MADAM C. J. WALKER

Sarah Breedlove was born in 1867 on a Louisiana plantation, the first child in her family born free. Orphaned at seven, married at fourteen, widowed at twenty, she moved to St Louis and worked as a washerwoman for about a dollar a day while her daughter went to school.

Severe scalp disease and hair loss — common where indoor plumbing was scarce and harsh soaps were the norm — pushed her to experiment with her own treatments.

In 1905 she moved to Denver, took the name Madam C. J. Walker, and sold her scalp preparation door to door. She toured the South and Midwest for years demonstrating in churches and parlours, then opened a factory and beauty school in Indianapolis in 1910.

Her real invention was the distribution model: thousands of trained Walker Agents in uniform, earning commission, organised into clubs with conventions and awards for charitable work. She built an income route for Black women that did not run through domestic service.

She funded scholarships, the NAACP's anti-lynching campaign, YMCA branches, and homes for the elderly, and joined a delegation to the White House protesting lynching. She died in 1919 at fifty-one at Villa Lewaro, the estate she built in Irvington, New York, leaving two-thirds of her estate to charity.