Madame C.J. Walker

            Sarah Breedlove, better known as Madame C. Walker, was born on December 23, 1867 in Delta, Louisiana. She was born into a slave family to Owen and Minerva Breedlove. The family worked as sharecroppers on a cotton plantation. In 1874, at the age of seven, Sarah's parents died during an epidemic of yellow fever and she was left an orphan. She moved in with her sister Louvenia. Following the failure of the cotton crop, the two sisters moved to Vicksburg, Missippi and worked as washerwomen. .
             At the age of 14, Sarah married Moses McWilliams and at 17 she gave birth to her only child, Lelia. Her husband died in 1887 when she was 19. Instead of moving back in with her sister, Sarah set off for St. Louis, where laundress jobs were plentiful and fairly well paid. For the next 17 years, Walker supported herself and her daughter as a washerwoman. .
             She went through a brief second marriage and joined the St. Paul African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church. It was at the church that she came upon successful, well-educated African Americans, and as a result, began to consider how to better improve her appearance. In her thirties she found that her hair was beginning to fall out. She experimented with hair products already on the market, but nothing helped her. .
             Finally, as Sarah told a reporter, "God answered my prayer, for one night I had a dream, and in that dream a big black man appeared to me and told me what to mix up for my hair. Some of the remedy was grown in Africa, but I sent for it, mixed it, put it on my scalp, and in a few weeks my hair was coming in faster than it had ever fallen out. I tried it on my friends; it helped them. I made up my mind I would begin to sell it." .
             Since St. Louis already had several cosmetic companies, Walker decided to move to Denver and set up her business there. Arriving in 1905 with $1.50 savings, she rented a small room, joined the local AME church, and found a job as a cook.