This woman became the first African-American female millionaire:
Oprah Winfrey
Madame C. J. Walker
Augusta Savage
Marian Anderson
Zora Neale Hurston
Madame C. J. Walker
Madame C. J. Walker became the United States? first African-American female millionaire. Born Sarah Breedlove Walker in 1867, she began life as the daughter of impoverished former slaves in Louisiana. Walker was orphaned at age six, married at fourteen and a widowed mother of a little girl at twenty. Largely illiterate, she worked as a laundress in St. Louis for two decades before her 1905 discovery of hair treatment for black women that became her means to financial independence. In 1906 she married Denver journalist Charles J. Walker and thereafter went under the name "Madame C.J. Walker.? Eventually, she marketed cosmetics and shampoo, built a manufacturing plant in Indianapolis, opened beauty schools, hired thousands of agents to sell her wares door to door, and generously supported charitable causes.
The HistoryNet.com is brought to you by the Weider History Group, the world's largest publisher of history magazines. HistoryNet.com contains daily features, photo galleries and over 5,000 articles originally published in our various magazines.
If you are interested in a specific history subject, try searching our archives, you are bound to find something to pique your interest.