Sarah Breedlove in the Southern Quote

She was born December 23, 1867 in Delta, Louisiana, one of six children. Her parents and elder siblings were slaves on a Madison Parish plantation but she was the first child in the family born into freedom after the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation. Her mother died in 1872 and her father shortly thereafter. In 1878, to escape a yellow fever epidemic and failing cotton crops, she and her sister moved to Vicksburg, Mississippi looking for work.

Sarah married at fourteen and gave birth to a daughter three years later. Sadly, within two years her husband had also passed away. Sarah took the toddler and moved on to St. Louis, Missouri where she subsequently married a newspaper advertising salesman.

Like many women of her era Sarah experienced hair loss, most probably because without indoor plumbing women bathed and washed their hair infrequently. Out of this personal need, she began experimenting and finally developed a shampoo and ointment that made her scalp healthier and promoted hair growth. Madam C.J. Walker (born Sarah Breedlove) began selling these products throughout the United States, eventually settling in Indianapolis where she established her headquarters and built a factory.

Sarah began to teach and train other black women, helping them build their own successful businesses using her line of beauty and hair products for black women. In 1917 builders completed work on her estate in New York but she only lived in the impressive home for two years before dying of complications from hypertension at the age of 51. At her death she was considered to be the wealthiest African-American woman in the country and the first self-made female American millionaire.

Today’s Southern Quote pays tribute to an enterprising businesswoman known as Madame C.J. Walker who once said, I am a woman from the cotton fields of the South. From there I was promoted to the washtub and then to the kitchen. From there I promoted myself into the business of manufacturing hair products. I have built my own factory on my own ground.”