C. J. Walker

America’s first Black female millionaire began her life on a Louisiana plantation, the child of two formerly enslaved parents born just two years after the end of the Civil War.

Madam C. J. Walker, born Sarah Breedlove, had lost both her parents by the age of 7. She married at 14, and by 20 she was a widowed mother working as a washerwoman to make ends meet.

But after losing her hair, she discovered and then adapted a product that helped regrow her locks.

At a time of poor hygiene and scarce indoor plumbing, the sulfur in her product helped heal scalp infections that led to hair loss. Madam C. J. Walker’s Wonderful Hair Grower was a smash.

“She was a master marketer. I’m convinced that if she were alive now she’d be all over Instagram,” her great-great-granddaughter and biographer A’Lelia Bundles told The Hill.

Though Walker’s story reached a large new audience in a four-part series that topped Netflix’s trending list, Bundles says there was more to Walker than simply success.

“What really makes her legacy important to me is that she used her money and influence to try to make things better for her community, as a philanthropist and a political activist,” Bundles said, pointing to Walker’s funding of scholarships and contributions YMCA and NAACP. 

She organized a petition and protested at the White House for anti-lynching legislation. The War Department, which made a habit of monitoring “Negro subversion,” put her under surveillance.

“It really is a Black Lives Matter from the early 20th century,” said Bundles.

— Niv Elis