January 17, 2025 • 30 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, born on the land of the former plantation where her parents were enslaved, Madam C.J. Walker married young, had a child young, became a widow young, and got a divorce young. She also created, out of necessity, a revolutionary hair care product that changed the world, and her life. Here's her great-great-great-granddaughter, A'lelia Bundles, with the story.
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Speaker 1 (00:10):
And we continue with our American stories. Up next, we
have the story of Madame CJ. Walker. Many believe that
she was the first female self made millionaire, and she
just happens to be African American. She was also the
first person to bring haircare products to the masses. You
to tell her story is her great great granddaughter, an
(00:30):
author of the book on her own ground, The Life
and Times of Madame CJ.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
Walker.
Speaker 1 (00:36):
Here's Alilia Bundles.
Speaker 3 (00:42):
She started life as Sarah Breedlove on the same plantation
in Delta, Louisiana, where her parents had been enslaved, and
she was the first child and her family born free
in December of eighteen sixty seven. They lived in an
area that had been devastated by the Civil War. Everything
(01:03):
the plantations had been burned down, and now the formerly
enslaved people were struggling to just live a life and
they had very little money. At the end of every season,
they owed money to the plantation owners who had been
their former slave owners. And Sarah Breedlove as the young
child in her family, she had had very little formal education.
(01:26):
There were schools for black children in Louisiana. Even though
her family minister Curtis Pollard had been a Black state
senator during reconstruction, when African Americans had gained a great
deal of political power, that power was taken away from
them by the ku Klux Klan, so that by the
time Sarah was old enough to go to school, there
(01:46):
were no schools for black children. She knows how to
pick cotton, she knows how to wash clothes, she knows
how to do domestic work. And then when she was
seven years old, both of her parents died. She had
to move in with her older sister, Lavigna, and Lavigna
(02:07):
was married to a man who was so cruel, as
Sarah later said that she got married at fourteen to
get a home of her own.
Speaker 2 (02:15):
She married a man named Moses McWilliams.
Speaker 3 (02:18):
They had one daughter named Alilia, when Sarah was seventeen,
and when Sarah was twenty, Moses died, so now Sarah
Breedlove McWilliams was a widow. She knew she wasn't going
to move back in with her sister, so she moved
up the Mississippi River to Saint Louis, where her older
brothers had moved about a decade earlier as part of
(02:41):
an exodus. In the eighteen seventies and eighteen eighties, African Americans,
formerly enslaved people just left Louisiana and Mississippi because the
conditions were so horrible. There was so much racial violence.
Her brothers had moved to Saint Lewis to escape that treatment.
Speaker 2 (03:01):
So she joined her brothers in Saint Louis.
Speaker 3 (03:04):
They had become barbers and they were doing relatively well.
Speaker 2 (03:09):
They had a barbershop very near Saint Paul African Methodist
Episcopal Church.
Speaker 3 (03:20):
She doesn't really have enough money to make ends meet,
but the women of the church really encourage her to
make sure that her daughter is educated. So during the
week she is having to work away from home, having
to live in as a domestic, she leaves her daughter
at what was called the Colored Orphans Home. There were
a number of black women who had organized because they
(03:41):
knew there were.
Speaker 2 (03:42):
Families who were struggling. There was no daycare in the.
Speaker 3 (03:44):
Way that we think about it now, so her daughter,
Lilia spent part of the week at the Colored Orphans Home.
She went to kindergarten with the other children from the school,
and then on the weekends or whenever Sarah could be
with her, she helped to raise her daughter. They went
to church every Sunday at Saint paul Amy Church and
even though Sarah was struggling, she had a good enough
(04:06):
voice that she was in the choir. Being in the
choir allowed her to meet some of the more middle
class women, to travel around the city when the choir performed,
and so she was being exposed to a way of
life that made her aspire to something better. So time
went on, and in eighteen ninety four, a couple of
(04:30):
her brothers had died, and so now her support system,
her emotional and financial support system, was really crumbling, and
she met a man named John Davis. She married John Davis.
She thought that that would be helpful to her, that
she would be helpful in raising her daughter.
Speaker 2 (04:46):
And that turned out to be a disaster.
Speaker 3 (04:48):
John Davis was a heavy drinker and he had a
lot of girlfriends. And even though it's you know, thinking
about him, it's hard to believe that anybody would be
interested in John Davis, but you know, she was. You know,
her life was hard, and sometimes people make really unwise decisions.
Speaker 2 (05:03):
So she married John Davis and they fought a lot
and he.
Speaker 3 (05:07):
Was arrested for you know, public drunkenness, and he really
just was, you know, not a good partner, so.
Speaker 2 (05:13):
They ended up splitting up.
Speaker 3 (05:14):
But around this time, she was under so much stress
and she was having so many problems that her hair began.
Speaker 2 (05:21):
To fall out.
Speaker 3 (05:22):
And I think one thing that is really important for
us to understand in this era, in the twenty first century.
Speaker 2 (05:29):
Is that in nineteen oh six, most.
Speaker 3 (05:31):
Americans didn't have indoor plumbing. That meant people didn't bathe
very often, which we don't like to think about. But
you know, people would have to go outside and pump
water at the well by hand, put it in a bucket,
heat it on a wood stoveboard an open fire, get
the water hot enough to fill a big, large tin tub, and.
Speaker 2 (05:52):
Take a bath.
Speaker 3 (05:53):
And that might happen once a week, and everybody in
the family might use the same bathwater.
Speaker 2 (05:58):
So it's really gross.
Speaker 3 (06:00):
But as you can see, this would not you know,
bathing was not the sort of luxury thing that we
think about now. So most people didn't have indoor plumbing,
they didn't bathe very often. They washed their hair even
less often, sometimes once a month, sometimes not at all
during the winter.
Speaker 2 (06:16):
Because you think about what that would take if it's
snowing outside, how were you going to pump the water?
Speaker 3 (06:21):
And Sarah was one of those women, and there were
many women like her. Because they weren't washing their hair
very often, they had really horrible scalp infections and as
a result, they were going bald. So that was really
Sarah's real problem is that she was going bald and
she wanted to figure out a way to have healthier hair.
Speaker 2 (06:42):
She said, I was so ashamed.
Speaker 3 (06:44):
Of my frightful appearance that I prayed to the Lord
for a solution. And one night, in a dream, a
big African man appeared and he told me what to
mix up for my formula. And some of the ingredients
came from Africa.
Speaker 2 (06:57):
I sent for them.
Speaker 3 (06:57):
I mixed them together, I applied into my scalp, and
my hair began to grow back faster than it had
ever fallen out.
Speaker 2 (07:05):
That is part of the truth.
Speaker 3 (07:08):
It's also true that she sold products for a while
for women who became her competitor, woman named Annie Malone.
It's also true that she worked for a while as
a cook for after she moved to Denver, for man
named el Schaltz, who owned the largest pharmacy west of
the Mississippi River, and he was well aware of products
(07:31):
that were already on the market, like cuticura and formulas
that pharmacist had been using and the medical profession had
been using, really for hundreds of years.
Speaker 2 (07:41):
A basic formula.
Speaker 3 (07:42):
That was cleaning your hair more often with a shampoo
and then an ointment that contained sulfur, and sulfur is
a century's old remedy for healing dandriffron scalp infections. She
moved to Denver in nineteen oh five, and her good
(08:04):
friend Charles Joseph Walker, whom she had met in Saint Louis,
who was a newspaper man, moved to Denver and they
got married, and she began to take out ads in
the newspaper. All of a sudden, instead of being Sarah
McWilliams and her ads in the black newspaper in Denver, now.
Speaker 2 (08:23):
She was Missus C. J.
Speaker 3 (08:24):
Walker. And then in April of nineteen oh six she
began to call herself Madam CJ. Walker. And you can think, well,
that's a bit of an affectation, but it was really
a nod to the fact that Paris, where people were
called madam rather than missus.
Speaker 2 (08:42):
Paris was the center of fashion and beauty culture. And
she like.
Speaker 3 (08:47):
Women who were her contemporaries, Elizabeth Arden, Helena Rubinstein, they
all called themselves madam, and that gave them a bit
of respect, you know, made them sort of stand out.
And then if you looked at the old newspapers of
the time, see that women who own boarding houses, or
who were seamstresses, or who were caters called themselves madam.
So it was really kind of a business honorific as
(09:08):
well as a way to have some respect and some dignity.
Speaker 1 (09:14):
And what a story you're hearing from a Lelia Bundles,
who happens to be the great great granddaughter of Madam C. J. Walker.
And what a life, I mean, Moore said, stories, more
tragic stories than anything you'd read in the Old Testament.
Loses her parents, young, lives in a home that's so
brutal with her sister that she has to get out
and get married. Her husband dies, she moves to Saint Louis,
(09:35):
her brothers die, and my goodness, somehow she just manages
to keep going. And the stress in her life is
so terrible that her hair keeps falling off. And then
we learned about this partnership with this newspaper man the
eds start and up comes the new and improved Madam C. J. Walker.
When we come back more of the life of Madam C. J.
(09:56):
Walker here on our American stories. And we continue with
our American stories and our story on the first female millionaire,
Madam C. J.
Speaker 2 (10:15):
Walker.
Speaker 1 (10:16):
Telling this story is her great great granddaughter, Alilia Bundles.
Let's get back to the story here again. Is Alilia Bundles?
Speaker 3 (10:25):
She really was, She really was a marketing and distribution genius.
Speaker 2 (10:35):
She begins to sell her products.
Speaker 3 (10:37):
You know, her hair is now growing longer, and other
women who had scalp infections like she did are wondering, Sarah,
what have you done? How come your hair is growing?
And she and her new husband traveled around Colorado to
the various mining towns, to Trinidad, to Pueblo, to Colorado Springs,
and it really became clear to her that she could
(10:58):
only grow her market so much in a state where
there were very few black residents. So she and Charles
Joseph Walker began to travel around the southwestern part of
the United States. In the South, they went to Texas,
to Kansas, to Oklahoma, Mississippi, Louisiana, she'd take out a
(11:19):
little ad in whatever black newspaper for the town where
she was going the next week, so that she would
have a crowd, and every town she would go to
she would demonstrate the products. She would find a woman
in the town who seemed to have a scalp infection.
In that she would hire a room in a church
and get the water heated and wash the woman's hair
(11:40):
and then show just.
Speaker 2 (11:41):
What her products could do.
Speaker 3 (11:43):
And you know, you figure, at this point in time,
there's no radio, there's no television.
Speaker 2 (11:48):
There are very few places that actually have movie houses.
Speaker 3 (11:51):
So when somebody comes to do a lecture and they
have a little few bells and whistles and they've gotten
the local minister to pay attention, she's the entertainment perhaps
for the month. She knew how to develop a crowd
and how to create buzz. And then she was always
very good about picking out the women who seemed to
(12:12):
have the most personality, who might be leaders in their church,
who might be with their missionary society or with their choir.
Speaker 2 (12:19):
She had a.
Speaker 3 (12:20):
Really great knack for finding women who were leaders, and
she would pick that woman to be her sales agent,
so that.
Speaker 2 (12:28):
When she left the town, she would leave a supply.
Speaker 3 (12:31):
Of products with that person and then she would stay
in touch. And then as the woman began to develop
a customer base, she would order more products from Sarah.
By training thousands of women to be her sales agents,
she developed a workforce, an army of women who were
(12:51):
selling her products. One story I remember from her secretary.
She had a secretary who came to work for her
in nineteen fourteen, when she was still a tea tea
and when I was growing up and really starting to
do my research, Violet Reynolds was still working for the
Walker Company. When she talked about Madam Walker. She had
a certain reverence for her, of course, but she said
when Madam Walker, as she traveled, she would go to
(13:14):
large towns, but sometimes she would go through on the
train through a town that was really too small for
the train to stop. And people may remember those old
cowboy movies where a train would sort of slow down
as it went through a town, and there was a
big hook, and that was the hook that the mail
bag went on, and so the train would slow down
(13:34):
and they would take the mail off the hook that
was going away from the town, and then they would
put a bag onto the hook for the mail that
was to be delivered to the town. Well, Madam Walker,
when she was going through a town that was too
small for the train to stop, knew the train.
Speaker 2 (13:49):
Would slow down.
Speaker 3 (13:50):
She would make advance arrangements with her local sales agent
to say, I'm coming through this town at three twenty
eight on Thursday, please be there, and she would throw
off a little bundle of her flyers and her order
forms and some products for the agent, and then the
agent would be able to distribute that material.
Speaker 2 (14:11):
To her customers. So Matta Walker used every available avenue
to promote her products, to distribute her products, to sell
her products. But she also understood the power of image.
If she had Instagram, I know she would be all
over Instagram. She needed to find a new base, and
(14:34):
in nineteen oh nine she visited Indianapolis, and she was
very impressed with Indianapolis. There was a very thriving black
business community.
Speaker 3 (14:43):
There were three black newspapers, including one that was a
nationally distributed newspaper called the Indianapolis Freeman. So just imagine
a black USA today in nineteen ten.
Speaker 2 (14:56):
It had a very robust current.
Speaker 3 (14:58):
Events front, second an excellent sports section, that told you
what was happening with black baseball teams, and a very
interesting entertainment section like the life section in USA Today,
and it was writing about the Lafayette players in Harlem
and Bert Williams and the different singers and actors who
were traveling all over the United States. So this Indianapolis
(15:21):
Freeman was something mount Walker immediately recognized as a great.
Speaker 2 (15:26):
Place to advertise.
Speaker 3 (15:27):
She took out an ad and she used before and
after photographs. The before pictures she put in the center
and her hair was very short. This was when her
hair been falling out. And then on either side, in
a sort of trio of pictures, she had a front
view and a side view and her hair was long,
and her hair was down to the middle of her
back and very healthy.
Speaker 2 (15:47):
It was kind of like a Jenny Craig commercial.
Speaker 3 (15:49):
I mean, you could really see the impact that her
products really worked. And in that ad, she took a
third of the page from top to bottom, placed the
pictures at the top, and then the ad included letters
that were testimonials from women who both were her customers
and women who were her sales agents. One woman wrote
(16:10):
her letter and she said, before I started using Madam
Walker's wonderful hair grewer. My hair was an eighth of
an inch long, and now my hair is down my
back and I have been able to throw my wig away.
So this was real, you know, real endorsement. But there
were also letters from women who had become her sales agents,
(16:31):
and one woman said, you have made it possible for
a black woman to make more money in a day
selling your products than she could in a month working
in somebody's kitchen. This was huge because there was so
much discrimination against, you know, women in general working outside
the home, but especially women of color. The only jobs
(16:54):
that they could be hired for were maids and cooks
and laundresses and sharecroppers. For a woman to be able
to make her own money, her own independent money meant
she didn't have to go work in somebody else's house,
live in somebody else's house, and leave her children at home.
She could have her own business in her house doing hair.
(17:14):
So Madam Walker always was pushing not just the products
and you can feel beautiful at a time when very
few people were.
Speaker 2 (17:22):
Telling black women they were beautiful.
Speaker 3 (17:24):
She always pushed financial and economic independence and empowerment. So
these ads were very powerful added to that. One of
the reasons she had picked Indianapolis is because it was
a transportation hub.
Speaker 2 (17:40):
It was called the Crossroads.
Speaker 3 (17:41):
Of America, and that was because of all of the
trains that went through Indianapolis every day. At that point
in nineteen ten, it was near the center of population
in America. The Western United States was still pretty sparsely populated.
California was not the powerhouse that we think of it
now with a large popular so Indiana really had quite
(18:02):
a bit of train traffic. And because the trains were
going through town, that meant that it was a great
place for her to.
Speaker 2 (18:10):
Do business with her mail order business.
Speaker 3 (18:12):
It also meant that the black men who worked on
the trains, the pullman porters, who were traveling from coast
to coast, could take papers, copies of the Indianapolis Freeman,
and sell those papers as they traveled around. So Madam
Walker placed her ad in the Indianapolis Freeman, knowing that
these black pullman porters would pick up stacks of those
(18:34):
papers as they came through town. And if they were
going to San Francisco or Boston or Detroit or Atlanta
or New York or Chicago, her ads were going to
be seen by people. So she didn't have Instagram, but
she had the Indianapolis Freeman. That was how people began
to know about her products.
Speaker 1 (18:55):
And you've been listening to Alelia Bundles, Madam CJ. Walker's
great great granddaughter, tell one heck of a story about
the marketing and distribution genius of Madam C. J.
Speaker 2 (19:05):
Walker.
Speaker 1 (19:05):
Before there was Mary Ka, there was Madam CJ. When
we come back more of the remarkable story of Madame CJ.
Walker here on our American Stories, and we continue with
(19:39):
our American stories and the final portion of our story
on the first female millionaire, Madam CJ. Walker, telling the story.
He is a great great granddaughter, Alilia Bundles. Let's continue
with the story. Here again is Alilia.
Speaker 2 (19:53):
So I'm going to tell you a story about her
first convention, but I'm going to lead up to it
just to sort of set the state.
Speaker 3 (20:03):
So nineteen ten, when Madame Walker moves to Indianapolis, she's
just really just on the cusp of breaking out.
Speaker 2 (20:11):
She's still you know.
Speaker 3 (20:13):
Making a few thousand dollars a year, which is more
money than most you know, even you white businessmen in
America are making at the time. But she's just really
poised to become nationally known.
Speaker 2 (20:27):
And shortly after she moves to.
Speaker 3 (20:29):
Indianapolis, there is a big push to build a new
YMCA in the black community, and Madam Walker becomes friends
with George Knox, the publisher of the Indianapolis Freeman, the
paper that has done so much to improve her advertisements
and to raise her profile. And George Knox is the
chairman of the board of the Black YMCA. This big
(20:52):
push to build a YMCA is led by George Knox.
He invites Jesse Moriland, one of the first Black secretaries
of the YMCA, to come to Indianapolis to do what
he has done in many other cities, which is to
hold a big rally to raise money.
Speaker 2 (21:09):
And he has.
Speaker 3 (21:09):
Persuaded Julius Rosenwald, the president of Sears Roebuck, to pledge
twenty five thousand dollars to any city in America where
the black and white communities will work together to raise
the balance of seventy five thousand dollars to build a
hundred thousand dollars building. Now, one hundred thousand dollars may
(21:30):
not go very far now, but then it would build
you a quite nice building. So Jesse Morland comes to
Indianapolis and holds a rally, brings together the leadership of
the Black YMCA and the leadership of the white YMCA,
and some of the wealthy white business men stand up
during the rally and they pledge one thousand dollars, five
thousand dollars, ten thousand dollars.
Speaker 2 (21:52):
And everyone's astonishment, Madam C. J.
Speaker 3 (21:55):
Walker stood up and said, I pledge one thousand dollars
doing this because I believe if I help our boys,
it will help our girls, and that is what I
am interested in.
Speaker 2 (22:08):
People were stunned.
Speaker 3 (22:09):
No black woman had ever contributed that amount of money
to that kind of secular cause.
Speaker 2 (22:15):
And she began to be written.
Speaker 3 (22:17):
About in newspapers, not just black newspapers, but white newspapers,
and they were writing about not just her business, but
they were writing about her philanthropy.
Speaker 2 (22:27):
And eventually the YMCA was built.
Speaker 3 (22:30):
But Madam Walker in the meantime, realized that people wanted
to hear her story, and so her crowds.
Speaker 2 (22:36):
Began to get larger.
Speaker 3 (22:37):
She traveled from town to town to sell her products,
and she decided during the summer of nineteen twelve that
she wanted to attend the National Negro Business League Convention.
That organization had been sounded by Booker T.
Speaker 2 (22:52):
Washington, who was.
Speaker 3 (22:54):
The most powerful black man in America. He had had
dinner at the White House with Theodore Roosevelt. That was
quite high controversial because segregation was still very much a
part of the ethos of America, and even though Booker T.
Washington had founded Tusky Institute and had founded the National
Negro Business League and was very influential, he was not
(23:16):
welcome in many.
Speaker 2 (23:17):
Places in America.
Speaker 3 (23:18):
Madam Walker arrived at the nineteen twelve National Negro Business
League Convention and sent word to Booker T.
Speaker 2 (23:24):
Washington that she wished to tell her story.
Speaker 3 (23:27):
She wanted to be included on the program, and she
had met Booker T. Washington before, but he had been
relatively dismissive of her. He had pretty much ignored her.
But she was not a woman who wanted to be ignored,
so on the first day of the convention she asked
politely about speaking, and he overlooked her. And on the
(23:50):
second day of the convention, her good friend George Knox,
the publisher of the Indianapolis Freeman, stood up and said
we should hear from Madam C. J.
Speaker 2 (23:58):
Walker.
Speaker 3 (23:59):
She is the woman who gave one thousand dollars to
the building fund of the YMCA in my hometown of Indianapolis.
Speaker 2 (24:06):
She has an incredible story to tell.
Speaker 3 (24:09):
And even though Knox was a longtime member of the
National Negro Business League and a good friend of Booker T. Washington's,
he dismissed George Knox, and Booker T. Washington said, you know,
we're discussing lifetime membership.
Speaker 2 (24:24):
But rather than call on.
Speaker 3 (24:26):
Somebody to discuss lifetime membership, he called upon one of
Madam Walker's neighbors.
Speaker 2 (24:31):
From Indianapolis, a man named H. L.
Speaker 3 (24:34):
Saunders, and mister Saunders proceeded to talk about his business.
Speaker 2 (24:37):
Now, he was very successful.
Speaker 3 (24:39):
He manufactured uniforms for people who worked in hotels and
who worked in service industries, and his business was now
a regional business with customers in Indiana and the four
surrounding states. At this point, Madam Walker, just six years
after she had started the Madam C. J. Walker Manufacturing Company,
(25:02):
had customers all over the United States, the Caribbean, and
Central America. As it turns out, mister Saunders had been
the treasurer for the fundraising campaign for the YMCA and
he had given the very generous sum of two hundred
and fifty dollars, but Madam Walker, of course, had given
(25:24):
four times as much, one thousand dollars. Now, I know
she was a good church going woman, and she knew
that you weren't supposed to compare what you put into
the collection basket to what others put in.
Speaker 2 (25:37):
However, I can't help.
Speaker 3 (25:38):
But imagine that she felt at least a twinge of presentiment.
And on the third and final day of the conference,
as the last banker was completing his report, she stood
at her seat, looked toward Booker T. Washington at the podium,
and said, surely you are not going to shut the.
Speaker 2 (25:56):
Door in my face. I am a woman from.
Speaker 3 (26:00):
The cotton fields of the South. From there I was
promoted to the washed up. From there, I was promoted
to the kitchen, and from there I promoted myself. I
promoted myself into the business of manufacturing hair goods and preparations,
and I have built my own factory on my own ground.
(26:24):
The next year he invited her back as a keynote speaker,
and then when he came to the dedication of the
YNCA in Indianapolis in nineteen thirteen, Madam Walker sent her
chauffeur to pick him up at the train station.
Speaker 2 (26:39):
And he was a guest in her home.
Speaker 3 (26:42):
At the dedication of the y, he praised Madam Walker
and all of the things.
Speaker 2 (26:46):
That she was doing.
Speaker 3 (26:48):
So she really believed that you had to speak up
for yourself. She believed that you first had to have
an excellent product, that you had to make people aware
of your product, that you had to surround yourself with
highly confident people, and that you had.
Speaker 2 (27:06):
To deliver on what you were promising. And so she
continued to.
Speaker 3 (27:12):
Develop this army, this workforce of sales agents, of employees
who were with her at her headquarters. She became very wealthy,
and it.
Speaker 2 (27:23):
Was really an American rags to riches story.
Speaker 3 (27:26):
She had been born on a plantation in Delta, Louisiana,
one of the poorest areas, an American area that had
been devastated during the Civil War, and she was on
a cotton plantation making no money, so an orphan at
a very early age, very little education. And yet by
the time she died in May of nineteen nineteen, she
(27:49):
was living in a mansion in one of the wealthiest
communities in America, just a few miles away from John D.
Speaker 2 (27:55):
Rockefeller. Well.
Speaker 3 (28:01):
When people would ask her the secret to her success,
she would say to them, there is no royal flower
strewing path to success, and if there is, I have
not found it. For whatever success I have attained has
been the result of much hard work and many sleepless nights.
I got my start by giving myself a start. So
(28:24):
don't sit down and wait for the opportunities to come.
You have to get up and make them for yourself.
She had, during those fifty one years, gone from an
uneducated washerwoman to a millionaire. She was one of the
wealthiest American business women of her time. Many people believe
(28:48):
that she was the first self made American woman millionaire
to make her own money in business, not to inherit
it or to marry someone who was a millionaire. She
was making this money one thousand dollars a month, then
ten thousand dollars a month, in twenty thousand dollars a month,
and on and on at a time when white men
(29:10):
who were managers in corporate America were only making twelve
hundred dollars a month. And she was also making it
possible for other African American women to create their own
financial independence, to create their own wealth. I still hear
from people when I'm making speeches, who will say, my grandmother,
(29:31):
my aunt, my great grandmother was a walker agent, and
she was able to buy real estate, and then she
became a realtor.
Speaker 2 (29:39):
She was able to start another business.
Speaker 3 (29:41):
And so this wealth was created in black families by
women who were independent entrepreneurs.
Speaker 1 (29:52):
Had a terrific job on the production, editing and storytelling
by our own monty Montcomery and a special thanks to
Lelia Bundles. My success was the result of much hard
work and many sleepless nights. I got my start because
I gave myself a start. A terrific message for her
times and for ours. The story of Adam C. J.
(30:12):
Walker here on our American Stories
And we continue with our American stories. Up next, we
have the story of Madame CJ. Walker. Many believe that
she was the first female self made millionaire, and she
just happens to be African American. She was also the
first person to bring haircare products to the masses. You
to tell her story is her great great granddaughter, an
(00:30):
author of the book on her own ground, The Life
and Times of Madame CJ.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
Walker.
Speaker 1 (00:36):
Here's Alilia Bundles.
Speaker 3 (00:42):
She started life as Sarah Breedlove on the same plantation
in Delta, Louisiana, where her parents had been enslaved, and
she was the first child and her family born free
in December of eighteen sixty seven. They lived in an
area that had been devastated by the Civil War. Everything
(01:03):
the plantations had been burned down, and now the formerly
enslaved people were struggling to just live a life and
they had very little money. At the end of every season,
they owed money to the plantation owners who had been
their former slave owners. And Sarah Breedlove as the young
child in her family, she had had very little formal education.
(01:26):
There were schools for black children in Louisiana. Even though
her family minister Curtis Pollard had been a Black state
senator during reconstruction, when African Americans had gained a great
deal of political power, that power was taken away from
them by the ku Klux Klan, so that by the
time Sarah was old enough to go to school, there
(01:46):
were no schools for black children. She knows how to
pick cotton, she knows how to wash clothes, she knows
how to do domestic work. And then when she was
seven years old, both of her parents died. She had
to move in with her older sister, Lavigna, and Lavigna
(02:07):
was married to a man who was so cruel, as
Sarah later said that she got married at fourteen to
get a home of her own.
Speaker 2 (02:15):
She married a man named Moses McWilliams.
Speaker 3 (02:18):
They had one daughter named Alilia, when Sarah was seventeen,
and when Sarah was twenty, Moses died, so now Sarah
Breedlove McWilliams was a widow. She knew she wasn't going
to move back in with her sister, so she moved
up the Mississippi River to Saint Louis, where her older
brothers had moved about a decade earlier as part of
(02:41):
an exodus. In the eighteen seventies and eighteen eighties, African Americans,
formerly enslaved people just left Louisiana and Mississippi because the
conditions were so horrible. There was so much racial violence.
Her brothers had moved to Saint Lewis to escape that treatment.
Speaker 2 (03:01):
So she joined her brothers in Saint Louis.
Speaker 3 (03:04):
They had become barbers and they were doing relatively well.
Speaker 2 (03:09):
They had a barbershop very near Saint Paul African Methodist
Episcopal Church.
Speaker 3 (03:20):
She doesn't really have enough money to make ends meet,
but the women of the church really encourage her to
make sure that her daughter is educated. So during the
week she is having to work away from home, having
to live in as a domestic, she leaves her daughter
at what was called the Colored Orphans Home. There were
a number of black women who had organized because they
(03:41):
knew there were.
Speaker 2 (03:42):
Families who were struggling. There was no daycare in the.
Speaker 3 (03:44):
Way that we think about it now, so her daughter,
Lilia spent part of the week at the Colored Orphans Home.
She went to kindergarten with the other children from the school,
and then on the weekends or whenever Sarah could be
with her, she helped to raise her daughter. They went
to church every Sunday at Saint paul Amy Church and
even though Sarah was struggling, she had a good enough
(04:06):
voice that she was in the choir. Being in the
choir allowed her to meet some of the more middle
class women, to travel around the city when the choir performed,
and so she was being exposed to a way of
life that made her aspire to something better. So time
went on, and in eighteen ninety four, a couple of
(04:30):
her brothers had died, and so now her support system,
her emotional and financial support system, was really crumbling, and
she met a man named John Davis. She married John Davis.
She thought that that would be helpful to her, that
she would be helpful in raising her daughter.
Speaker 2 (04:46):
And that turned out to be a disaster.
Speaker 3 (04:48):
John Davis was a heavy drinker and he had a
lot of girlfriends. And even though it's you know, thinking
about him, it's hard to believe that anybody would be
interested in John Davis, but you know, she was. You know,
her life was hard, and sometimes people make really unwise decisions.
Speaker 2 (05:03):
So she married John Davis and they fought a lot
and he.
Speaker 3 (05:07):
Was arrested for you know, public drunkenness, and he really
just was, you know, not a good partner, so.
Speaker 2 (05:13):
They ended up splitting up.
Speaker 3 (05:14):
But around this time, she was under so much stress
and she was having so many problems that her hair began.
Speaker 2 (05:21):
To fall out.
Speaker 3 (05:22):
And I think one thing that is really important for
us to understand in this era, in the twenty first century.
Speaker 2 (05:29):
Is that in nineteen oh six, most.
Speaker 3 (05:31):
Americans didn't have indoor plumbing. That meant people didn't bathe
very often, which we don't like to think about. But
you know, people would have to go outside and pump
water at the well by hand, put it in a bucket,
heat it on a wood stoveboard an open fire, get
the water hot enough to fill a big, large tin tub, and.
Speaker 2 (05:52):
Take a bath.
Speaker 3 (05:53):
And that might happen once a week, and everybody in
the family might use the same bathwater.
Speaker 2 (05:58):
So it's really gross.
Speaker 3 (06:00):
But as you can see, this would not you know,
bathing was not the sort of luxury thing that we
think about now. So most people didn't have indoor plumbing,
they didn't bathe very often. They washed their hair even
less often, sometimes once a month, sometimes not at all
during the winter.
Speaker 2 (06:16):
Because you think about what that would take if it's
snowing outside, how were you going to pump the water?
Speaker 3 (06:21):
And Sarah was one of those women, and there were
many women like her. Because they weren't washing their hair
very often, they had really horrible scalp infections and as
a result, they were going bald. So that was really
Sarah's real problem is that she was going bald and
she wanted to figure out a way to have healthier hair.
Speaker 2 (06:42):
She said, I was so ashamed.
Speaker 3 (06:44):
Of my frightful appearance that I prayed to the Lord
for a solution. And one night, in a dream, a
big African man appeared and he told me what to
mix up for my formula. And some of the ingredients
came from Africa.
Speaker 2 (06:57):
I sent for them.
Speaker 3 (06:57):
I mixed them together, I applied into my scalp, and
my hair began to grow back faster than it had
ever fallen out.
Speaker 2 (07:05):
That is part of the truth.
Speaker 3 (07:08):
It's also true that she sold products for a while
for women who became her competitor, woman named Annie Malone.
It's also true that she worked for a while as
a cook for after she moved to Denver, for man
named el Schaltz, who owned the largest pharmacy west of
the Mississippi River, and he was well aware of products
(07:31):
that were already on the market, like cuticura and formulas
that pharmacist had been using and the medical profession had
been using, really for hundreds of years.
Speaker 2 (07:41):
A basic formula.
Speaker 3 (07:42):
That was cleaning your hair more often with a shampoo
and then an ointment that contained sulfur, and sulfur is
a century's old remedy for healing dandriffron scalp infections. She
moved to Denver in nineteen oh five, and her good
(08:04):
friend Charles Joseph Walker, whom she had met in Saint Louis,
who was a newspaper man, moved to Denver and they
got married, and she began to take out ads in
the newspaper. All of a sudden, instead of being Sarah
McWilliams and her ads in the black newspaper in Denver, now.
Speaker 2 (08:23):
She was Missus C. J.
Speaker 3 (08:24):
Walker. And then in April of nineteen oh six she
began to call herself Madam CJ. Walker. And you can think, well,
that's a bit of an affectation, but it was really
a nod to the fact that Paris, where people were
called madam rather than missus.
Speaker 2 (08:42):
Paris was the center of fashion and beauty culture. And
she like.
Speaker 3 (08:47):
Women who were her contemporaries, Elizabeth Arden, Helena Rubinstein, they
all called themselves madam, and that gave them a bit
of respect, you know, made them sort of stand out.
And then if you looked at the old newspapers of
the time, see that women who own boarding houses, or
who were seamstresses, or who were caters called themselves madam.
So it was really kind of a business honorific as
(09:08):
well as a way to have some respect and some dignity.
Speaker 1 (09:14):
And what a story you're hearing from a Lelia Bundles,
who happens to be the great great granddaughter of Madam C. J. Walker.
And what a life, I mean, Moore said, stories, more
tragic stories than anything you'd read in the Old Testament.
Loses her parents, young, lives in a home that's so
brutal with her sister that she has to get out
and get married. Her husband dies, she moves to Saint Louis,
(09:35):
her brothers die, and my goodness, somehow she just manages
to keep going. And the stress in her life is
so terrible that her hair keeps falling off. And then
we learned about this partnership with this newspaper man the
eds start and up comes the new and improved Madam C. J. Walker.
When we come back more of the life of Madam C. J.
(09:56):
Walker here on our American stories. And we continue with
our American stories and our story on the first female millionaire,
Madam C. J.
Speaker 2 (10:15):
Walker.
Speaker 1 (10:16):
Telling this story is her great great granddaughter, Alilia Bundles.
Let's get back to the story here again. Is Alilia Bundles?
Speaker 3 (10:25):
She really was, She really was a marketing and distribution genius.
Speaker 2 (10:35):
She begins to sell her products.
Speaker 3 (10:37):
You know, her hair is now growing longer, and other
women who had scalp infections like she did are wondering, Sarah,
what have you done? How come your hair is growing?
And she and her new husband traveled around Colorado to
the various mining towns, to Trinidad, to Pueblo, to Colorado Springs,
and it really became clear to her that she could
(10:58):
only grow her market so much in a state where
there were very few black residents. So she and Charles
Joseph Walker began to travel around the southwestern part of
the United States. In the South, they went to Texas,
to Kansas, to Oklahoma, Mississippi, Louisiana, she'd take out a
(11:19):
little ad in whatever black newspaper for the town where
she was going the next week, so that she would
have a crowd, and every town she would go to
she would demonstrate the products. She would find a woman
in the town who seemed to have a scalp infection.
In that she would hire a room in a church
and get the water heated and wash the woman's hair
(11:40):
and then show just.
Speaker 2 (11:41):
What her products could do.
Speaker 3 (11:43):
And you know, you figure, at this point in time,
there's no radio, there's no television.
Speaker 2 (11:48):
There are very few places that actually have movie houses.
Speaker 3 (11:51):
So when somebody comes to do a lecture and they
have a little few bells and whistles and they've gotten
the local minister to pay attention, she's the entertainment perhaps
for the month. She knew how to develop a crowd
and how to create buzz. And then she was always
very good about picking out the women who seemed to
(12:12):
have the most personality, who might be leaders in their church,
who might be with their missionary society or with their choir.
Speaker 2 (12:19):
She had a.
Speaker 3 (12:20):
Really great knack for finding women who were leaders, and
she would pick that woman to be her sales agent,
so that.
Speaker 2 (12:28):
When she left the town, she would leave a supply.
Speaker 3 (12:31):
Of products with that person and then she would stay
in touch. And then as the woman began to develop
a customer base, she would order more products from Sarah.
By training thousands of women to be her sales agents,
she developed a workforce, an army of women who were
(12:51):
selling her products. One story I remember from her secretary.
She had a secretary who came to work for her
in nineteen fourteen, when she was still a tea tea
and when I was growing up and really starting to
do my research, Violet Reynolds was still working for the
Walker Company. When she talked about Madam Walker. She had
a certain reverence for her, of course, but she said
when Madam Walker, as she traveled, she would go to
(13:14):
large towns, but sometimes she would go through on the
train through a town that was really too small for
the train to stop. And people may remember those old
cowboy movies where a train would sort of slow down
as it went through a town, and there was a
big hook, and that was the hook that the mail
bag went on, and so the train would slow down
(13:34):
and they would take the mail off the hook that
was going away from the town, and then they would
put a bag onto the hook for the mail that
was to be delivered to the town. Well, Madam Walker,
when she was going through a town that was too
small for the train to stop, knew the train.
Speaker 2 (13:49):
Would slow down.
Speaker 3 (13:50):
She would make advance arrangements with her local sales agent
to say, I'm coming through this town at three twenty
eight on Thursday, please be there, and she would throw
off a little bundle of her flyers and her order
forms and some products for the agent, and then the
agent would be able to distribute that material.
Speaker 2 (14:11):
To her customers. So Matta Walker used every available avenue
to promote her products, to distribute her products, to sell
her products. But she also understood the power of image.
If she had Instagram, I know she would be all
over Instagram. She needed to find a new base, and
(14:34):
in nineteen oh nine she visited Indianapolis, and she was
very impressed with Indianapolis. There was a very thriving black
business community.
Speaker 3 (14:43):
There were three black newspapers, including one that was a
nationally distributed newspaper called the Indianapolis Freeman. So just imagine
a black USA today in nineteen ten.
Speaker 2 (14:56):
It had a very robust current.
Speaker 3 (14:58):
Events front, second an excellent sports section, that told you
what was happening with black baseball teams, and a very
interesting entertainment section like the life section in USA Today,
and it was writing about the Lafayette players in Harlem
and Bert Williams and the different singers and actors who
were traveling all over the United States. So this Indianapolis
(15:21):
Freeman was something mount Walker immediately recognized as a great.
Speaker 2 (15:26):
Place to advertise.
Speaker 3 (15:27):
She took out an ad and she used before and
after photographs. The before pictures she put in the center
and her hair was very short. This was when her
hair been falling out. And then on either side, in
a sort of trio of pictures, she had a front
view and a side view and her hair was long,
and her hair was down to the middle of her
back and very healthy.
Speaker 2 (15:47):
It was kind of like a Jenny Craig commercial.
Speaker 3 (15:49):
I mean, you could really see the impact that her
products really worked. And in that ad, she took a
third of the page from top to bottom, placed the
pictures at the top, and then the ad included letters
that were testimonials from women who both were her customers
and women who were her sales agents. One woman wrote
(16:10):
her letter and she said, before I started using Madam
Walker's wonderful hair grewer. My hair was an eighth of
an inch long, and now my hair is down my
back and I have been able to throw my wig away.
So this was real, you know, real endorsement. But there
were also letters from women who had become her sales agents,
(16:31):
and one woman said, you have made it possible for
a black woman to make more money in a day
selling your products than she could in a month working
in somebody's kitchen. This was huge because there was so
much discrimination against, you know, women in general working outside
the home, but especially women of color. The only jobs
(16:54):
that they could be hired for were maids and cooks
and laundresses and sharecroppers. For a woman to be able
to make her own money, her own independent money meant
she didn't have to go work in somebody else's house,
live in somebody else's house, and leave her children at home.
She could have her own business in her house doing hair.
(17:14):
So Madam Walker always was pushing not just the products
and you can feel beautiful at a time when very
few people were.
Speaker 2 (17:22):
Telling black women they were beautiful.
Speaker 3 (17:24):
She always pushed financial and economic independence and empowerment. So
these ads were very powerful added to that. One of
the reasons she had picked Indianapolis is because it was
a transportation hub.
Speaker 2 (17:40):
It was called the Crossroads.
Speaker 3 (17:41):
Of America, and that was because of all of the
trains that went through Indianapolis every day. At that point
in nineteen ten, it was near the center of population
in America. The Western United States was still pretty sparsely populated.
California was not the powerhouse that we think of it
now with a large popular so Indiana really had quite
(18:02):
a bit of train traffic. And because the trains were
going through town, that meant that it was a great
place for her to.
Speaker 2 (18:10):
Do business with her mail order business.
Speaker 3 (18:12):
It also meant that the black men who worked on
the trains, the pullman porters, who were traveling from coast
to coast, could take papers, copies of the Indianapolis Freeman,
and sell those papers as they traveled around. So Madam
Walker placed her ad in the Indianapolis Freeman, knowing that
these black pullman porters would pick up stacks of those
(18:34):
papers as they came through town. And if they were
going to San Francisco or Boston or Detroit or Atlanta
or New York or Chicago, her ads were going to
be seen by people. So she didn't have Instagram, but
she had the Indianapolis Freeman. That was how people began
to know about her products.
Speaker 1 (18:55):
And you've been listening to Alelia Bundles, Madam CJ. Walker's
great great granddaughter, tell one heck of a story about
the marketing and distribution genius of Madam C. J.
Speaker 2 (19:05):
Walker.
Speaker 1 (19:05):
Before there was Mary Ka, there was Madam CJ. When
we come back more of the remarkable story of Madame CJ.
Walker here on our American Stories, and we continue with
(19:39):
our American stories and the final portion of our story
on the first female millionaire, Madam CJ. Walker, telling the story.
He is a great great granddaughter, Alilia Bundles. Let's continue
with the story. Here again is Alilia.
Speaker 2 (19:53):
So I'm going to tell you a story about her
first convention, but I'm going to lead up to it
just to sort of set the state.
Speaker 3 (20:03):
So nineteen ten, when Madame Walker moves to Indianapolis, she's
just really just on the cusp of breaking out.
Speaker 2 (20:11):
She's still you know.
Speaker 3 (20:13):
Making a few thousand dollars a year, which is more
money than most you know, even you white businessmen in
America are making at the time. But she's just really
poised to become nationally known.
Speaker 2 (20:27):
And shortly after she moves to.
Speaker 3 (20:29):
Indianapolis, there is a big push to build a new
YMCA in the black community, and Madam Walker becomes friends
with George Knox, the publisher of the Indianapolis Freeman, the
paper that has done so much to improve her advertisements
and to raise her profile. And George Knox is the
chairman of the board of the Black YMCA. This big
(20:52):
push to build a YMCA is led by George Knox.
He invites Jesse Moriland, one of the first Black secretaries
of the YMCA, to come to Indianapolis to do what
he has done in many other cities, which is to
hold a big rally to raise money.
Speaker 2 (21:09):
And he has.
Speaker 3 (21:09):
Persuaded Julius Rosenwald, the president of Sears Roebuck, to pledge
twenty five thousand dollars to any city in America where
the black and white communities will work together to raise
the balance of seventy five thousand dollars to build a
hundred thousand dollars building. Now, one hundred thousand dollars may
(21:30):
not go very far now, but then it would build
you a quite nice building. So Jesse Morland comes to
Indianapolis and holds a rally, brings together the leadership of
the Black YMCA and the leadership of the white YMCA,
and some of the wealthy white business men stand up
during the rally and they pledge one thousand dollars, five
thousand dollars, ten thousand dollars.
Speaker 2 (21:52):
And everyone's astonishment, Madam C. J.
Speaker 3 (21:55):
Walker stood up and said, I pledge one thousand dollars
doing this because I believe if I help our boys,
it will help our girls, and that is what I
am interested in.
Speaker 2 (22:08):
People were stunned.
Speaker 3 (22:09):
No black woman had ever contributed that amount of money
to that kind of secular cause.
Speaker 2 (22:15):
And she began to be written.
Speaker 3 (22:17):
About in newspapers, not just black newspapers, but white newspapers,
and they were writing about not just her business, but
they were writing about her philanthropy.
Speaker 2 (22:27):
And eventually the YMCA was built.
Speaker 3 (22:30):
But Madam Walker in the meantime, realized that people wanted
to hear her story, and so her crowds.
Speaker 2 (22:36):
Began to get larger.
Speaker 3 (22:37):
She traveled from town to town to sell her products,
and she decided during the summer of nineteen twelve that
she wanted to attend the National Negro Business League Convention.
That organization had been sounded by Booker T.
Speaker 2 (22:52):
Washington, who was.
Speaker 3 (22:54):
The most powerful black man in America. He had had
dinner at the White House with Theodore Roosevelt. That was
quite high controversial because segregation was still very much a
part of the ethos of America, and even though Booker T.
Washington had founded Tusky Institute and had founded the National
Negro Business League and was very influential, he was not
(23:16):
welcome in many.
Speaker 2 (23:17):
Places in America.
Speaker 3 (23:18):
Madam Walker arrived at the nineteen twelve National Negro Business
League Convention and sent word to Booker T.
Speaker 2 (23:24):
Washington that she wished to tell her story.
Speaker 3 (23:27):
She wanted to be included on the program, and she
had met Booker T. Washington before, but he had been
relatively dismissive of her. He had pretty much ignored her.
But she was not a woman who wanted to be ignored,
so on the first day of the convention she asked
politely about speaking, and he overlooked her. And on the
(23:50):
second day of the convention, her good friend George Knox,
the publisher of the Indianapolis Freeman, stood up and said
we should hear from Madam C. J.
Speaker 2 (23:58):
Walker.
Speaker 3 (23:59):
She is the woman who gave one thousand dollars to
the building fund of the YMCA in my hometown of Indianapolis.
Speaker 2 (24:06):
She has an incredible story to tell.
Speaker 3 (24:09):
And even though Knox was a longtime member of the
National Negro Business League and a good friend of Booker T. Washington's,
he dismissed George Knox, and Booker T. Washington said, you know,
we're discussing lifetime membership.
Speaker 2 (24:24):
But rather than call on.
Speaker 3 (24:26):
Somebody to discuss lifetime membership, he called upon one of
Madam Walker's neighbors.
Speaker 2 (24:31):
From Indianapolis, a man named H. L.
Speaker 3 (24:34):
Saunders, and mister Saunders proceeded to talk about his business.
Speaker 2 (24:37):
Now, he was very successful.
Speaker 3 (24:39):
He manufactured uniforms for people who worked in hotels and
who worked in service industries, and his business was now
a regional business with customers in Indiana and the four
surrounding states. At this point, Madam Walker, just six years
after she had started the Madam C. J. Walker Manufacturing Company,
(25:02):
had customers all over the United States, the Caribbean, and
Central America. As it turns out, mister Saunders had been
the treasurer for the fundraising campaign for the YMCA and
he had given the very generous sum of two hundred
and fifty dollars, but Madam Walker, of course, had given
(25:24):
four times as much, one thousand dollars. Now, I know
she was a good church going woman, and she knew
that you weren't supposed to compare what you put into
the collection basket to what others put in.
Speaker 2 (25:37):
However, I can't help.
Speaker 3 (25:38):
But imagine that she felt at least a twinge of presentiment.
And on the third and final day of the conference,
as the last banker was completing his report, she stood
at her seat, looked toward Booker T. Washington at the podium,
and said, surely you are not going to shut the.
Speaker 2 (25:56):
Door in my face. I am a woman from.
Speaker 3 (26:00):
The cotton fields of the South. From there I was
promoted to the washed up. From there, I was promoted
to the kitchen, and from there I promoted myself. I
promoted myself into the business of manufacturing hair goods and preparations,
and I have built my own factory on my own ground.
(26:24):
The next year he invited her back as a keynote speaker,
and then when he came to the dedication of the
YNCA in Indianapolis in nineteen thirteen, Madam Walker sent her
chauffeur to pick him up at the train station.
Speaker 2 (26:39):
And he was a guest in her home.
Speaker 3 (26:42):
At the dedication of the y, he praised Madam Walker
and all of the things.
Speaker 2 (26:46):
That she was doing.
Speaker 3 (26:48):
So she really believed that you had to speak up
for yourself. She believed that you first had to have
an excellent product, that you had to make people aware
of your product, that you had to surround yourself with
highly confident people, and that you had.
Speaker 2 (27:06):
To deliver on what you were promising. And so she
continued to.
Speaker 3 (27:12):
Develop this army, this workforce of sales agents, of employees
who were with her at her headquarters. She became very wealthy,
and it.
Speaker 2 (27:23):
Was really an American rags to riches story.
Speaker 3 (27:26):
She had been born on a plantation in Delta, Louisiana,
one of the poorest areas, an American area that had
been devastated during the Civil War, and she was on
a cotton plantation making no money, so an orphan at
a very early age, very little education. And yet by
the time she died in May of nineteen nineteen, she
(27:49):
was living in a mansion in one of the wealthiest
communities in America, just a few miles away from John D.
Speaker 2 (27:55):
Rockefeller. Well.
Speaker 3 (28:01):
When people would ask her the secret to her success,
she would say to them, there is no royal flower
strewing path to success, and if there is, I have
not found it. For whatever success I have attained has
been the result of much hard work and many sleepless nights.
I got my start by giving myself a start. So
(28:24):
don't sit down and wait for the opportunities to come.
You have to get up and make them for yourself.
She had, during those fifty one years, gone from an
uneducated washerwoman to a millionaire. She was one of the
wealthiest American business women of her time. Many people believe
(28:48):
that she was the first self made American woman millionaire
to make her own money in business, not to inherit
it or to marry someone who was a millionaire. She
was making this money one thousand dollars a month, then
ten thousand dollars a month, in twenty thousand dollars a month,
and on and on at a time when white men
(29:10):
who were managers in corporate America were only making twelve
hundred dollars a month. And she was also making it
possible for other African American women to create their own
financial independence, to create their own wealth. I still hear
from people when I'm making speeches, who will say, my grandmother,
(29:31):
my aunt, my great grandmother was a walker agent, and
she was able to buy real estate, and then she
became a realtor.
Speaker 2 (29:39):
She was able to start another business.
Speaker 3 (29:41):
And so this wealth was created in black families by
women who were independent entrepreneurs.
Speaker 1 (29:52):
Had a terrific job on the production, editing and storytelling
by our own monty Montcomery and a special thanks to
Lelia Bundles. My success was the result of much hard
work and many sleepless nights. I got my start because
I gave myself a start. A terrific message for her
times and for ours. The story of Adam C. J.
(30:12):
Walker here on our American Stories
Host
Lee Habeeb
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