Imagine you wake up and you find out you're the first person of your gender and race to be a millionaire. That would be so crazy. This biography is about Madame C.J. Walker and she was indeed the first woman and Black-American to do so. She has a very interesting story and journey to getting where she was. It’s one of the best stories of someone starting at the bottom, and going all the way to the top. She really went from rags to riches. Madame C.J Walker, whose original name at birth was Sarah Breedlove McWilliams Walker, was born on December 23, 1867 in Delta, Louisiana. When she was young, she worked very hard in cotton fields with other blacks from sunrise until sunset (C.J.). She had a very rough childhood and suffered poverty. She lived …show more content…
Walker was fast building “an empire in the trey tradition of American enterprise—producing products in her own factory, recruiting a nationwide sales group to sell them, and making and owning sops of beauty that used and promoted them (Madame). Walker knew she had to sell her products on a national level if she wanted to make a large fortune. She made a chain of beauty parlors through the U.S., South America, and the Caribbean. By 1910, she recruited five thousand black agents to sell her products on a commission basis (C.J.) By 1917, the Madame C.J. Walker Manufacturing Company was “the largest Black-owned business in the country” with yearly income of about $500,000. A lot of the success was built around Black women known as “Walker agents” and they became familiar sights around the Caribbean and the U.S. with their white blouses and long black skirts (Madame). Walker lived a lavish lifestyle. She wore the latest clothes, wore expensive jewelry, drove around in an electric car, and built a $250,000, 20-room mansion in Georgia (Madame). By 1918, Walker's hard work had begun to take a toll on her. She continued to travel after the doctors told her to slow down to ease her blood pressure. She collapsed on a business trip to St. Louis. She died quietly of kidney failure resulting from hypertension in May of 1919. She left behind a thriving company, extensive property, and a personal fortune of $1 million