Madam C.J Walker

Madam C.J Walker was born Sarah Breedlove. Sarah, who was their fifth child, was the first in her family to be free-born. Sarah was born a cotton plantation near Delta , Louisiana.

Minerva (mother) died in 1874 and Owen (father) passed away the following year, both due to unknown causes, leaving Sarah an orphan at the age of seven.

After her parents' passing, Sarah was sent to live with her sister, Louvinia, and her brother-in-law.The three moved to Vicksburg, Mississippi, in 1877, where Sarah picked cotton and was likely employed doing household work, although no documentation exists verifying her employment at the time.

Sarah married a man named Moses McWilliams
When Moses died two years later, Sarah and A'Lelia moved to St. Louis, where Sarah's brothers had established themselves as barbers. There, Sarah found work as a washerwoman, earning $1.50 a day — enough to send her daughter to the city's public schools.

On June 6, 1885, Sarah gave birth to a daughter, A'Lelia

While in St. Louis, Breedlove met her second husband Charles J. Walker

During the 1890s, Sarah developed a scalp disorder that caused her to lose much of her hair, and she began to experiment with both home remedies and store-bought hair care treatments in an attempt to improve her condition.

In 1907 Walker and her husband traveled around the South and Southeast promoting her products and giving lecture demonstrations of her "Walker Method" — involving her own formula for pomade, brushing and the use of heated combs.

s profits continued to grow, in 1908 Walker opened a factory and a beauty school in Pittsburgh, and by 1910, when Walker transferred her business operations to Indianapolis, the Madam C.J. Walker Manufacturing Company had become wildly successful, with profits that were the modern-day equivalent of several million dollars.

Walker died of hypertension on May 25, 1919, at age 51, at Villa Lewaro in Irvington, NY.