Madam C.J. Walker Builds a Business

Sarah Breedlove worked as a washerwoman. Every day she scrubbed other people's clothes in hot water until her hands were sore, and she earned barely a dollar a day.

Around that time, Sarah's own hair began falling out. Many women had the same trouble, and hardly anybody was trying to help them.

So Sarah decided to help herself. She learned everything she could about hair and scalps. She mixed and tested and mixed again in her kitchen, until she had a treatment that genuinely worked. Her hair grew back.

Then she did the clever thing. Instead of keeping it to herself, she gave herself a proper business name — Madam C.J. Walker — packed a case full of jars, and travelled from town to town, knocking on doors and showing women what she had made.

It sold. And sold. She built a factory. She built a school.

But here is the part she was proudest of. She trained thousands of other Black women to sell her products for themselves — the Walker agents — so that they earned their own money too, instead of a dollar a day.

Madam Walker became one of the first women in America to make a fortune entirely by herself. And she gave a great deal of it away.

Goodnight, clever one. Big things start in small kitchens.