fourteen years of age. When she was widowed unexpectedly at age twenty, Sarah had to find a way to support herself and her young child, Lelia.

From these tragic early years, Sarah went on to become a profoundly successful entrepreneur and philanthropist. Each of her ventures was established through a combination of faith that God would provide what she needed, an intuitive business sense, and an others-focused model of investing in women. Eventually, she developed an Indianapolis factory, a New York salon, and numerous training schools for “beauty culturalists.” More than 3,000 women were employed and empowered to work, teach, and rise above the obstacles of racism and poverty.

Don’t Just Sit and Wait!

It was 1904, and it seemed the whole world had come to St. Louis for the Louisiana Purchase Exposition. Orators, statesmen, and businessmen took their turns at the podium. On this particular afternoon, among a gathering of the National Association of Colored Women, Sarah watched and listened with rapt attention as Margaret Murray Washington, educator and wife of Booker T. Washington, addressed the crowd. She spoke of the importance of healthy and moral living. She exhorted the audience to “ . . . stoop down now and then and lift up others.”

She reminded women that no matter their personal circumstances, they each had an obligation to other members of their race. “We cannot separate ourselves from our people, no matter how much we try; for one, I have no desire to do so.” Mrs. Washington’s powerful speech resonated with Sarah.

How had this female orator, with origins in a poor, sharecropping family like Sarah’s, transformed into this poised, well-spoken lady with elegant, upswept hair? Sarah touched her own unruly and brittle hair self-consciously and looked down at her hands. Her own nails were worn short, her fingers calloused and cracked from long days submersed in laundry tubs.

Despite her meticulous care to dress neatly and carry herself with dignity, her days as a washerwoman, nights as a student, and a lifetime of poverty had taken their toll on her. Mrs. Washington had something Sarah had never seen in one of her race, and she wanted to learn her secrets.

Sarah came away from the meeting empowered with a vision of what it meant to be a woman and what it meant to be Black. That evening, she knelt by her bed to meet with God in the same way her parents had taught her so long ago. She poured her heart out to her Heavenly Father, thanking Him for providing for her every need and confessing her longing to do more than just survive each day. Thus unburdened, and trusting that God would care for her needs, she slept deeply.

That night she dreamed of the land of Africa, a place she knew only from the stories of her kinsmen. The next morning, she awoke with an idea inspired by her dream. The idea was simple; Black women needed haircare products sourced from the ingredients of their ancestral homes.

The current chemical methods of smoothing and straightening Black hair to achieve styles made for white women’s hair were simply destroying Black hair. What was worse, these products were designed and modeled exclusively by white women, society’s ideal of not only beauty but also of womanliness, culture, and sophistication. In not-so-subtle ways, the advertising told Black women that they were unattractive and inferior with looks that needed vast improvement.

Sarah had felt the condemning weight of those societal messages all of her life. Now, for the first time, she had the means to do something about it. She approached her new idea in the same manner she had always lived. Trust God, seek opportunity, and go after it. She knew change would never come if she just sat and did nothing.

She began with a petroleum jelly base and added copper sulfate and sulfur to treat unhealthy scalps. She mixed in beeswax for shine and violet extract and coconut oil for fragrance. As Sarah sought the right combination of ingredients to improve her hair quality, her own scalp and patchy hair became the perfect test subject, and she continued to mix and experiment. She was on her way to creating a line of hair-care products specifically for the unique hair texture of Black women.

As God would have it, when she relocated to Colorado, she found work as a cook for a pharmacist and learned a great deal about the ingredients she needed for her products to succeed. She continued to experiment with her haircare products in her free time. It was not long before Sarah’s experimentation paid off. As she scrutinized her own appearance in the mirror, she no longer saw bald spots or dried and broken hair. For the first time, her own head was growing thick, full, and healthy hair.

It was now time to begin her ascent out of the life of hardship she had always known. Sarah, with marketing help from her new husband, C. J. Walker, created Madam C. J. Walker Manufacturing Company. Her products were proudly emblazoned with her name, and in a revolutionary marketing strategy for the time, her own image, which showcased her newly full, luxurious locks. As a professional businesswoman, Sarah refined herself to embody her new life and identity as Madam C. J. Walker.

Madam Walker went door-to-door, demonstrating her products on women in their own kitchens, building relationships and providing education in hygiene and health. As the efficacy of her products caused explosive business growth, she hired and trained other women to work as commission-based agents, selling products by the same methodology she employed.

Poised and confident, Madam Walker was on the rise, and she invited her sisters to lift one another up as together they climbed.

“His master said to him, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master’” (Matthew 25:21 ESV).