Sarah Breedlove is the woman the world would one day know as Madam C. J. Walker.
Note: Of these three photos I found, the left two were labeled Sarah Breedlove, and on the right, Madam C.J. Walker. After painting her portrait using the left photo, I realized it was a highly touched up version of her (or possibly AI?). I was duped! I’m working on a second portrait of her using the middle photo.
Madam C. J. Walker
1867–1919
Sarah Breedlove was born in 1867 in the cotton fields of Louisiana, the first in her family born free. Orphaned at seven, she worked in the fields, picking cotton beside the adults. That hardship built a strength that would guide her all her life.
At fourteen, she married to escape abuse. By twenty, she was a widowed mother with no clear path forward. She moved to St. Louis to be near her brothers. She scrubbed laundry for pennies, and the chemicals affected her hair. When her hair began to fall out, she experimented with different products to help restore her hair. With help from entrepreneur Annie Malone, Sarah learned the haircare business and soon created her own product. In 1905 she moved to Denver to she could expand her own business. A year later she married Charles Joseph Walker, and officially launched her “Madam C.J. Walker” brand, “Madam Walker’s Wonderful Hair Grower.” Her husband was in marketing and helped her market her product.
Madam C.J. Walker’s image is on her haircare product packaging
She built a network of Walker Agents, women who sold her products and carried her message of pride and independence across the country. She trained them to lead, to serve, and to lift others as they rose.
By the time of her death, Madam C. J. Walker was celebrated as one of America’s first self-made women millionaires. But her greatest legacy was the door she opened for countless Black women, to stand tall, to dream bigger, and to build lives of their own making.