Madame C.J. Walker (Sarah Breedlove McWilliams Walker): Inventor, Businesswoman
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| Audience/Grade: | Pre-K or Kindergarten - Continuing Education |
| Discipline(s): |
Design Engineering Diversity Entrepreneurship and Innovation General Engineering, Engineering Science |
| Special Topic(s): |
Black and African American Scientists and Engineers Women Inventors |
| Learning Resource Type: | Reference - General |
| Media Type: | WWW |
| Author(s): | Mitchell Brown |
| Description: | This is a case study of an historical African American engineer or inventor. "n 1905 Sarah Breedlove developed a conditioning treatment for straightening hair. Starting with door-to-door sales of her cosmetics, Madame C.J. Walker amassed a fortune. In 1910 she built a factory in Indianapolis to manufacture her line of cosmetics. Before her death in 1919 she was a millionaire, one of the most successful business executives in the early half of the twentieth century. One of the first American women of any race or rank to become a millionaire through her own efforts was Sarah Breedlove Walker. Sarah Breedlove was born in 1867 to Minerva and Owen Breedlove on the shores of the Mississippi River in northeast Louisiana. Sarah's parents, both ex-slaves, were sharecroppers who lived on the Burney plantation in Delta, Louisiana. "Madam Walker always said in her public speeches that she was 'orphaned at seven.' Her mother died first. Her father remarried and apparently died before she turn eight in December, 1875. Source: Bundles" Because of her impoverished background she had only a limited formal education. She was married to a Mr. McWilliams at fourteen, "to get a home" (as described by Walker herself), and had a daughter, A'Lelia, in 1885. Widowed at twenty in 1887, Sarah and her daughter moved from Vicksburg to St. Louis, Missouri. For eighteen years, from 1887-1905, she supported herself and her daughter by work as a washerwoman. While in St. Louis in 1905, Walker said she had an idea to begin a cosmetics business. "Madam Walker's treatment did not straighten hair. Her treatment was designed to heal scalp disease through more frequent shampooing. massage and the application of an ointment consisting of petrolatum and a medicinal sulfur. Madam Walker did use a hot comb--which she did NOT invent--in her system, but she was by no means the first person to employ such methods. In fact, Marcel Grateau, a Parisian, was using heated metal hair care implements as early as 1872, and hot combs were available in Sears and Bloomingdale's catalogues in the 1890s, presumably designed for white women." Source: Bundles Before this time, African American women who wanted to de-kink their hair had to place it on a flat surface and press it with a flat iron. She invented her hair softener for use with a straightening comb. Mixing her soaps and ointments in washtubs and kitchen utensils, while adapting the existing hairdressing techniques and modifying curling tools. She added the prefix Madame to her name and took to the road, soon demonstrated her excellent marketing skills to sell her hair products door-to-door." Keywords: African American or Black Engineer, ethnic diversity |
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| Use of Resource: |
Promoting Ethnic Diversity and Inclusion This resource is part of a larger collection on African American Scientists, Engineers and Inventors called See "The Faces of Science: African Americans in the Sciences". This series is a useful set of cases that show the contributions of early African American engineers and inventors. Go to: http://www.needs.org/needs/view.jhtml?id=E863B803-EE62-48B9-BFB0-BDCC9B01FF51 |
| Difficulty: | Easy |
| Interactivity Level: | Very Low |
| Version Info | |
| Publication Date: | 2005 |
| Platform/Format: | WWW |
| Cost: | Free |
| Download URL: | https://webfiles.uci.edu/mcbrown/display/walker.html |
| Metadata: | IEEE LOM Record |
| Collection: |
NEEDS
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