Madam C. J. Walker: Building a Business Empire
By Penny Coleman
Orphaned at an early age, Madam C. J. Walker, who was born Sarah Breedlove, told people, “I had to make my own living and my own opportunity! But I made it!” A washerwoman who turned herself into a powerhouse, Madam revolutionized the business of hair-care products for black women. As her business grew, she moved from Denver to Pittsburgh and then to Indianapolis, Indiana, where she established a beauty school, a laboratory, and a factory where her products were developed and made. In 1913 her daughter A’Lelia opened a beauty salon in a townhouse in Harlem, a section of New York City. Madam soon moved there because, she said, “There is so much joy living in New York.” In 1918, she moved into a thirty-room mansion she had built in a town not far from New York. A year later she died at the age of fifty-one years. Her last words were, “I want to live to help my race.”
During her lifetime, Madam C. J. Walker had made lots of money; she had spent some of it on fancy cars, clothes, a gold-leaved grand piano and harp, and a mansion. But she also used her money to help make life better for other people.
You can purchase the book online from Amazon at http://www.amazon.com/Madam-C-J-Walker-ebook/dp/B009WEYTTI.
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