Charles joseph walker

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Discover the History Makers of Black History Month

Madam CJ Walker Forged a New Path in Indianapolis

“I had to make my own living and my own opportunity. But I made it! Don’t sit down and wait for the opportunities to come. Get up and make them.” Madam C.J. Walker

Earlier this year, Netflix released a miniseries about the life of Madam C.J. Walker, a female entrepreneur who built her beauty empire in Indianapolis. Walker, who suffered from a scalp disorder, created a homemade line of women’s hair care products specifically for African American women.

In 1910, Walker relocated her growing business from the Pittsburgh area to Indianapolis and opened the Madam C.J. Walker Manufacturing Company. Not only did she overcome adversity as a black person, but as a woman in business, Walker shattered glass ceilings as she went on to become the first black female self-made millionaire as recorded in the Guinness Book of World Records.

Now designated as a National Historic Landmark, the Madam C.J. Walker Building still stands in downtown Indianapolis on Indiana Avenue

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Madam C.J. Walker’s Early Life

Madam CJ Walker, Self-Made Millionaire

Madam C.J. Walker was born Sarah Breedlove on December 23, 1867. Her parents, Owen and Minerva, were Louisiana sharecroppers who had been born into slavery. Sarah, their fifth child, was the first in her family to be born free after the Emancipation Proclamation. Her early life was marked by hardship; she was orphaned at seven, married at 14 (to Moses McWilliams, with whom she had a daughter, A'Lelia, in 1885) and became a widow at 20.

Walker and 2-year-old A’Lelia moved to St. Louis, where Walker balanced working as a laundress with night school. She sang in the choir of the St. Paul African Methodist Episcopal Church and became active in the National Association of Colored Women. It was in St. Louis that she first met Charles J. Walker, the man who would become her second husband—and inspire the name of her eventual empire.

The Walker System

Walker was inspired to create haircare products for Black women after a scalp disorder caused her to lose much of her own hair. She came up with a treatment that wo

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Entrepreneur, philanthropist, and activist, Madam C.J. Walker rose from poverty in the South to become one of the wealthiest African American women of her time. She used her position to advocate for the advancement of black Americans and for an end to lynching.

Born Sarah Breedlove on December 23, 1867, on a plantation in Delta, Louisiana, one of six children of Owen and Minerva Anderson Breedlove, former slaves-turned sharecroppers after the Civil War. Orphaned at age seven, Walker lived with her older sister Louvenia, and the two worked in the cotton fields. Partly to escape her abusive brother-in-law, at age 14 Walker married Moses McWilliams. When her husband died in 1887, Walker became a single parent of two-year old daughter Lelia (later known as A’Lelia).

Seeking a way out of poverty, in 1889, Walker moved to St. Louis, Missouri, where her four brothers were barbers. There, she worked as a laundress and cook. She joined the African Methodist Episcopal Church, where she met leading black men and women, whose education and success likewise inspired her. In 1894, she marri