This woman became the first African-American female millionaire:
- Oprah Winfrey
- Madame C. J. Walker
- Augusta Savage
- Marian Anderson
- Zora Neale Hurston
Daily Quiz for February 19, 2008
This woman became the first African-American female millionaire:
This woman became the first African-American female millionaire:
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.